to the positive nature he had that was instilled upon the team after he was first hired, making him the full-time head coach of the team. At the time of his promotion to permanent head coach, Watson was the second-youngest head coach in the NBA (behind only Luke Walton), being 36 when he first started coaching. Watson also became the first former UCLA Bruins player to become a head coach in the NBA, as well as the first NBA head coach of Hispanic descent. During Watson's first full season as head coach, he continued to promote the same philosophical mindset he had for the Suns back when he first started coaching them, but he'd also adjust the team's focus to being more involved with defense first and then offense second. Before the start of the 2017–18 season, Suns owner Robert Sarver had told sports agent Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, who represented Watson at the time, that he planned to fire Watson if the coach did not server ties with Klutch. After the Suns got off to a 0–3 start, with two blowout losses (including the worst loss in franchise history and worst season opening performance in NBA history), Watson was fired on October 22, and replaced on an interim basis by associate head coach Jay Triano for the rest of the season. Watson later worked with the Junior Basketball Association in 2018 and then worked as a Pac-12 Network and NBA TV studio analyst from 2019 to 2021 before joining the Toronto Raptors as an assistant coach in the 2021–22 season. Head coaching record |- | align="left" |Phoenix | align="left" | |33||9||24|||| align="center" |4th in Pacific|||—||—||—||– | align="center" | Missed playoffs |- | align="left" |Phoenix | align="left" | |82||24||58|||| align="center" |5th in Pacific|||—||—||—||— | align="center" | Missed playoffs |- | align="left" |Phoenix | align="left" | |3||0||3|||| align="center" |(fired)|||—||—||—||— | align="center" | — |-class="sortbottom" | align="left" |Career | ||118||33||85|||| ||0||0||0|||| Personal life Watson's father, Earl, is African-American and his mother, Estella, is Mexican-American. Because his maternal grandparents were born in Mexico, Watson was eligible to play for the Mexico national basketball team. Watson has four brothers and one sister. He is also involved with the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Arizona. One of his brothers, Dwayne, was a retired police officer who died due to blood clots in his legs that were dislodged during an altercation. The assailant, Tremaine