FanPost

Far From Owning The Future

The Bucks have an undisputed top 10 player in the NBA and are moving into a brand new arena yet have somehow managed to produce a pretty grim outlook for the franchise. In the most Bucks way possible, they continue to be unable to get out of their own way and potentially ruin the gift of Giannis in Milwaukee. Starting from ownership all the way down the organization, there is is disorganization and incompetence. Let's start with the owners...

Last summer, the Bucks and John Hammond parted ways. This wasn't a surprise. It seemed for a while that both parties were ready to go their separate ways. The Bucks had months to put together a plan of who to target for their new GM. What did they come up with? They had zero plan. Instead the owners fought and plotted power plays against each other and ended up settling for a young, unqualified fall back option in Jon Horst that allowed them to pinch pennies. The decision to be cheap when hiring the person responsible for building the roster around a generational talent like Giannis is baffling, yet so Bucks. This issue will follow the franchise around as they hire a coach this summer.

I would say they must aggressively pursue hiring a real GM or President of Basketball Operations, but we all know that won't be happening. Bucks don't make forward thinking decisions. Hell they didn't offer Giannis a 5 year extension two summers ago cause they needed to save it for Jabari. Given Horst's age, inexperience and salary, he needed to have an impressive first year to ease concerns. He was terrible, despite the even worse coaching staff taking a majority of the blame. Shall we review Horst's first year on the job?

  • Drafted DJ Wilson in the middle of the 1st round. Wilson played 70 minutes all year averaging 1 point per game.
  • Sterling Brown seems like a solid player in the 2nd round. This was by far his best move.
  • Signed Tony Snell to a 4/44 extension. Just what the Bucks needed another overpaid role player who's inconsistent. The deal also put the Bucks $500K over the luxury tax. Couldn't negotiate or be creative to avoid this? He compounded this mistake by stretching Spencer Hawes. Hawes will count $2 million against the cap the next two years. As the season played out, they likely would've been able to avoid the tax by keeping Hawes.
  • Kept Deandre Liggins who killed the Bucks every time he took the floor.
  • Traded for Eric Bledsoe. At the time, the trade made sense so hard to blame him too much. I'm ok with taking a chance on the kind of talent. However, it clearly didn't work out. Will Horst do what's necessary and ship Bledsoe out this summer? I highly doubt it.
  • Signed Brandon Jennings...
  • Traded a 2nd Round pick for a center who was unplayable in the playoffs.
  • Didn't fire Jason Kidd immediately and when he eventually did he let Joe Prunty finish out the job. Prunty may have been the only coach on the planet capable of being worse than Kidd.
  • Truly exceptional work from an under qualified GM.

The coaching was so unbelievably bad it's hard to understand. It has been beaten to death how awful Kidd and Prunty were. They lacked common sense while ignoring blatant statistical evidence most of their choices actively hurt the team. It's hard to talk anymore about the coaching since they were so bad it'll be impossible to try to understand or explain. A home run hire here could change the direction of the franchise, but why would we have any faith they would even hire a decent coach? They've already waited days to start their search while other teams are signing candidates the Bucks were interested in.

The next three years are vital to the Bucks future. This summer will likely decide how those three years play out. Will the Bucks hire an innovative front office mind who can help them navigate a roster littered with overpaid and underachieving players? Can they hire a coach who can help develop the few young guys with potential on the roster? Someone who understands what he's doing with rotations and schemes on both sides of the floor? We better hope so.

Losing in the playoffs yet again to a team that was missing their two best players should be a massive wake up call for everyone in the organization. Time for ownership to get out of their own way and hire a President of Basketball Operations to take charge of the front office. No more of ownership interfering with roster moves. My perfect summer would be hiring Sam Hinkie as POBO and hiring Mike Budenholzer as head coach. Let Jabari leave, move on from Bledsoe and try to find cheap rotation options.

We should all Fear the Deer, but only the incompetence they are capable of.

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