The Phoenix Suns have reportedly added their fifth assistant coach under Mike Budenholzer, former University of Washington coach Mike Hopkins.
Hopkins spent the last seven season as the coach at Washington, winning Pac-12 Coach of the Year in both of his first two seasons (2017-18 and 2018-19).
Before this, Hopkins served as an assistant at his Alma mater, Syracuse, under Jim Boeheim from 1995-2017.
In total, Hopkins went 122-111 as a head coach, including a 4-5 record at Syracuse as the interim head coach in the 2015-16 season.
Hopkins also worked on USA Basketball’s coaching staff for several years.
He was fired at Washington before the end of this past season, but did finish out the year there, posting a 17-15 record.
This is the Suns’ first reported addition of an assistant in over 10 days. The last report was from Hoops Hype’s Michael Scotto, who reported that Budenholzer was adding Wisconsin Herd coach Chaisson Allen to his staff. Deseret News reported that the Suns were adding Utah Jazz assistant coach Chad Forcier. David Fizdale is reportedly returning to Phoenix as an assistant per ESPN, while the Suns also reportedly landed one of Budenholzer’s previous assistants, Vince Legarza, according to AZ Central’s Duane Rankin.
The Suns officially hired Budenholzer to replace fired coach Frank Vogel on May 11, two weeks after the team was swept in the first round by the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Phoenix has not made any of these assistant coach hirings official.
