The Future of Many Bucks Officials Unclear

The Bucks are in a bit of a shaky state.

As Dan and Mitchell's fantastic writeups outlined, a season that began with high expectations and slowly drifted downwards has left fans to wonder what moves should have been made, what went wrong, and what do we need to do to get ourselves out of this mess?  But above all, we're all just frustrated.

The future of the Bucks seems to be in limbo, with the looming spectre of a lockout hangs over everything, and the sizeable contracts the Bucks signed this offseason not at all working out the way Hammond and company intended.

However, as Gery Woelfel reported in the Journal Times, aside from Jennings' unhappiness with the offseason moves, the uncertainty goes a bit farther than that.  According to Woelfel, there is a laundry list of Bucks coaches and other officials who are on the last year of their contract and have yet to be resigned. 

These include all the assistant coaches: Jim Boylan, Kelvin Sampson, Joe Wolf, Bill Peterson, Anthony Goldwire and Jason Staudt,and also Director of Player Personell Dave Babcock, Director of Scouting Billy McKinney, Advance Scout Chris Gilmartin, Head Athletic Trainer Marc Boff, Head Strength and Conditioning coach Jeff Macy, Assistant Athletic Trainer and Assistant Strength and Conditioning coach Scott Barthlama and equipment manager Dwayne Wilson.

*Deep breath*

This comes as a bit of a curiousity, as both Skiles and Hammond were re-signed before the season began, and as Woelfel reported, Skiles told assistants that they were to get an extension during the season.

Several of the names here are pretty recognizable, especially Kelvin Sampson, who has recently come up in head coaching rumors for the Clippers and Timberwolves.  It can probably be assumed the other assistant coaches have a lot of importance as well, but none of them currently have the currency of Sampson.

Others are not so much in the spotlight.  A great number of the names are more behind the scenes, such as the conditioning and athletic coaches. And perhaps the most interesting to watch will be Babcock and McKinney, both of whom could be lame ducks in the lead-up to the draft in late June.

So what I'm wondering: How does this compare to other teams' contracts? It's possible that this could be simply a function of the upcoming lockout and the uncertainty behind it, and several teams are dealing with these issues as well, but Gery doesn't make it seem as much.  After all, that is an awfully big list.

Or is it a sign of major shakeups to come?  Is Kohl regretting signing Hammond and Skiles to an extra year?  Only time to tell.

Woelfel also speculates that Kohl may be looking to sell the team and thus making way for new staff.  I would be shocked if this were the case. But at the same time, not so shocked, because Kohl has owned the team for a very long time and is getting up there in age. Still, it seems highly unlikely Kohl would sell the team to out-of-towners--and there aren't any obvious local buyers lined up to save the day either. 

For all we know, the whole group could all very well be re-signed at the end of the season. Like most things however, we'll just have to wait and see.