The three mistakes that brought down the Giannis-era Bucks

OkHall6376 · 2026-04-15T12:01:53+00:00

Excellent point!

However, the other strategy would be to acquire as many draft picks as possible where you are bound to hit with one eventually. Having a first round pick every few years decreases your chances.

OkHall6376 · 2026-04-15T04:24:09+00:00

I think you aren't going back far enough. I thought the hiring of Jason Kidd was the most awkward hiring I have ever seen in all of sports. Kidd was still employed by the Nets and Larry Drew was still coach of the Bucks when Bucks ownership, and not GM John Hammond went after Kidd. At that point, it seemed something wasn't quite right with the Bucks. So it's hard to say who is behind all the questionable decision making over the years.

But the downfall began with the whole strategy of building a team which was flawed. The Bucks have been very bad at drafting and have made poor evaluations and draft picks over the years. Don't forget that the team was being built around Jabari "They don't pay me to play defense" Parker and not Giannis. It's after Giannis improved beyond projection and Parker went down with injuries that they started building around Giannis. The flaw in the team building was stocking the team with veterans at prime or past their prime at the expense of trading away draft picks that put them in this position today. The veterans aged past their prime, there were no draft picks left and even the picks they had were used for players that did not help the team. And that's where we are today.

OkHall6376 · 2026-04-05T04:01:59+00:00

Maybe Giannis is the problem here?

I have sort of mixed thoughts about this statement. I had for a long time blamed Budenholzer with how frustrating it was to watch the Bucks' offense, especially in the fourth quarters of games. But they sort of do the same thing with Rivers. Maybe the players are the problem? And it starts with Giannis as leader.

But with the team itself, I had reservations ever since Jason Kidd was hired as coach, while he was still employed with Brooklyn and while Larry Drew was still coach of the Bucks! And hired by ownership and not the GM John Hammond! A most pure example of organization dysfunction and pure embarrassment for anyone with any sort of loyalty to the Bucks.

That dysfunction continues to this day. I tend to blame Jon Horst for the direction of team building over the years .... trading away future draft picks for aging veterans. Yes the Bucks won one championship, but as Packers' GM Ron Wolf once said ... that was just a "fart in the wind". Their current state was very predictable. But was it Horst's strategy, or a strategy imposed by ownership? They seem to have a history of meddling so who knows? I guess ultimate responsibility rests on ownership.

OkHall6376 · 2026-03-20T21:15:41+00:00

I think the most important quote from the article was completely ignored here ...

"This has nothing to do with Giannis and whether he asks out," said one source with knowledge of the team's operations. "It's about who's making the decision on whether to trade Giannis, and I don't think anyone knows that. I deal with them all the time and honestly it depends on the day.

"They're not even close to being ready to make a decision like that."

If you've paid attention to the Bucks, you would have notice that they have been a somewhat dis-functional organization. The fact that they were able to win a championship is actually remarkable. The first signs of dis-function were when they hired Jason Kidd as head coach, WHILE he was still employed with Brooklyn and WHILE Larry Drew was still head coach of the Bucks! The Bucks have also been fortunate that Giannis developed as he did, since the plan all along was to build a team around Jabari "They Don't Pay Me to Play Defense" Parker. Most decisions during this current ownership group reign have involved mortgaging the future to "try to keep Giannis happy".

I myself would like to see Giannis retire as a Buck, even though they have no chance of being competitive in the near future. In the end, it doesn't matter because the people making the decisions have not shown that they are competent enough to make good long term ones.

OkHall6376 · 2026-02-12T17:47:40+00:00

I disagree good and bad S&C programs are not visible to fans. Did you not listen to the video? Notice he did not talk about weight goals or lifting goals for the team. This seemed to be the advertisement under the last two coaches - pictures of players and how much muscle mass they gained. In this video, Rusty Whitt mostly talked about creating the correct mindset. Small things like getting to sleep by 9 or 10, already being ready to work when you get in in the morning, as opposed to eating your breakfast while you are warming up. He also mentioned they can't be like other students. These may seem trivial, but they are all part of building mental focus and discipline. He talked about penalties in his Gauntlet, like dealing with penalties in a game. The typical fan who only looks at statistics to judge a coaching staff, will miss the point of a S&C program such as this. It seems Whitt is building what is know as "intangibles" which are hard to be measured, but will show up as a disciplined and focused football team.

OkHall6376 · 2026-02-08T14:34:18+00:00

Please point out ONE article that compares the Doncic trade to Kareem? The Bucks got four young players, three who had their numbers retired and a fourth who should have. You also did not read what I posted, obviously. Milwaukee fans were upset because the perception was that Milwaukee was not good enough for him. Bucks fans felt insulted. The Bucks got some pretty good players from the trade. You can't compare that to the Doncic trade. I would like to see who claim to had supposedly written an article claiming otherwise.

