Would the Milwaukee Bucks Let Jon Horst Leave?
We break down the biggest immediate question facing the Milwaukee Bucks and Jon Horst after wrapping up their 2023-24 season.
The dust has settled on the Milwaukee Bucks’ 2023-24 season. The disappointment didn't just reverberate from their Game 6 loss against the Indiana Pacers, nor a second straight year where they didn't advance out of the first round. It reverberated for a lost season where nothing ever really met the eye of expectations.
Never has it felt better for the Bucks to decompress from a season that didn't end by going all the way to a title. But there are still questions that will be answered in the wake of an unfulfilled season. Most importantly, who will be in charge of running the Milwaukee Bucks next season?
It will mark seven years next month when Jon Horst emerged from anonymity, and began his tenure as Bucks general manager. Under his watch, the Bucks emerged as a power within the East, won an NBA championship, and secured the ongoing commitment of the greatest player to ever play for the franchise. Not once, but twice.
But whereas other NBA executives answered for why their teams saw their season end in the first round on Monday, Horst was not out in front of microphones or the media. Instead, his name has been in the rumor mill, extensively tied to the Detroit Pistons as they search for a president of basketball operations to bring them out of their own wilderness. Not unlike he did for the Bucks.
It's easy to understand why the ever-elusive Horst is linked to a job like this. He got his start in the NBA with Detroit under John Hammond. He's born and raised in Sandusky, Michigan, 88 miles north of Detroit. The symbolism of a championship-winning GM going to save his hometown Pistons comes with a lot of cache, security, and quite the raise, too.
We learned last week, thanks to the always brilliant reporting of Eric Nehm from The Athletic, that Horst's contract runs for two more seasons. Winning that title helped secure Horst to oversee the franchise as they searched for more success following that 2021 run.
Whereas the Bucks and ownership valued continuity after that championship run, the Bucks have tried to find a new normal, and Horst has been caught in the middle. Over the last year, Horst fired a championship coach in Mike Budenholzer, pulled off one of the biggest trades in team history with the arrival of Damian Lillard fired Bud's replacement, Adrian Griffin, and moved quick to install Doc Rivers. These decisions have bordered on calculated, to rash, and to grace-saving.
The Bucks have moved into a new era. The grace period of a championship has run thin, and their own actions over the last year prove as much. Any team that has won consistently, and climbed to the top as the Bucks did, can and will eventually be a victim of their own success. It's just hard to maintain these windows, and survive it before you succumb to it.
Horst is the top decision maker of the franchise, but he ultimately answers to what Bucks ownership feels is the best course of action. That ownership also underwent a massive change with the departure of Marc Lasry in favor of Jimmy Haslam as one of four majority partners. Just to add more changes to the deck.
As one of the few remaining constants in a position of power, Horst will have to own up to why this season was a hot mess. The Bucks have yet to really capitalize on this post-championship era, and certainly some reasons for that are beyond his control. But Horst, himself, is not blameless in this pursuit.
He’s always pushed his cards towards the middle of the table. He’s not one for measured acquisitions and/or moves. Eventually, the runway of what the Bucks can do to push the needle comes to a standstill. Horst timed his pursuit of Lillard right before the new financial realities set in for a Bucks team that has operated in the luxury tax for the last four seasons. They have few draft picks of value in their control, and the roster is only growing older.
The Bucks don’t need an overhaul, but they certainly need a reimagining of how to build around two stars like Giannis Antetokounmpo and Lillard, a clutch playoff performer in Khris Middleton, and on down the line.
An injection of youth is not just needed. It’s imperative to foster the development of players like Andre Jackson Jr., AJ Green, and MarJon Beauchamp before the track runs out of road. If neither of those players are the answers, are the Bucks able to consolidate the proven depth pieces they have to find ways to improve the middle-to-back end of this roster?
There’s no question that the Bucks just need time to find their chemistry, and all of that starts at the top. For their greatness, Lillard and Antetokounmpo have only scratched the surface of what their partnership could do for one another, and a long offseason would help remedy that. So would getting on the same page as Rivers, and not have it come within the pressure cooker of an NBA season.
Those will all come with time, but whether Horst has enough time in Milwaukee to see out this phase of building the Bucks is the big question. The Pistons might not just be a leverage play, and they wait for the Bucks permission to interview Horst for their POBO position, according to the latest from Marc Stein.
The ball is in ownership’s court, and that answer will ultimately decide Horst’s fate, and whether he’d be the next in the growing list of changes that have swept over the organization.