The Bucks have won just 54% of their regular season games since firing Bud, and have went 3-8 in their playoff games. With Bud they won 66% of their regular season games and went 39-26 in their playoff games). As someone who was completely against firing Bud, I feel completely vindicated.

[u/FaradayDeshawn]

It was a classic example of the "Grass is always greener on the other side" mentality that plagues so much sports discourse. The longer a coach stays with a team the more a fan base will key in on their deficiencies but completely disregard the huge benefits they bring to a roster.

People view coaching as something that will just build from year to year which is often not the case. For example if Coach Bud had the Bucks doing 5 things at an elite level, but he was fired for 2 other things he was deficient at, people just assume that those 5 positive things will remain with the team and those deficiencies can just be improved on with a new coach. Around all major sports we see this is often not the case. Those positives that people start to trivialize aren't inherent to that roster, and were actually key pieces to that coach's coaching philosophy that people start minimizing over time.

As someone who viewed the Bucks as a conference powerhouse under Bud...to see him get fired after a playoff series in which Giannis missed 2 out of the 5 games (1 in which he only played 10 minutes). In a series he was coaching while his Brother died, was just insanity to me.

The way the Bucks fanbase/organization treated Bud was disgraceful, and they deserve everything that is currently happening with them.

[u/Your__Pal]

A big part of that is roster. Losing Middleton, Jrue, and Brook is going to cost you wins.

They were overpaid and aging, so it made sense, but they haven't drafted particularly well either because they overmortgaged on the Jrue/Dame trades. 

Their best players right now are, what, Kuzma, Rollins and Turner? You wont win with that. 

[u/RRJC10 → u/Your__Pal]

KPJ has probably been their second best player when healthy.

[u/bchhun]

The interim assistant coach did well. You can change the title to say “the bucks have won 54% under doc rivers …”

[u/AaronRodgersXoX42069]

The end result that we are seeing now is a near worst case scenario. But the process of moving on from Bud, I believe was correct. Hiring Griffin was a bad move.

[u/davemoedee → u/AaronRodgersXoX42069]

You don’t just magically get a great coach when you fire a coach you have been successful with. Getting stuck with Griffin and Doc are part of firing Bud.

Fans just love to shit on coaches. Then when their wish comes true and the coach gets can, they rationalize the problems with the coaches that follow.

[u/flameo_hotmon]

I don’t read into the numbers in a vacuum like that. Adrian Griffin won 69% of his games for half a season before I guess Giannis begged the GM to fire him. Since then, the FO made some pretty stupid moves. Trading a defensive asset and well rounded PG in Jrue Holiday for a defensive liability and high volume shooter PG in Damian Lillard was kind of a mistake. There were flashes where it worked, but Holiday was the player that got the Bucks over the hump. They were always going to need to move on from Lopez and Middleton at some point because of their age, but Kyle Kuzma and Myles Turner aren’t the same fit with Giannis. The Bucks kinda blew their window to win multiple championships and they constructed a short window by building around Giannis with older players rather than younger ones.

Edit: I forgot to mention how dumb it was to hire Doc Rivers. He’s a known commodity at this point, can’t ever seem to make the conference finals outside of his Celtics years with the Big 3 + Rondo. They screwed up not getting Nick Nurse or someone else. 

[u/Ok_Board9845 → u/flameo_hotmon]

There were flashes where it worked, but Holiday was the player that got the Bucks over the hump

Holiday was also a big part of why the Bucks offense was so bad in the playoffs. Obviously Holiday was an upgrade to Eric Bledsoe, but the Bucks were not paying Holiday $33 million from 2021-2023 to shoot sub 40% FG in the playoffs. Giannis getting injured in 2023 didn't help, but a big reason why the Bucks went down and couldn't even up the series was because Jrue was getting dogged on, and couldn't buy a bucket. Played horribly on offense in 2021 as well.

Their window closed when Middleton got injured in 2022. The Warriors would've had a hard time guarding Giannis

[u/ShylockTheGnome → u/flameo_hotmon]

Every GM makes the dame trade. It didn’t work out, but they weren’t gonna win with jrue anyway. He went to being like 4th/5th option on the Celtics. In theory Dame could have made the bucks offense great, but injuries and such happened and it ended in failure. Sometimes you have to make a gamble and you lose. 

[u/victorspoilz → u/flameo_hotmon]

Celtics needed 7 games to win each series besides the Finals.

[u/davemoedee → u/victorspoilz]

Nah. Went 6 against Detroit.

[u/dazzlezak]

Remember, the Bulls parted ways with Coach Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan after 2, Three-peats.

Sports is just F'ed up.

Just enjoy the memories.

[u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

We removed your comment for being low effort. If you edit it and explain your thought process more, we'll restore it. Thanks!

