Milwaukee Bucks: 5 reasons Jason Kidd was fired
The Milwaukee Bucks fired head coach Jason Kidd on Monday after three and a half seasons. Why did the team feel now was the right time to make a move?
The Milwaukee Bucks managed to thread the needle between shocking and inevitable on Monday when they fired head coach Jason Kidd. The future Hall-of-Fame point guard was dismissed in the midst of his fourth season with the Bucks, during which time they went 139–152 and made the playoffs twice.
At the time of his firing, the Bucks were in eighth place in the Eastern Conference, with the 11th-best point differential in the Conference. Cleaning the Glass suggests the Bucks were the league’s fourth-luckiest team just to get to 23-22, with a 20-25 expected record based on the team’s play.
Jason Kidd came to the Bucks after one season with the Brooklyn Nets. Milwaukee immediately leapt into the postseason on the back of Kidd’s extreme new defensive scheme and a rising star in Giannis Antetokounmpo. That defense has since fallen off, and the team has hovered around league average throughout his tenure.
Assistant coach Joe Prunty took over as interim head coach, and is expected to hold that position through the remainder of the season.
The news of the firing broke Monday afternoon, hours before the team hosted the Phoenix Suns.
Milwaukee has fired coach Jason Kidd, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 22, 2018
Jon Horst, the team’s general manager, issued a letter to Milwaukee fans thanking Kidd for his services and stating “ultimately we decided that a fresh approach and a change in leadership are needed to continue elevating our team to the next level and bringing us closer to our goal of winning championships”.
Wojnarowski followed with more information on the firing:
Bucks made move on Kidd based upon dropping into the 8th seed in the East, frayed relationships in organization and general non-alignment, league sources tell ESPN. Bucks job will be most sought after of offseason, largely because of @Giannis_An34.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) January 22, 2018
Those are some big picture reasons, the type of generally vanilla statements a team makes as it tries to be classy and professional. (Kidd, it should be noted, was everything but classy in outing star player Giannis Antetokounmpo and their private conversation in an interview with ESPN‘s Ramona Shelburne).
But what are some specific reasons that the Bucks felt Jason Kidd needed to go? The most glaring one is with Kidd’s first big accomplishment in Milwaukee, the failure of his defense over the past few years.