Phoenix had league ownership - basically could only spend the bare minimum to keep the franchise going and made the playoffs in the extremely tough Western Conference in 3 out of the last 5 years and just missed out in the past two (probably would have made it this year if not for Smith's injury). That is pretty impressive given the restraints they had.
As for the whole 'puppet' thing - Its going to be a group effort just like every franchise in the world. Feaster would have discussed his moves with Burke (or King before that), Weisbrod, etc, Sutter would have discussed with King. The entire point of having this structure is to have franchise stability in the event the GM doesn't work out.
Burke isn't going to sit there and tell Treliving who to draft in the 4th round, but he's also not going to sit in his office all day twiddling his thumbs and looking at spreadsheets of business operations.
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