Steve Clifford is reportedly stepping away from his advisory role in the Charlotte Hornets' front office. The hilarious thing is that he is joining the Phoenix Suns, where he will be reunited with a couple of former Hornets players and with whom Charlotte has been pretty familiar these past months.
It's unclear how much impact Clifford had in his erstwhile job in Charlotte, a post he had held since stepping down as head coach in 2024. However, Jeff Peterson appears to have esteemed him so highly that he let him call in the Hornets' selection of Kon Knueppel with the fourth overall pick of this year's draft.
The Knueppel pick could turn out to be one of his legacies with Charlotte. He could have probably helped oversee the team's growth into a contender, but perhaps the allure of being a coaching advisor for the Suns was too good to pass up.
Maybe he also just wanted to reunite with Mark Williams and Nick Richards. He would have worked again with Vasilije Micic and Cody Martin if Phoenix didn't trade Micic to the Hornets in the Williams deal and guaranteed Martin's contract for the 2025-26 campaign.
Hornets and Suns have linked anew
It's interesting that Clifford landed with the Suns after Charlotte completed arguable fleece jobs against them.
Let's not forget that Buzz City managed to acquire from Phoenix a net total of two second-round picks in the Richards trade in January, a 2026 first-rounder and Jusuf Nurkic (which the Hornets turned into Collin Sexton and a second-round selection this summer) in exchange for Micic and Martin at the trade deadline, and the 29th pick in this year's draft (which it used on possible steal of the draft, Liam McNeeley) and a first-rounder in 2029 in the Williams draft-day trade.
The Hornets might be able to snag some more draft capital from Phoenix if it becomes desperate to land Miles Bridges, a product of Michigan State University, where its current owner, Mat Ishbia, graduated. The question is if the organization has any more assets left in the tank after going all-in on Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, both of whom are already on different squads, in the past years.
However, it's highly likely that Clifford would be the last person the Suns take from Charlotte in the foreseeable future.
Hopefully, losing the 63-year-old executive won't have too much of a negative impact on the Hornets, especially after former assistant coach Chris Jent slipped out of their hands to become the New York Knicks' associate head coach.
Clifford will surely be missed at the Hive, though. Don't let his disappointing two-season run as Charlotte's head coach from 2022 to 2024 draw the attention away from the fact that some of its best campaigns in the past dozen years came during his first coaching stint with the franchise.
The Hornets' last playoff appearance was in 2016, when Clifford steered them to a 48-34 finish in the regular season. Two years before that, when they were still called the Bobcats, he also guided them to the postseason. Maybe Charles Lee has what it takes to become a better coach in Charlotte than his predecessor.