Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver had an odd approach to encourage former general manager Ryan McDonough – which backfired in predictable ways.
According to Kevin Arnovitz, the goal for Sarver was to remind basketball executive McDonough to eventually land the greatest player of all time for the organization. The greatest of all time is often referred to by its acronym, GOAT, which sparked this silly idea (via ESPN):
“Four years after naming McDonough general manager, Sarver acquired some live goats from a Diana Taurasi event at Talking Stick Resort Arena and planted them upstairs in McDonough’s office. The stunt was both a practical joke and an inspirational message — the Suns should find a GOAT of their own, one who dominates like Taurasi. The goats, unaware of their metaphorical connotation, proceeded to defecate all over McDonough’s office.”
Based on the timeline of events described by Arnovitz, this would place the extremely strange incident sometime around 2017.
As such, that would be a couple years after Phoenix landed young backcourt star Devin Booker and one year before the Suns selected promising big man Deandre Ayton with the No. 1 overall pick of the 2018 NBA Draft.
Still far too early to determine if either player could reach such a lofty apex, the prank certainly did not have its intended results. McDonough was fired by the Suns in October 2018. Perhaps worse is that sometime during 2017, his office was littered with animal feces planted there by his boss.
