Suns General Manager Steve Kerr has talked often about the teamwork and collective effort it has taken to run the franchise's basketball operations.
That teamwork's one-two punch will be gone in two weeks, now that Suns Senior Vice President of Basketball Operations David Griffin gave Suns Managing Partner Robert Sarver a letter on Wednesday morning to inform him he did not want to be a candidate for the GM job and would not stay with the franchise beyond June 30.
Like Kerr, Griffin will work with the team through the draft, one of the operations he heads year-round. Unlike Kerr, Griffin has not commented on his departure.
It is known that Griffin's decision is tied to Kerr's startling turnabout, one that came this week when a TNT opportunity became more and more attractive in light of the two weeks of talks he had on his contract and other basketball matters with Sarver.
Griffin and Kerr shared a vision for the future of the franchise. Without Kerr, Griffin could no longer connect to the direction of the club.
Griffin has been with the team since 1993, starting as a media relations intern and quickly working his way into a basketball operations position by 1997. He became a video coordinator who ran the Suns' statistical databases for the draft. He was a self-proclaimed "fantasy nerd" working in a dream job as a Phoenix native and lifelong Suns fan who cried as a 7-year-old kid when Ricky Sobers was traded.
Then-GM Bryan Colangelo gave the persistently eager, hard-working Griffin increasing responsibilities until he became his right-hand man, just as he has been for Kerr, especially when Kerr entered the job in 2007 without having worked in a basketball operation or a leadership position.
In between Colangelo and Kerr, Griffin essentially handled the GM duties for a year while MIke D'Antoni held the title but was weighed down with responsibilities as Suns coach during the season and as a USA Basketball assistant in the summer.
Griffin became a team vice president in 2006 after Colangelo left and again was promoted to senior vice president in 2007. Each time, he stayed out of the limelight in a winning organization. Behind-the-scenes executives tend to have more longevity, with their mistakes hidden as well as their successes. It is not clear whether Sarver was going to give Griffin serious consideration, especially with the desire to do a broad search. Griffin always has aspired to be a GM and he will now pursue that opportunity elsewhere, unless another surprising about-face occurs.
