Former coach: Sarver’s Suns never had serious conversation about drafting Doncic over Ayton

On draft night in 2018, the Phoenix Suns held the No. 1 overall pick and had a decision to make. Except owner Robert Sarver had already made it, according to then-first-year coach Igor Kokoskov.

The two top players widely under consideration were Arizona Wildcats center Deandre Ayton and Real Madrid’s Luka Doncic.

According to Kokoskov, he and the front office never had a debate over who to take. And he believes it was because Sarver was locked onto Ayton as the guy.

“We never, literally never, had a single serious strategic conversation about who we were going to draft, which gave me more than enough of an indication that the decision had already been made,” Kokoskov said, according to a translation of the X&O’s Chat Podcast published Sunday.

Ayton was viewed as a safe pick at No. 1. In his first and only year with the Wildcats, he put up averages of 20.1 points, 11.6 rebounds and 1.9 blocks per game on 61.2% from the field.

Doncic, on the other hand, had been thriving in the top European leagues since he was 16 years old, and he was widely viewed as the player with the highest ceiling in the class.

With Devin Booker being a combo guard and Doncic also needing the ball in his hands, there was some thought of redundancy at the guard positions.

“We had … Devin Booker, and we projected Luka as a high-usage shooter who could pass,” Kokoskov said. “But not a pure point guard to put alongside Booker at shooting guard, meaning they’d overlap as two off-guards.”

Kokoskov was close with Doncic from his time as head coach of the Slovenian national team, where they won the 2017 EuroBasket title. But he also considered himself lucky to simply be in the position to coach the Suns.

Phoenix had a prolonged coaching search before landing on Kokoskov ahead of that draft. He also had familiarity with Phoenix and Sarver after serving as an assistant with the Suns earlier in his career. But his hire was viewed as a stretch — a historic one as the first non-North American-born head coach hired to lead an NBA team.

“The problem when you’re the first is that you can’t turn around, call someone up, and say, ‘Listen, give me some advice on how to navigate this,'” Kokoskov said.

“I consider myself lucky or fortunate enough to get the job, but then so many unfortunate circumstances followed right after that you start wondering, ‘Is someone doing this on purpose?’ Like, ‘Let’s give him the job just to torture him a bit.'”

The circumstances: Suns general manager Ryan McDonough was fired after the final preseason game of Kokoskov’s first year on the job — months after earning an extension and leading a front office that selected Ayton.

“It feels like a flashback looking back at today— I’m walking out of my room, heading to a coaches’ meeting to map things out. We had so many things on our minds — not just that preseason game, but the regular season starting the very next week,” Kokoskov said. “I see Ryan calling me as I’m walking. I say, ‘Hey, Ryan’ — he never calls me that early, it was barely 7:30 a.m. He says, ‘Nothing, just wanted to say goodbye, wish you the best’ … and he adds, ‘Robert just let me go.’ I thought it was an April Fools’ joke or something. … Robert could be impulsive like that.

“It was important to him to hire the first non-American head coach in NBA history,” Kokoskov added.

With that, Kokoskov said he let Sarver do what he thought was best without much pushback during draft preparation.

According to Kokoskov, on the morning of draft day, Sarver went to the coaches and asked them for their input on who to take, before eventually just laughing it off.

“Sarver turns to me and says, ‘Coach, what are we doing?’ I tell him, ‘We draft Luka and sign (Clint) Capela in free agency, and see if Atlanta wants to trade their pick,'” Kokoskov said. “He just says ‘OK,’ and leaves.”

Ultimately, Kokoskov believes that Ayton being an Arizona draftee sealed the deal for Sarver, who is an Arizona graduate.

“Robert Sarver went to Arizona, so he had an emotional connection to Ayton,” Kokoskov said. “He had already made up his mind, and everything regarding Luka was just him looking for reasons to justify taking Ayton as the No. 1 pick.”

Fast forward to today, and Doncic is a perennial MVP candidate with the Los Angeles Lakers, while Ayton will be backing up Anthony Davis on the Washington Wizards (his fourth team).

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