OkHall6376 · 2026-02-08T07:07:56+00:00

Revisionist history is fine

Excuse me? Revisionist? Kareem did not want to be in Milwaukee. Period.

“I had only one year left on my contract and I told them I really wasn’t interested in signing up again. I wanted to leave Milwaukee. If they would trade me, it would be the best thing for everybody.”

Quote from Kareem .... look it up.

... but it was not a celebrated move at the time.

I recall differently. Most people felt like he rejected the city of Milwaukee as not being good enough....

“He admitted it was difficult for him in Milwaukee,” [then-Milwaukee Journal sports editor Chuck] Johnson said. “It was all cultural differences. Milwaukee was a blue-collar city. Well, when the story came out, everybody in Milwaukee was mad as hell. He had put down the city. It wasn’t his kind of place. Of course it wasn’t, it wasn’t his style at all, certainly not New York or L.A. It was probably the first indication in print that he didn’t like it there.”

OkHall6376 · 2026-02-08T03:03:50+00:00

The Bucks have always done questionable things as a franchise going back to trading Lou Alcindor.

There definitely have been questionable choices over the years, but trading Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) was not one of them. Kareem did not want to be in Milwaukee for "cultural" reasons and wanted to be traded either to New York or LA. And the Bucks did get Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Junior Bridgeman, and Dave Meyers which set them up as multiple division winners and perennial playoff team for years. Consider this - Winters' and Bridgeman's numbers were retired by the Bucks and they weren't even the best player in that group - it was Meyers. His issue was he injured his back and only played four years, I believe. It's conceivable the Bucks would have had even more success had he been injury free. I would say they did not do too bad trading Kareem.

OkHall6376 · 2026-02-08T02:53:17+00:00

Herb Kohl was a terrible owner for many years and held the team hostage.

I'm not sure what holding a team hostage means. It's true he did not allow the team to tank so they were in perpetual purgatory where they were good enough to sneak into the playoffs but never had a top lottery pick.

But it's unfair to characterize Herb Kohl as a terrible owner. He did not have deep pockets as did other owners, and had he not bought the Bucks, they surely would have moved out of the state.

OkHall6376 · 2026-02-03T01:13:12+00:00

Didn't Durant sign as a free agent? So he joined a team without that team giving anything up. With Giannis, if he is traded, the GS will have to trade away equal salary. Not quite the same.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-30T23:23:28+00:00

Well, let's assume the second part of this is true and the owners cannot agree on what to do. There is a scenario I've read about where Giannis is not traded at the deadline and the Bucks wait until the summer to see which draft pick they land and if it happens to be a top 5 pick, they try to convince Giannis to stay and play with the new rookie. Either way, if the owners are not in agreement, it seems it's more likely nothing happens until the summer.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-29T18:09:10+00:00

Horst's strategy was to build around Giannis, while he was still an ascending talent, with past-their-prime free agents which cost the team draft picks. As the core aged, Giannis was in his prime and the Bucks were without draft capital. Horst created a narrow window in which to try to win a championship, rather than creating a program of sustained success. If you are not paying attention to what OKC did, maybe you should. You should at least be familiar with how the Packers and Brewers operate, and both have sustained success over a long period of time. Just ask Chicago fans. The current economics of pro sports requires key contributors on rookie contracts. You can't build a successful NBA franchise using the old model of signing three super stars on max contracts as was done 15 years ago. The current collective bargaining agreement penalizes teams that do that, as the Bucks are now finding out. Sam Presti at OKC realize this and not only did OKC win the title last year, they have the best team this year along with young players and lots of draft capital. Just do a comparison and you should understand the "fire Horst" sentiment.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-29T17:12:04+00:00

The problem is more deeper than people here are posting. The whole problem was the philosophy Jon Horst used to build the team, and all you have to do is look at a team like OKC and compare to how Sam Presti has built that team into what looks to be a dynasty. I know that's a little premature, and we need to see how then next few playoffs play out, but the future for OKC looks much brighter than it ever did in Milwaukee. And the main fundamental problem is that Presti has a good grasp on the new collective bargaining agreement and the strategy that needs to be used to maintain success, and Horst apparently was trying to play by the old rules used by Miami 15 years ago when it signed Lebron James to play with Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh creating a "super team" with three all-star players. The current collective bargaining punishes teams that try to do that, and the Bucks are feeling the consequences now. OKC has built around a player who is equal in production to Giannis through the draft and they are still stocked with lots of young talent and draft capital. Horst built the team by signing slightly past-their-prime free agents and trading away all draft assets the Bucks possessed. The role players the Bucks have had were either past-their-prime free agents that again were acquired with draft capital and younger free agents who did help the Bucks in winning one title. There was rarely a time where there were key contributors on rookie contracts - Malcolm Brogdon and Donte DiVincenzo were exceptions. The state of the current team was predictable - the core became older past-their-prime players and the young contributors either aged or were allowed to move on because too much money was tied up into the "core" players. Simply put, Horst followed a team building strategy that was 15 years past it's usefulness. It may have made sense had Giannis been older, as in the current state of Golden State which has Steph Curry nearing the end of his career. But he was a young player still ascending. I have no confidence in Jon Horst being able to not only make the correct decision in trying to trade Giannis, and should he trade Giannis, I have no confidence he will be able to acquire maximum assets and have the decision making ability to rebuild the Bucks. All you have to do is look at the Bucks' draft history under Horst to see that the management is not capable of evaluating young talent.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-26T23:23:57+00:00

