Lon Babby was not ready to leave the Suns

Lon Babby said he did not simply jump at the opportunity to sign a two-year contract extension to remain the president of basketball operations for the Phoenix Suns, but came to the decision only after thinking about whether or not it was the best thing for him and his family.

But alas, Babby did agree to the deal, and he’ll remain with the franchise through the 2014-15 season.

“At the end of the day, I enthusiastically accept the vote of confidence from Robert and the entire organization to continue and stay the course and see this thing through,” Babby told Arizona Sports 620’s Doug and Wolf Tuesday. “It just didn’t feel like the right time to be leaving.”

Babby, who joined the organization in 2010 and has overseen records of 40-42, 33-33 and now 23-51, will continue to try and get the franchise back to an elite status. He believes the franchise is on the right track, with ample draft picks on the way and a decent amount of salary cap space, too.

“The motivation is the thing that motivates every one of us who is a professional: to do the very best you can, to leave things better than you found them,” he said, alluding to the situation the franchise was in when he took over, with an aging roster and little cap space, and how it is in better shape now. “But the biggest thing is you want to see through the challenge and I think we’ve put ourselves in position to where we can begin to make progress.

“We’ve endured a lot of pain and we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting, whether it was getting through the last years of Steve (Nash) and Grant (Hill) and then making a painful coaching change; we’ve done a lot of heavy lifting and we still have a lot of heavy lifting to get this right, but I think we’re on the right track and it just wasn’t in my nature to walk away from it at this point.”

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