"We Fucking Took Those Cocksuckers Down. Fuck Them" - A Leaked Voicemail Of Suns Owner Mat Ishbia Talking Shit About Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert's Mortgage Business Helps Perfectly Explain How He's Running The Suns

Yikes Mat Ishbia, calm down man! Look, I may not be the CEO of a billion dollar mortgage company, and I may not have more money than God, but even I know you don't get in the position of Mat Ishbia and Dan Gilbert by not being competitive, especially in business. It's a cold world out there when it comes to competing for......mortgages? I guess that makes sense as there's big money to be made in that industry, so a leaked voicemail like that is the least surprising thing of all time. I hear that as a guy who runs a company who is competitive as hell and is looking to destroy not only his main competitor, but everyone else in his path to the top of the mountain. 

Was it aggressive? Sure. But I imagine this is hardly unique in the business world. you also have to remember who we're dealing with here. Mat Ishbia seems like an "all in" type of owner both in his business and when it comes to his professional basketball team. Just look at our recent history since he bought the team. He said fuck the future and unloaded his assets to bring in KD. Then there was the time he tried to take matters into his own hands in a series against the Nuggets

then he doubled down on this win-now window by saying to hell with even more future assets by bringing in Bradley Beal. Say what you want about the guy, but it's pretty obvious he cares and is willing to do whatever it takes to get to the top of the mountain. If that means being a dick on a leaked business voicemail, so be it. If that means committing hundreds of millions of dollars and trading every short-term asset the Suns have in order to form a superteam and compete for a title immediately, so be it. 

And while it seems like he's taken over the mortgage business and that's great for him, I'm someone who doesn't really care about that. As someone who caught one of the prayers of the century and has a 2% interest rate on my mortgage from pre-covid years, I am going to die in this house before I ever consider getting a new one. I'm not exactly going to need the services of Mat Ishbia's mortgage business anytime soon.

But what I do care about is his basketball business, and essentially this was a great way for me to bring up that the Suns may have found a way to righten the ship as they fight for their Play In/playoff lives. Sure it helps when Devin Booker goes nuclear 

but for a team that has by far the toughest schedule left in the NBA, the Suns have managed to stay afloat. They've won 5 of their last 7 and are coming off a road trip where they beat both the Nuggets and Pelicans. They now enter a 4 game homestand against CLE/MIN/NO/LAC, which is a tad funny given that leaked voicemail considering Dan Gilbert's Cavs are up next. Considering the Suns only trail NO by 1 game and own the H2H tiebreaker, it's still possible the Suns play their way out of the Play In altogether. They've weirdly started to shoot way more 3PA recently and that's the one thing that has gotten the Suns into trouble all year. They don't take enough 3s. Midrange scoring is cool and all, but when your opponent is getting 35-40 3PA up against you, trading those buckets for 2s is not a winning formula in 2024.

Over their last 3 games which includes wins over DEN/NO, the Suns are 5th in the league in 3PA at 40.3 a game. How different is that from their season average? On the year the Suns rank 24th in the NBA in 3PA per game at just 32.4, so….a massive jump. In my opinion, this is how they are going to have to play if they want to survive the Play In/advance past the first round, especially if they end up facing a team like SAC or GS or DAL at some point, teams that all rank in the top 4 in 3PA on the season. If they stay in 7th, one hot shooting night can end your season if you are trading 2s for 3s. 

The risk of course is that the Suns either miss the playoffs or get bounced early, and this entire experiment blows up before it even really has had a chance to get started. With no real future assets and big money committed to the Suns superteam trio, this is it. This is their window to win a title. 

We heard how obsessed Mat Ishbia is with being #1 in the business world, and we're only a few more weeks away from finding out if he can also pull it off when it comes to the basketball court. You can't fault him for not trying, but it wouldn't shock me at all if the Suns fall short we somehow catch wind of Dan Gilbert throwing shade. Because remember, at the end of the day he's reached the top of the NBA mountain

Andrew D. Bernstein. Getty Images.