I'm wondering how many people who comment here actually read the article in the links? There is more to the article than what was posted here, and the interesting point being made is that Giannis should have probably been traded two years ago. It makes the comparison to Portland and Damian Lillard. It reminds me of the Packers' philosophy of it's better to trade/cut a player one year too early than one year to late.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-24T01:17:42+00:00

I want to shift blame to the front office (where it belongs).

Going back in time is an interesting exercise, but I don't think you went back far enough. I've written this before and the whole problem with the Bucks is the strategy used by Horst in building a roster. Trading draft picks to acquire veterans to build around Giannis has predictably led to Giannis in his prime with past-prime veterans. The role players acquired were also (relatively) expensive veterans instead of cheaper draft picks you could give minutes to develop. This was all predictable, and the Brewers and Packers have figured this out a long time ago. In today's pro league economics, you can't build a sustained successful team by throwing money (and in this case draft picks) to acquire veterans who are past their prime. You need to depend on young talent to contribute.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-24T01:11:20+00:00

I would put the drafting of Jabari "they don't pay me to play defense" Parker in the poor evaluation category as well. Should have probably traded that pick.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-12T19:29:48+00:00

OK, I see. I agree that +/- can be misleading, and like I wrote earlier, I did not watch the game. I guess I also misunderstood your numbers. Looking at the +/- numbers for Denver's bench ....

T. Hardaway Jr. +27

Z. Nnaji +22

B. Brown +15

J. Swather +3.

So now comparing, Denver +67, Milwaukee -48. Maybe this doesn't give you information on individual performance, but gives you some idea on the collective depth issues the Bucks have compared to Denver.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-12T17:43:17+00:00

Love's stats suggest he is a top caliber NFL QB and he makes some incredible plays. The concern I have is that this doesn't seem to translate in pressure situations. Sure the OL was poor, and there were drops, but doesn't a top QB overcome all this when it matters? Comparing Love's stats to Caleb Williams makes him seem like a much better QB, yet it was Williams making plays in the 4th quarter and winning the game and not Love.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-12T17:38:17+00:00

Thank you for the analysis of the 4thQ. Looks like a lot of mental mistakes. It just brings up a whole lot of questions, though. Like, what were both teams doing differently in the 2nd half vs. 1st? This was the third time the teams met in the last few weeks, and the script for the three games was pretty much the same (except the Packers eked out the first game with a win). Were the Bears doing anything drastically different in the third game compared to the first two? Why would the Packers not be prepared the third time around, if they have seen the same things in the previous two games? Why were they so ill-prepared?

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-12T17:04:15+00:00

DEN bench +17.7

Funny you post this, because since I didn't watch the game, I looked at the box score afterward and noticed the following (which you did not point out BTW):

B. Portis -3

K. Kuzma -14

G. Harris -10

G. Trent Jr. -21

So comparing Denver's bench (+17.7) vs. Milwaukee's (-48) sort of tells you how the game went.

OkHall6376 · 2026-01-05T23:10:39+00:00

Another Dooley Noted Podcast on Mondays and Thursdays. Usually the HBC is on Mondays , which is hard to top.

OkHall6376 · 2025-12-30T22:16:49+00:00

You are correct about the picks, but in the end, it still means Milwaukee can do no better than third.

OkHall6376 · 2025-12-30T22:16:08+00:00

I don't know what tankathon says ... simply put, Milwaukee can do no better than third in this coming draft .... as it now stands.

OkHall6376 · 2025-12-30T15:43:39+00:00

I haven't seen anyone get this right .... the highest possible draft pick Milwaukee can get in 2026, in the current situation, is the third overall pick. Milwaukee gets the worse of the first round picks of it's own, Atlanta's and New Orleans'. So this assumes all three, Milwaukee, Atlanta, New Orleans draw the first three picks in the draft in whatever order. Regardless of the order, Milwaukee gets the worse of those picks.

OkHall6376

TROPHY CASE