Milwaukee Bucks: 4 ways Mike Budenholzer will improve the team

1. Experience in running a team well

When Jason Kidd was hired as head coach in 2014, his track record as a coach consisted of zero games as an NBA assistant and just one season as a head coach, overseeing a veteran roster in Brooklyn to 44 wins. While experience is not a must in the NBA, a proven track record can show a coach does not have certain glaring flaws.

Mike Budenholzer has been an NBA coach for 22 seasons — 17 as an assistant in San Antonio under Gregg Popovich and five as the head coach in Atlanta. Only twice has a team he was involved with not made the postseason: his first year in San Antonio (when the team tanked for Tim Duncan), and his final season in Atlanta after the team’s talent was squeezed dry and a rebuild green-lit.

In Atlanta there was never an instance of Budenholzer’s coaching destroying the team from within, or holding them back from the team they could otherwise become. While they experienced tough postseason losses, the Hawks were always there in the postseason year after year. He elevated the pieces in Atlanta to greater than the sum of their parts; Jason Kidd seemed to do the opposite in Milwaukee.

The blemish on Budenholzer’s record is the friction caused when he tried to take on a second role, serving as president of basketball operations in Atlanta after general manager Danny Ferry was let go amidst scandal. Budenholzer, as nearly every head coach in the modern era has done, failed to maximize both roles.

In Milwaukee his focus appears to be on coaching, and that is an area where he can excel. He does not have the highest of achievements on his resume — leading a team to a title — but the coaches who do are rarely available. No coach on the market had ever won 60 games other than Budenholzer, and to reach even 50 would be a welcome development in Milwaukee.

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There are no guarantees in the NBA, and it’s possible that Ettore Messina or Dwane Casey would have been a better hire in Milwaukee. Yet Mike Budenholzer brings experience, he brings structure, and he brings a track record of making players better than they were before. Those are all attributes a team should want in its coach, and the Bucks were smart to hire the man they did.