Milwaukee Bucks: Rough Season Taught Important Lessons

Could the 2015-16 Milwaukee Bucks season end up being a teaching moment for ownership going forward?

Things clearly didn’t go as planned for the Milwaukee Bucks last season. The team finished with 49 losses in a season where many fans expected Milwaukee to chase 50 wins.

Much of the Bucks shortcomings last season likely had a lot to do with the lack of veteran presence on the team.

Important veteran players like Zaza Pachulia, Jared Dudley and Ersan Ilyasova were traded away for essentially nothing over the summer, and replaced with Greg Monroe and other young players having expanded roles.

More from Bucks News

Some young talent did crop up for the Bucks in the absence of those guys, but without their leadership the team often appeared unfocused throughout the long NBA season. That cost the Bucks a lot in the wins column.

The Milwaukee Bucks, like every NBA team does at times, erred. They messed up. That’s not actually very important.

In the words of the great Rocky Balboa, it’s not about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you get hit, and keep moving forward. The best teams get hit hard just like everybody else, but those hits don’t stop them from following their path to success in the NBA.

The Bucks just got hit pretty hard, but how the franchise reacts is what matters. Luckily for Bucks fans, it seems that ownership recognizes that too.

In this piece by Rich Kirchen, Marc Lasry and Jamie Dinan admitted that they got caught up in trying to force-build a winning team too early in Milwaukee.

"“You look to solve one problem and you create another one,” Dinan said. “Sometimes you have to take a much more holistic approach, especially with player development.”"

Dinan continued to detail where Milwaukee’s offseason went wrong in more specific terms:

"“In order to stay under the salary cap, we had to make some adjustments — letting go of Zaza Pachulia and Jared Dudley,” Dinan said. “What we didn’t realize was we were losing our veteran locker room presence.”"

This is a great sign for Bucks fans. Ownership may not make day-to-day moves like general manager John Hammond does, but every NBA front office answers to the owners. They make the final calls on big moves.

Clearly, ownership in Milwaukee realizes that mistakes were made last summer. It appears those mistakes have become learning moments for the Bucks.

Lasry said he realized that ownership tried to do too much, too soon:

"“I think the biggest mistake we made is (the basketball experts) said, ‘Don’t do anything the first year,” Lasry said. “We ended up trying to do a lot after our first season.”"

Lasry seems to be implying that the team could be quieter in free agency this season, although the Bucks will have to add some veterans for chemistry’s sake.

So the big question remains–what does this say about the Dwight Howard to Milwaukee rumors?

There seem to be two different ways of reading into what Lasry and Dinan said in that article. The first is that the team needs veteran leaders, and maybe Dwight could fit that bill.

Dwight impressed and surprised a lot of people through his TNT pseudo-intervention, and he’s been through a lot. He would bring that experience to Milwaukee to be sure.

On the flip side of things, signing free agents of that stature certainly fits under “trying to do a lot”. That’s what Lasry cited as the mistake ownership made that led to this disappointing season.

Dwight or any other free agent weren’t the specific focus of the quotes, so all fans can really do at this point is try to read the tea leaves left behind by Bucks people. Right now, it feels like the team could go in either direction.

Next: BTBP Big Board 2.0

We’ll have updates on Dwightwatch, and everything else that happens with the Milwaukee Bucks, as the summer goes on.

Home/Bucks News

Milwaukee Bucks: Rough Season Taught Valuable Lessons

By Ti Windisch | May 11, 2016

Could the 2015-16 Milwaukee Bucks season end up being a teaching moment for ownership going forward?