Four more years
Reacting to Mike Budenholzer's contract extension with the Milwaukee Bucks
Winning an NBA title, as the Milwaukee Bucks did a little over a month ago to close out the 2020-21 NBA season, gives a sense of security for anyone who played a consequential part in leading a team to the promise land.
Tuesday night saw the Bucks announce a contract extension for head coach and reigning NBA champion, Mike Budenholzer. The extension, as first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, will run through the 2024-25 season.
Just as Bucks general manager Jon Horst spoke about with reporters late last month, this was a mere formality for Budenholzer after leading the organization to their second NBA title in franchise history.
The fact that it came after the Bucks navigated through such an arduous path to reach the NBA Finals, much less an NBA title, made it that much more definitive that Budenholzer’s future would lie in Milwaukee for the foreseeable future. That’s not even considering the hurdles of playing through an NBA season in the midst of a global pandemic and the protocols the league put in place that made it that much more taxing to deal with for all teams, players and coaches, especially coming out of the bubble at the end of last season.
But the hardships didn’t end there for Budenholzer as the microscope hovered every move and every decision he made in regards to lineup configurations and/or tactical changes he made throughout the season and the Bucks’ playoff run.
The backdrop of two consecutive playoff flameouts after the Bucks had raced through through the 2018-19 and 2019-20 regular seasons with the best record in the NBA had ramped up the pressure cooker for Bud and his staff.
Part of that was certainly on Bud’s own doing as what worked for the Bucks during those regular season runs struggled and failed to translate towards a trip to the NBA Finals. However, as their title run showed, the Bucks clearly didn’t have all of the pieces they needed to complete the puzzle towards contending for a title.
Vital additions such as Jrue Holiday and P.J. Tucker made the Bucks that much more versatile and helped force Budenholzer and co. to go outside of the lines of their system and what was previously comfortable for them. The same goes for utilizing Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton in different spots and situations that helped optimize their play in critical moments.
Whether Budenholzer would be able to push the right buttons at the right time eventually became the question for the Bucks as Milwaukee exorcised their demons against the Miami Heat, outlasted the Kevin Durant-led Brooklyn Nets and the Atlanta Hawks to get out of the East. And climbing out of a 2-0 deficit in this year’s NBA Finals against the Phoenix Suns proved to be the last obstacle Bud and the Bucks had to reach in their quest for immortality.
The fact that Budenholzer’s extension runs through the 2024-25 season isn’t insignificant in itself, either. That runs through the end of Holiday’s contract after signing his four-year extension midway through last season and when Antetokounmpo will have to decide what to do with his $51.9 million player option.
With their core in place for the next few seasons between Antetokounmpo, Holiday, Middleton and Brook Lopez, the braintrust that has helped map out this era of Bucks basketball has followed suit with Budenholzer now extended (Horst’s current contract runs through 2022-23).
There’s no question that it was touch and go for Budenholzer all season long and especially as the Bucks had to recover from harrowing deficits against the Nets and the Suns this playoff run. Now, on the other side of answering those great challenges and showing a newfound resiliency along the way, Budenholzer showed us all why his future rightly belongs in Milwaukee moving forward.