Milwaukee Bucks: 4 ways Mike Budenholzer will improve the team

The Milwaukee Bucks have hired their new head coach, former Atlanta Hawks skipper Mike Budenholzer. What are specific ways he will help this team?

The Milwaukee Bucks have ended their search for a new coach, hiring former Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer. After a disappointing season ended with a first round loss to the Boston Celtics, the Bucks needed a new coach to guide this team through the prime of Giannis Antetokounmpo.

For most of Antetokounmpo’s time in Milwaukee, he has been coached by Jason Kidd, who was fired in the middle of this past season for a confluence of factors. His replacement, interim head coach Joe Prunty, helped the team to tread water and make the postseason as the seventh seed.

Now that they have been eliminated, the Bucks must turn their gaze forward. The decision of who to hire was critically important, not only because this team has high hopes but because this is the window to prove to Antetokounmpo that the Bucks can contend with him in place. Hire the wrong coach, and Antetokounmpo may walk in 2021.

Every coaching candidate is in some ways an unknown. For those with no head coaching experience, we have little information to go on in evaluating their potential from the outside. Even for a coach like Mike Budenholzer, it’s hard to identify how he will look with an entirely different roster.

With that being said, Budenholzer was the right man to hire for the job. He is not perfect, with his own postseason failures and organizational friction in his past. But of the available candidates, Budenholzer combined experience, structure and upside to put him above the others.

How specifically can coach Bud help the Milwaukee Bucks take the leap from fringe playoff team to contender? Based on his time in Atlanta, we can highlight four ways Mike Budenholzer will improve the Bucks and propel them in the right direction.