The Valley of the Sun has been blessed with one tremendous owner: Jerry Colangelo.
It has also been burdened by several terrible ones, like Robert Sarver, Bill Bidwill, Ken Kendrick and Andrew Barroway.
Two current owners — the Suns’ Mat Ishbia and the Cardinals’ Michael Bidwill — don’t yet have a long enough track record to fit in either box, but they are headed in clear, opposite directions.
Ishbia is the closest thing we’ve seen to Colangelo in the two decades since the former owner of the Suns and Diamondbacks sold off his majority stakes in 2004.
The D-Backs are still the lone professional Arizona franchise to win a Big Four championship, as Colangelo put together a superteam right out of the gate that won the World Series in 2001.
He also made every effort to get the Suns a ring, falling just short in the mid-1990s.
Ishbia is following in those footsteps.
In five months since buying the team from Sarver, the 43-year-old billionaire has traded for Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, building the core of a contender without regard for salary cap or cash repercussions.
Unsurprisingly, solid role players flocked to Phoenix in the free agent period, as Eric Gordon and Co. once again proved that if you build an attractive situation, veterans will turn down more money to join it.
Heading into the 2023-24 season, the Suns have the third-best odds to win the NBA Championship at +600, trailing only the defending champion Denver Nuggets and the Boston Celtics, per BetMGM.
Bidwill has found some success after taking over day-to-day operations from his father, Bill, in 2007.
Michael played a big role in getting State Farm Stadium built, and was in charge when the Cardinals turned an almost perfectly average 2008 regular season (+1 point-differential) into a Cinderella Super Bowl run.
His biggest accomplishment was the hire of Bruce Arians, who helped build a legitimate contender from 2013-16, and if we stopped there, Bidwill would be in the Colangelo and Ishbia tier.
But since then, the Cardinals have lost and lost often, and recently had a damning NFLPA report card that showed penny-pinching similar to the Bill Bidwill era.
Arizona’s only true window for recent contention came in 2021 and 2022, but Bidwill stuck to a standard free agent budget that ultimately constrained the team’s ability to make big swings, aka the anti-Ishbia approach.
The short-sighted nature of the decision had huge consequences, as a stars-and-scrubs roster last season fell apart and Bidwill cleaned house.
Now the Cardinals are back where they have been so often throughout their history: in the dregs of the NFL. Arizona has the longest odds to win the 2024 Super Bowl, and new GM Monti Ossenfort has spent the entire offseason in tank mode to improve future prospects.
There is a hard salary cap in the NFL, but it can be manipulated if owners want to win badly enough. Bidwill has not shown that gumption, and in the areas of no cap constraints — coaching, scouting, analytics, facilities, etc. — he has not been willing to spend enough.
There is a lot of parity in the NFL, which will give the Cardinals a chance to bounce back in the near future. But Bidwill needs to take a page from Ishbia’s book and understand that financial infusions are the most fail-safe way to build a perennially-competitive team.
While Ishbia’s net worth is reportedly five times that of Bidwill, both are still billionaires, and the NFL is a cash cow. The Cardinals owner can afford to spend lavishly without putting a dent in his ever-growing pocket.
Even though Ishbia has only owned the Suns for a short time, it is crystal clear that his goal is to win a title, and he will pull out all the stops to get it done.
Bidwill currently has more in common with the non-Colangelo group of owners, but it’s not too late to change his stripes.
Let Ishbia be the inspiration so this state can have two teams prioritizing championships over profits.
