While the dust is still settling, the decision to fire former head coach Jason Kidd simultaneously gives the Milwaukee Bucks a fresh start while possessing a foundation to build on in the years to come.
At long last, the Jason Kidd era of the Milwaukee Bucks has come to an emphatic close with his firing on Monday afternoon.
Over the three-and-a-half years he’d been at the helm for the Bucks, Kidd helped bring some cache to an organization that had long been neglected by both the local and national eye and his arrival coincided with the eventual superstar emergence of Giannis Antetokounmpo.
But for any of the mild success and name recognition he enjoyed and brought to the franchise, his presence within the organization had put the Bucks in a holding pattern by the end of his tenure, especially as they aspired to take the next steps toward contending for a potential championship.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise since Kidd’s arrival in the summer of 2014 came on the back of him reportedly pushing for both head coaching and upper management duties and rumors of Kidd’s overarching influence within the higher levels of the Bucks had festered all throughout his time in Milwaukee.
Cracks eventually began to show. Kidd sticking his nose where it didn’t belong according to his job title had been gradually splitting a driven ownership group, determined to make a contender with the Bucks. The first rumblings of that started bubbling back at the trade deadline during the 2015-16 season as Adrian Wojnarowski reported back during his time with The Vertical.
"“At last week’s trade deadline, Kidd tried to engineer a massive deal with New Orleans that Milwaukee ownership ultimately rejected, league sources tell me. That wouldn’t have happened a year ago, but the fact that it did now speaks to the growing division within Milwaukee’s ownership group on Kidd. At the least, there’s increasing reluctance to grant Kidd player personnel power.”"
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Even with possible question marks hanging over his job status after the Bucks wrapped up their highly disappointing campaign that same year, ownership went ahead and gave Kidd an extension that lasted until the 2019-20 season, negating the prospects of him having to prove himself during a potential lame duck season the following year.
As much as the move secured him financially, which still applies for him after getting the axe, the cracks continued to run deeper as Kidd failed to hit the growing bar of expectations and establish some semblance of consistency, even with accounting for the significant injuries to both Khris Middleton and Jabari Parker during the 2016-17 season.
Couple that with his lagging coaching aptitude as well as his belief in deploying well worn and failing tactics that had done more harm to the team’s performance than good, and Kidd had worn out his welcome among the majority of the Bucks fanbase well before the decision was officially made to part ways with him earlier this week.
But now that the band-aid has been officially ripped off, the Bucks, specifically their ownership, have been given a cautionary tale on what happens when you give a person carte blanche to influence decisions that are above their authority to how they see fit.
There’s no doubt you want to empower someone in any position that you believe is qualified to lead your organization down the right path, but there’s no question Kidd’s sway undermined the actions or decisions of other officials in the Bucks organization, most notably former general manager John Hammond (i.e. the 2015 NBA Draft).
It only brings up more questions over whether they were prepared to act on this at an earlier date, more specifically during last summer, something Jared Zwerling of Sports Illustrated illuminated after Kidd’s departure this week. Whether that was during the same time they were deciding on who to appoint as Hammond’s successor or not is not known at this point, but it’s not hard to connect those dots for why that situation may have played out as ugly as it did on all fronts.
Regardless, with Kidd now gone, the Bucks’ ownership has their first chance to establish not only a clear power structure across the basketball side of their operations since practically arriving to Milwaukee almost four years ago, but have the chance to find a basketball mind that holds the qualities and merit to lead the team to the promised land, so to speak.
Of course, that decision will wait until the spring or summer as Joe Prunty has been named the team’s interim head coach and will fill that role until the completion of the Bucks’ season this year.
The big question will be whether Kidd’s power and status within the organization was at the heart of the ownership’s issues or is potentially the start of a slippery slope and a harbinger of what’s to come with another search to find their coach of the future in store.
Next: Milwaukee Bucks: What to expect from Joe Prunty’s Bucks
We have no way of knowing whether Kidd was the chicken or the egg in this scenario just yet, but his exit answers one of the biggest questions that had hung over the franchise as they look to maximize the superstar window with Antetokounmpo — the figure who they make all of their decisions, however large or small, by now — leading the way.