Fire Bud and also Horst too
Lotta talk about whether or not Bud should be fired. I think the answer is very obviously yes. People talk about him failing to make adjustments defensively, and I don’t actually think that’s true. He does make adjustments, the team just isn’t comfortable running the new schemes. This isn’t because suddenly Giannis, Khris, Jrue, hell even Donte are bad defenders this year. It’s clearly because Bud hasn’t spent the time these last few years working on anything besides the drop coverage scheme. Obviously asking the players to make in-game adjustments that they aren’t comfortable with will result in bad outcomes.
So yes, fire Bud before he drives this team further into the ground. Promote Ham to coach, and start interviewing. Plenty of talented coaches out there. Obradovic, Hammon, Atkinson, whoever, there is talent that can do significantly better with this team.
However, I think there is a much much bigger issue than Bud. And that is Jon Horst. We better pray Jrue re-signs or picks up the player option, otherwise we are headed towards Houston Rockets purgatory. The Holiday trade was fine, the issue is everything else around it. Brook’s drop-off hasn’t helped, but Portis (love him) can’t be a reliable defensive big. Wouldn’t be an issue if we had one, but we don’t. Next, DJA’s contract is a nightmare and it makes so little sense. Signing him with the MLE hardcapped us meaning this is our team for the season. So no true point on the team. Throw in the Connaughton contract and we have almost no plus-value contracts, almost no draft capital, and no room under the cap. For a team without an athletic big and a true point guard.
And that’s just this year! Next year, we have even more in salary payroll and as we well know, Lasry and Co don’t love paying the tax. Even if Jrue leaves, we won’t have enough space to replace him with a player of his caliber. And I don’t have faith in the squad right now to be able to win a championship.
So ya, let’s fire Bud and get someone in who at the very least can make watching the Bucks play fun again. It looks rough for the players and it’s rough for the fans. But the management of this team seems to be a bigger issue and it deserves to be scorched as much if not more than Bud.