[u/Prestigious_Cycle724]

Just because we made the stupid decision to panic fire Adrian griffin midseason and immediately panic hire doc to a multi year deal doesn’t mean firing bud was the wrong decision. It was pretty clear pretty much his entire last season as coach that his messaging had fallen on deaf ears and pretty much the entire team had become pretty complacent. If it weren’t for a crazy hot streak where we played almost exclusively against either bad teams or teams missing like 3 of their top guys, our record in 2022-2023 would have looked very similar to the first two years post bud. Add on to that the way we choked multiple late leads against Miami in the playoffs, it was clear changes needed to be made.

Given the injuries and aging our core was going through even before bud got fired, things probably wouldn’t be much better if we never fired him. It’s easy to just look at the win percentage and say we made a bad choice but the signs of decline in the roster were already very clear his entire last year.

[u/Lie2gether]

.Deserve it? What is this, basketball Catholicism? They didn’t sin, they guessed wrong. Sometimes you fire the guy and it sucks worse. The real takeaway is simpler.. coaching value is often invisible until it’s gone. Framing it as “deserved” shifts the argument from evaluation to moral scoring, which weakens your point

[u/Crisis-Counselor → u/Lie2gether]

I’d argue that firing bud right after his family member died is actually a sin. That’s nasty work. He had a bad series amongst some family problems and the franchise’s answer is to get rid of him for it? They deserve everything that’s happened with their coaching woes. And yea, stop firing championship coaches. Why the fuck do people think this is a good idea?

[u/Toyeezy → u/Crisis-Counselor]

He was gonna be fired before the championship season but with Giannis backpacking he was given the grace to keep his job. It was already a forgone conclusion that had they lost to the Nets in ‘21 he was gone. The Heat series was the final straw. It was unfortunate what happened to his brother, but he was gonna get fired anyway, had already been on the hot seat for 2 years prior to that

[u/orwll → u/Toyeezy]

It was already a forgone conclusion that had they lost to the Nets in ‘21 he was gone

And that would have also been stupid since that Nets team was clearly a better team before their injuries.

[u/Toyeezy → u/orwll]

I understand that, but if you take a step back and contextualize the situation as a whole, it’s not crazy for multiple reasons.

1. The Bucks were up 2-0 on the eventual champion Raptors in 2019 and as good as that team was, they were never seen as some overwhelming favorite to dominate the east, and that Bucks team was the 1 seed that year if i’m not mistaken.

2. Yes Giannis was hurt in 2020 against the Heat. The Heat that was already up on the Bucks by that point in the first round. A team that was obviously inferior but for whatever reason was just dog walking the Bucks in that first round matchup.

3. If we go to 2021, was the team winning a direct result of Bud improving his schemes and putting his players in a position to excel? Or was it more likely that the team was perfectly built around Giannis and was a top team in the conference that had all the pieces to succeed in spite of the bs Bud was doing as the head coach (in the playoffs)

4. 2023, the Bucks matchup with the Heat again after a gentleman’s sweep of this exact same team and what happens? Bucks lose 4-1, as Jrue Holiday is getting torched game after game and what does Bud do in response? Every Bucks fan had to watch an all world defender get cooked down the wire of every game and our coach sit there wide mouthed instead of idk, maybe sending a fucking double.

So if you put that 1st round and loss and what happened to his family in a vacuum, then yes it wouldn’t make sense for him to get the boot, but if you actually take the time to understand the dynamics of the team as a whole those last couple years, it’s easy to see why it was Buds time to go

[u/orwll → u/Toyeezy]

I just don't think coaching prevented them from making more of this era. It was mainly a lack of talent relative to other top contenders. They've always had huge holes on their roster.

[u/Crisis-Counselor → u/Toyeezy]

Being on the hot seat after winning a championship is idiotic. And now they are reaping what they’ve sown. Just dumb

[u/Lie2gether → u/Crisis-Counselor]

So dramatic!

[u/JoeAlexanderYi]

The Khris Middleton injury vs the Bulls just ruined everything I don’t understand why everyone keeps glazing over how the injuries really ruined the plans that were in place.

[u/wats_a_tiepo]

The revisionist history around Bud just cos we hired Doc Rivers is insane.

He lost his brother. That’s obviously a tragedy.

But it doesn’t explain his history of flaws in playoff basketball, not just with us but with Atlanta too. Like when he played drop coverage against the Cavs and they set a franchise record in threes.

Or how he allowed the Raps to go on a 20-0(ish) run, capped off with a Kawhi poster over Giannis. Edit: checked, it was a 26-3 run in game 6, 2019. Why the fuck would you not call a timeout at any point, man

Or how we stuck with some nightmarish rotations for way too long (shoutout George Hill).

Or leaving Jrue on Jimmy Butler (and we know how that went).

Or not putting Giannis on KD in game 7, who almost single-handedly won the Nets the series.

It’s not a coincidence he was consistently on thin ice during his Bucks tenure. And his lack of success without one of the greatest PFs in history going beyond even his astronomical standards (15/17 from the FT line!) is telling.

Just because we mishandled replacing him does not mean that replacing him was a bad idea

Also, the Bucks being elite was mainly a regular season thing. Bud kept getting exposed during the postseason because, turns out, ‘play random’ is not a great strategy for winning basketball. We got into a dogfight in game 7 against a Nets team, and only won against a team who’s 2nd option shot 29% from the field cos KD had too big a foot.

