With Mike Budenholzer set to take over as the Milwaukee Bucks head coach, what do you need to know about the man tasked with leading the team forward?
After an almost two-week long search, the Milwaukee Bucks’ coaching search seems to have come to an end.
Reports on Wednesday evening suggest the Bucks have come to an agreement with former Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer on a four-year deal to be the team’s new head coach.
In hiring Budenholzer, some fans seem to feel the Bucks have opted for the safest choice in their pursuit of a new coach. That’s not necessarily untrue and the reasons for that sentiment are pretty obvious. More than anything, the average NBA fan knows who Budenholzer is, or at least think they do.
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In saying that, although the Atlanta Hawks have been the darling of NBA Twitter at times, they’ve never really been one of the NBA’s most watched or most talked about teams.
Sure, this season saw them come to the end of what had been the NBA’s lengthiest active streak outside of San Antonio for consecutive years making the playoffs, but it doesn’t mean everyone was really paying attention.
That’s become increasingly evident as simplified narratives about playoff exits at the hands of LeBron James, and misconceptions about defensive schemes akin to Jason Kidd‘s have swirled around social media throughout Budenholzer’s time under consideration by the Bucks.
Having previously covered the Hawks and come to the NBA as an Atlanta fan — that was back when I knew what being a fan even felt like, but hey, we’ll psychoanalyze my relationship with the NBA another time — and since spending the best part of four seasons living and breathing every detail of Bucks basketball, it seems like this is a topic that I’m at worst moderately qualified to shed some light on.
So, without further ado, I’m here to give you a better sense of who Mike Budenholzer is, how he made it to the NBA, and what you can expect from him as both a personality and a coach.