Bledsoe leaves after Watson fired

PHOENIX — Phoenix point guard Eric Bledsoe was sent home Monday, a day after the Suns fired coach Earl Watson and replaced him on an interim basis with Jay Triano.

About the time that word of Watson’s firing was leaking out, Bledsoe sent a tweet Sunday that read “Don’t wanna be here.”

General manager Ryan McDonough said Bledsoe told him that he was at a hair salon and that’s what the tweet was about, that it had nothing to do with the Suns. “I don’t believe that to be true,” McDonough said.

So Bledsoe was sent home.

McDonough said he’s already received calls from teams about Bledsoe’s availability and he planned to answer them. McDonough said Bledsoe had asked to be traded before the season. The New York Knicks reportedly are among the teams that have inquired about Bledsoe.

McDonough also acknowledged his relationship with Watson “wasn’t great” and that it is “time for a new voice, a new direction.”

The Suns also fired assistant coaches Nate Bjorkgren, Jason Fraser and Mehmet Okur. Tyrone Corbin was elevated to lead assistant and Ty Ellis, head coach of the Northern Arizona Suns G League team, will fill one of the vacant assistant roles. Marlon Garnett was promoted from player development coordinator to bench coach.

Watson’s firing came three games into the season, two of them among the four most one-sided defeats in franchise history. McDonough said those ugly losses weren’t the sole reason for the firing.

“We had a number of meetings over the summer about some of the changes we would have liked to see in terms of style of play and player development and accountability,” McDonough said, “all those things that go into winning and helping players develop and improve. Unfortunately, we didn’t see those changes.”

McDonough said Triano would be head coach the remainder of the season.

Triano, 59, came to the Suns as associate head coach in the summer of 2016 after four years as an assistant to Terry Stotts in Portland.