Thank you, Bud
Mike Budenholzer leaves the Milwaukee Bucks with a legacy of changing the franchise forever
In case you missed it, Mike Budenholzer, after five seasons at the helm and a championship is under his belt, is no longer the head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.
The news came down the pipeline a week after the Bucks had crashed out of the playoffs following their first round shakedown by the Miami Heat. A week of discussion over debating the true definition of what failure means was silenced by the ultimate act of when a team falls and performed well under expectations.
It’s true that Budenholzer fell on the sword for the Bucks. He had an active hand in creating a situation that, in the minds of the Bucks’ decision makers, was so untenable that the second coach to bring the franchise an NBA championship was dismissed not even two years after delivering such a feat. The Bucks have changed their roster before while keeping Bud on board in the face of playoff disappointment. But this one proved to be far too greater than the last time it happened, on top of having already used up their silver bullet (i.e. offloading a number of draft picks to trade for Jrue Holiday).
The Bucks under Bud were a pillar of success. Holding the best regular season record over the last five years puts Budenholzer’s 69.3 winning percentage at the top of the franchise’s history. They captured the top seed in the East and the best record in the NBA three times while he won NBA Coach of the Year honors in 2019 and made that aforementioned trip to the NBA summit by taking home the 2020-21 NBA title.
He did all of that while unlocking Giannis Antetokounmpo into back-to-back MVP seasons, helped turn Khris Middleton into a multi-time All-Star, had a hand in guiding one of the most memorable career turnarounds for Brook Lopez. On and on, Budenholzer made his mark in developing each of the core players that went through every step of the process of building the team into a perennial contender and eventually, a championship-winning squad.
There really shouldn’t be any debate as to what Budenholzer’s legacy is in Milwaukee. We only have to look at what the Bucks achieved, or lack thereof, before Bud walked into the door. He shifted the paradigm, helping take a young, developing team hungry for any sort of success and the groundswell of expectations shifted right along with this Bucks team as they climbed their way towards the top of the league.
Not only did they live up to the growing expectations, but Bud’s Bucks exceeded them. No one wouldn’t say there wasn’t heartbreak and missteps along the way, but this Bucks team achieved what only one other Bucks team has ever achieved. That will carry a lot of weight around these parts. Well, unless you lose a first round series in five games, I guess.
More importantly, Budenholzer helped build a definitive identity and instilled a culture that organically sprung up over his time in Milwaukee. The synergy between a willing ownership, opportunistic front office, a proven coaching staff and the collection of players the Bucks have been able to keep in Milwaukee for all this time really solidified this golden era for the franchise.
It’s all why the Bucks have big shoes to fill, now that Budenholzer has departed from the organization. There is no question as to whether Bud will coach in the NBA again. He absolutely will, and his track record and championship cache will make him a frontrunner for any coaching gig he wants.
The Bucks, meanwhile, are trying to thread a very precarious needle between hiring a new coach, maintaining their championship core and trying to sustain the success they have had over the last five years. There will never be another coaching hire that will be as big as this one in Bucks history and every move they make over the next year or two will be done under the pressure cooker of knowing Antetokounmpo’s supermax deal has an out in 2025.
What this next era of Bucks basketball will have to answer is whether all of the good fortune the franchise has been able to experience over the last five years can be duplicated. Sure, some of the players will, hopefully, stick around, but the circumstances will be far different than how it was when Bud first arrived in Milwaukee nearly five years ago.
The Bucks, with Bud, redefined success for a small market team. They sought to model themselves as the team who has done it the best, the San Antonio Spurs, and it’s no surprise that when Bud became available, the Bucks jumped at the chance to bring him on board. It was enough to rack up wins, keep a back-to-back MVP in town and win a championship in a span of three years.
In the end, though, it wasn’t enough to save the man who helped oversee all of it when the greatest test to what the Bucks have built arose. And now, time will tell what will be left standing when all is said and done.