Righting The Ship: One Year In With The Bucks’ Owners

By Jordan Treske | Apr 16, 2015

At one year in, it’s hard to refer to Marc Lasry, Wes Edens and Jamie Dinan as “new” Bucks’ owners at this point. They’ve already made quite an impact on the franchise from making a noteworthy coaching change, overhauling the team’s logo, along with the color scheme and continue to champion for a new arena in downtown Milwaukee.

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But it all still feels new at this point, considering the long lasting tenure under previous owner Herb Kohl. But that’s not all that feels new this year.

It’s been no secret that the Bucks have been a second banana (third in this case), if you will, to the Green Bay Packers, the state’s prized football team and the recently rejuvenated Milwaukee Brewers, the state’s baseball team.

It certainly hasn’t helped that the team hasn’t been that good in recent years either.

Sure, there have been bad breaks of luck along the way that have derailed momentum for the team in the past (T.J. Ford, Michael Redd, Andrew Bogut), but overall, management mishandling and general mediocrity have long been the name of the game for the Bucks.

That’s why this year has been so refreshing. Yes, the weird cosmic energy against the Bucks reared its ugly head once again in the case of the injury to Jabari Parker, the unfortunate Larry Sanders’ saga came to an end and the shocking Knight-Carter-Williams trade could have easily derailed team chemistry, and overall, the team’s season.

But the Bucks persevered through all of it, went 41-41 and became the third team since playoff expansion in 1983-1984 to clinch a playoff berth after having the worst record in the NBA the previous season.

Did the ownership/front office think this season would go this way? Most certainly not. Before the season, Lasry and Edens were aware this wouldn’t be an overnight transformation, looking down the road three-to-five years to be a perennial team at the top. It certainly made sense why this year’s slogan is “own the future.”

That comes to beg the question: Is this year a “happy accident?”

The answer certainly depends on how you view the situation. You could’ve easily described the previous year as an accident itself, where everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. But it wasn’t like things didn’t go wrong this year either, with circumstances previously stated.

Does it all come down to the arrival of Jason Kidd and the effect he’s had on the team?

Coming into the season, the team wasn’t that entirely different to the year before under coach Larry Drew, with Jerryd Bayless, Jared Dudley, Kendall Marshall and Jabari Parker being the only newcomers to the team.

Of course the team is drastically different now, but that’s all been under Kidd. Just imagine if Kidd didn’t try to make his alleged power play in Brooklyn, where would this team be now under Larry Drew? Is that a question one can think about without shuddering?

Not to throw Drew under the bus, considering he coached the team in it’s worst year in franchise history and was unceremoniously fired, but he certainly didn’t make things better.

Yes, the owners themselves regretted the way they handled the firing of Drew when they hired Kidd, but they insisted that Kidd was their man no matter what.

And that’s been the biggest winner so far under LED’s brief ownership.

They know they aren’t suited to make the basketball decisions so they went out and found someone who knew he could. Kidd’s been the X-factor and has been appropriately credited for being the biggest reason for the Bucks’ turnaround.

He’s successfully emphasized team basketball, relying on tenacious defense and has turned a twenty year-old in Giannis Antetokoumpo into a face of the franchise type player.

Yes, the stigma of being the middle child (factually correct, since the Bucks were the second of the three major sports teams in Wisconsin) still rings true for the team, but for the first time in a long time, things seemed to be looking up.

It’s truly astonishing to see the birth of a culture change in such a short amount of time.

Yes, everything comes in baby steps, but whether you’re a die-hard or fairweather fan, you can’t help but feel encouraged by the direction the team is heading. And it all starts from the top.

Next: Time To Embrace Giannis' Dark Side

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