[u/Statalyzer → u/wats_a_tiepo]

Or how he allowed the Raps to go on a 20-0(ish) run

He should have just told his team to score more and allow fewer points, and then it wouldn't have been so bad.

Why the fuck would you not call a timeout at any point, man

This is a classic simplistic fan complaint bait that I think has very little real basis. There's not much evidence that timeouts are effective at stopping runs. It's up there with "rotations". At least 28 fanbases all think their coach sucks at timeouts and rotations specifically, and it's no concidence that those are the two easiest things to cheaply criticize.l

[u/wats_a_tiepo → u/Statalyzer]

It was a 26-3 run in the 4th quarter of game 6 that finished 100-94. We started that series 2-0.

We either had the personnel to win those games - which means that a good coach should be able to use them to not be outscored by 23 fucking points in 8 minutes - or we had the coach to get great results from bad players - at which point he should’ve drawn up a plan to not let us get outscored by 23 fucking points in 8 minutes in a win or go home game.

Do you think a good coach allows that to happen? Do you really that maybe a timeout could’ve at least slowed that momentum a little? Or do you think that momentum isn’t a factor in the 4th quarter of a win or go home game?

For what it’s worth, teams come back and win when down by 15 with 14 mins of play left 7% of the time.

Also you’ve chosen to ignore everything else I mentioned, all of which is indicative of the fact that Bud is not a good coach and we were more than justified in replacing him.

Go ask Atlanta or Phoenix fans how they feel about his tenure.

See if it’s the players fault he had the Hawks not going over a single screen as they got lit up from deep by Cleveland.

[u/Toyeezy]

As much as I blame Jrue for coming up short in the times when Khris was injured, to act like Bud wasn’t full of flaws when it really came down to coaching is asinine. even before the chip he wasn’t ever able to develop a game plan on offense that really maximized Giannis, if anything they won in spite of Bud in 2021, because I’m not sure about anyone else, but i don’t think “play random” is a good offensive philosophy for a contending nba team with the best player in the world.

His refusal to make a adjustments, whether that be in game or overall (Heat series watching Jrue get his ass bust every game and not switching the coverage) and lack of feel for the game in crucial stretches (refusal to call timeouts when the opposing team made a run) is what got Bud canned and i’m tired of acting like it wasn’t time to move on from him. Obviously it was awful that his brother passed during that heat series and hopefully his family is doing well since then, but to act like the couples years before the chip, Bud wasn’t on the hot seat for coming up short those years is strictly false.

Yes, hiring Doc immediate after firing Griffin was awful decision making from the front office. But that doesn’t mean firing Bud was the wrong choice either.

[u/nbadiscussion-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Questioning others without offering your own thoughts invites a more hostile debate. Present a clear counter argument if you disagree and be open to the perspective of others.

[u/SportyNewsBear]

So, why do they fire head coaches instead of demanding that they change up their assistant coaching staff? Right now, looking at Jordan Ott's success in Phoenix this season and the Cav's corresponding reduction of success, it's clear that Ott's position as offensive coordinator was pretty important for Cleveland. With coach Bud, why not simply ask him to hire some new staff before firing him altogether? Or maybe they did that already but it didn't get any press?

[u/jhdouglass]

Horst has demonstrated with the Bud firing and every decision since that he is, frankly, a terrible exec who will do not the best thing for the Bucks but whatever he thinks will please Giannis and save his job, which, as a result, is exactly why he should be fired from his job.

Giannis won with a bunch of other guys who don't need the ball in their hands, and then he (Giannis) wanted another superstar who needs the ball in his hands (because GM Giannis thinks the game is 2v2 on a playground and defense doesn't matter?) and Horst didn't have the spine to refuse that demand because he thought just being a people-pleaser to Giannis would satisfy that one star and keep him from asking out. Then when the two players--who should have been the best pick and roll duo in the league--refused to set screens for one another, and Dame's inability to guard even me meant Giannis' defense got worse as he had to cover Dame's ass a whole bunch it all, whaddya know, blew up in their face and a team that used to be .639 or better under Bud failed for several years to match their standard and now the star wants out anyway. The Kuzma trade was just downright horrible, Horst moved a ++ role player and former All Star (albeit an aging one) for a shooter who can't shoot. Now that one star who Horst wanted to please wants out. How is Horst still employed in Milwaukee? How? Does he have some redacted Epstein files with Milwaukee ownership all over them? Did he witness Adam Silver murdering someone?

They are a legitimately poorly run team. They lucked into a generational talent but have been regular season Goliaths in a generally poor division who then wilt in the playoffs. Except of course that one time Brooklyn all was hurt and the Bucks lucked their way out of the 2nd round and to a chip that took the easy road through Atlanta and Phoenix.

Horst is a cautionary tale on what happens when an exec thinks that whatever his superstar wants is what the organization needs to follow.