Ex-NBA Player Stephen Jackson Claims Phoenix Suns Fired Coach Monty Williams to Hire A White Coach ‘So He Can Get All the Credit’
Former NBA player Stephen Jackson believes Monty Williams’ firing from the Phoenix Suns is another example of Black head coaches not getting a fair shot.
Williams was fired as the Suns’ coach after the team was eliminated by the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference semifinals. Forward Kevin Durant was acquired at the trade deadline, and Jackson said it was “wrong” of the organization to fire Williams before he got a chance to adjust to the latest iteration of the team.
“Even I said, ‘Yeah, if they lose, they were gonna give this team another yes, minus (Chris Paul),'” Jackson said on I AM ATHLETE’s Paper Route podcast. “I said that. Give this team another year to have a whole season of training camp and all this together to see if they could pull it off. I didn’t think they were gonna get rid of the coach. I think he was the right coach for the job. But you know how they do. When teams come together like this, they’re quick to go and find a white coach somewhere around, just throw him in that position so he can get all the credit.”
Williams was named the Suns head coach in 2019. In the 2019-2020 season — which was shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic — the team finished the regular season 34-39. The 2020-2021 season — again shortened — saw the team surge to 51-21 to earn the top seed in the Western Conference. After winning the Western Conference Finals, the team lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA Finals.
The following season, the Suns once again earned the No. 1 seed but were upset by the fourth-seeded Dallas Mavericks in the second round.
At the 2022-2023 trade deadline, the Suns stunned the NBA when they traded for Durant. Despite a relatively-middling season up to that point, they were widely considered to be championship favorites with a lineup including Durant, Paul, and guard Devin Booker. After beating the Los Angeles Clippers in the first round, the team struggled against the Nuggets. The Suns’ lack of bench depth — which the team sacrificed to get Durant — was a primary factor in the series loss.
Jackson said it’s become too common for Black coaches to not survive team rebuilds of this magnitude.
“Every time a black coach comes into the league, he gets the worst team in the league to start his career off under .500,” Jackson said. “He got a sorry team and his team won’t win ’til he’s like six years in coaching when he finally gets some stars. But situations like they this, they always find a white coach somewhere around — just like they did Steve Nash in Brooklyn — to throw him a spot where the team is really already basically together.
“They did Monty wrong. They know they shouldn’t have done that.”
