Two Former Suns Get Into Altercation Despite Being Team Mates

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(L-R) Monaco’s US forward Alpha Diallo, Monaco’s US guard Mike James and Monaco’s French guard Elie Okobo react during the Euroleague basketball match between FC Bayern Munich and AS Monaco in Munich, southern Germany, on March 31, 2023. (Photo by Christof STACHE / AFP via Getty Images)

Acouple of weeks ago, two former members of the Phoenix Suns backcourt got into an ugly altercation with each other. And it would be less of an issue were they not also currently team mates.

Mike James and Elie Okobo are currently both find themselves members of powerhouse French club, AS Monaco, who play in the top-tier European basketball competition, the EuroLeague. As the clock ran down on the final seconds of an 88-70 Monaco loss to Turkish giants Fenerbahce earlier this month, tensions erupted between James and Okobo as James was leaving the court – leading to James giving Okobo an unsightly firm shove.

Reportedly, Okobo’s decision to walk off the court before the final buzzer sounded – as opposed to standing around for an aimless dribbling out of the final 12 seconds of the game clock – annoyed James, and he confronted the French national about it. James, who had shot only 3-15 on the night despite his self-appointed status as the greatest player in EuroLeague history – did not want to see Okobo’s open gesture of defeat. Cue the kind of underwhelming kerfuffle that only professional athletes can muster.

Bad Times For The Monegasque

Okobo and James were both members of the Suns in the calendar year of 2018, in the days when Devin Booker first became a star. Their paths did not quite cross – James played 32 games with the team to open the 2017-18 season before being waived at the trade deadline, while Okobo joined the team after being selected 31st overall in the 2018 NBA Draft, spending the next two seasons with them before enduring a waiving of his own. Nevertheless, they are now both in Okobo’s home land, playing on as big of a platform as there is in non-NBA club level basketball – and not having the best time of it.

On the 2025-26 EuroLeague season to date, Monaco are ranked ninth of the 20 teams in the competition, and are the best of the three French ones. However, this marks a sharp decline from the second-placed rank they held as recently as late January, as a run of five straight defeats and six losses in seven games saw them go from being in the contention conversation to the departure of their head coach, former Houston Rockets guard and EuroLeague legend Vassilis Spanoulis. Injury to Nikola Mirotic has been a big part of why, yet financial problems plague the team, who were only just saved from going out of business via debt forgiveness from the state at the start of the month, and who will face another insolvency hearing in April.

In the aftermath of the altercation, Monaco general manager Oleksiy Yefimov downplayed the idea of any tension between the two, as should be expected.

“I believe the best response is given on the field. Just two days after the incident, during the game against Cholet, when Okobo fell in the first quarter, James was the first to run to help him. Later in the second half, Okobo did the exact same thing for James. That says it all. As James himself said, they are ‘brothers’ and are fully focused on leading the team together.”

All well and good.  And James would later take to his own social platforms to apologise. But if there was tension in the Monaco team, perhaps it is obvious as to why.

The Duo’s Time With The Suns

James joined the Suns as an undrafted free agent in the summer of 2017, five years into a professional career in which he had already proven himself to be one of Europe’s best scoring talents. At a time when the Suns were turning over a lot of guards due to injury  problems for Eric Bledsoe – Josh Gray, Shaquille Harrison and Isaiah Canaan would also get auditions during that same period – James played his way into a full contract after starting out as a two-way player, and scored the ball through his usual combination of floaters, pull-ups, unrelenting confidence and excessive dribbling. He would average 10.4 points per game in his 32 games for the Suns, albeit inefficiently, and can at the time of writing confidently claim to be one of the two best players in NBA history with the name Mike James.

Okobo meanwhile is one of the NBA’s two best-ever Elies, despite his time on American shores proving to be somewhat underwhelming. In 108 NBA games across his two years in Phoenix, he would average 4.8 points per game, but did so inefficiently and without asserting himself in any aspect of the game, or either end.

Since returning to France, Okobo has nevertheless improved substantially, and his 15.8 points per game in EuroLeague is second on the team, behind only James’s 16.0 – if Monaco are to salvage anything from this season, it is the combined powers of these two that will be relied upon to do it. For that to happen, though, the vibes will need to improve.

Mark Deeks I am continuously intrigued by the esoterica and minutiae of all the aspects of building a basketball team. I want to understand how to build the best basketball teams possible. No, I don’t know why, either. More about Mark Deeks