The Milwaukee Bucks were defined by their mediocrity during the early 2010s, but plenty of franchise-altering moments set the stage for their middling play.
The Milwaukee Bucks currently stand as the cream of the crop in the NBA, even in spite of the coronavirus pandemic pausing play to the 2019-20 season.
But before they climbed to the top of the league as they have done the last two seasons, before they had a promising core headlined by superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, All-Star forward Khris Middleton as well as Eric Bledsoe and Brook Lopez, the Bucks were stuck in the middle.
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The Bucks of the early 2010s operated as if they had no future and constantly played for the present. In some ways, that statement proved to be all too real, given the threat of relocation had the state of the art Fiserv Forum not been built.
But despite their efforts to compete for the playoffs and hopefully beyond, the Bucks were stuck in an endless loop, always landing in the very area they aspired to get out of: the middle.
It was a different time, different era and a wholly unrecognizable team from the top down compared to the current squad led by Antetokounmpo, Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer and their current ownership.
My co-site expert Adam McGee went into great detail earlier this week about this era of Bucks basketball and most specifically, how the 2012-13 Bucks exemplified this edict under then-owner Herb Kohl. But as we’re about to dive into, franchise-altering moments certainly influenced why the Bucks were stuck in this kind of purgatory for many years.
So without further ado, let’s run through some of the biggest ‘what ifs’ that ultimately defined the Milwaukee Bucks’ run on the treadmill of mediocrity throughout the early 2010s.
Trading Tobias Harris
There have been plenty of monumental trades throughout the Bucks’ 52-year history, whether it’s been dealing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Ray Allen.
Dealing Tobias Harris, then a second-year forward, as the Bucks did as part of a blockbuster deal at the 2013 NBA trade deadline, doesn’t rise to the level of franchise-changing as the aforementioned examples. But what it ultimately does is define the ‘eighth-seed or bust’ Bucks and the ultimate short-sightedness that hung over the end of the Herb Kohl era.
Over his two seasons in Milwaukee, Harris stood as nothing more than a bit player, making 70 appearances and totaling just 804 minutes over that span, good for 11.5 minutes per game. Harris’ inexperience and defensive woes led to him never catching on in the team’s rotation under the perennially grouchy Scott Skiles and later, interim coach Jim Boylan.
Clearly, Harris hadn’t shown enough signs of being the efficient three-level scorer he later became along his stops in Orlando, Detroit, Los Angeles and now, Philadelphia. At the same time, the former Volunteer never was given the proper reps and development time needed to grow his game in Milwaukee and immediately blossomed upon being traded to Orlando.
Still, Harris was a valuable asset on a rookie contract, whom the Bucks believed could have been a difference maker after swinging a draft night trade with the Charlotte Bobcats during the 2011 NBA Draft. That was, until he was included in the deadline deal to acquire J.J. Redick, Ish Smith and Gustavo Ayon from the Magic.
Hindsight has been able to give us a look into what went into play as far as Harris’ inclusion and as the Toronto Sun’s Ryan Wolstat reported on in February of 2019, it went all the way to the top to Kohl.
For his part, Skiles insisted that he wouldn’t have advised the Bucks to trade Harris when speaking to Charles Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in November 2015, despite Skiles never giving him a consistent chance while in Milwaukee:
"“He was pretty mature as a person even then,” Skiles said of Harris, who left Tennessee after his freshman year to enter the NBA draft. “In camp he got sick; he fell behind. “At that time, we just felt (Luc) Mbah a Moute was a better defender and (Mike) Dunleavy was a better offensive player, and Tobias didn’t get as many minutes. But we were high on him. “Not that anybody would have listened to me, but if I would have still been the coach, I would not have been for moving Tobias. That’s for sure, if somebody would ask my opinion.”"
Funnily enough, Harris was later traded to the Detroit Pistons in another trade deadline deal in February 2016 under Skiles’ one-year coaching stint with the Magic.
Eventually, the Bucks bottoming out as hard as they did during their 15-win season in 2013-14 and Kohl selling the team at the end of the season alleviated Hammond from having to ‘serve two masters’ as he would often describe his job at that time as he said to Grantland’s Zach Lowe in December 2014:
"“That is not who we are today,” says John Hammond, the team’s GM. “The core objective is long-term now: to develop into a championship-caliber team.”"
After many twists and turns and Hammond ultimately leaving for Orlando in the summer of 2017, that vision has come to pass. And it’s the reminder of Harris’ part in a deadline deal that left the Bucks with nothing meaningful to show for it that shows why building for the long-term was so necessary in the first place for Milwaukee.
Andrew Bogut’s career-altering injury
If not for Andrew Bogut‘s career-altering injury on April 3. 2010, there’s no way of knowing just how the subsequent seasons and current era could have been changed.
During the Bucks’ 2009-10 season, commonly referred to as the ‘Fear the Deer’ run, Bogut had asserted himself as one of the league’s top centers and the centerpiece to Milwaukee’s top-ranked defense in his age-25 season and under Skiles’ second year in charge.
He was one of the NBA’s premier shot blockers, averaging 2.5 blocks per game, and held a 99.0 defensive rating that stood near the top of individual players around the league, per NBA.com/stats. Along with that, Bogut’s mix of size, savvy and screen setting made him an integral part of the team’s offense and formed a nice pick-and-roll combination with rookie guard Brandon Jennings.
But two weeks before the start of their playoff run, where they would eventually go up against the third-seeded Atlanta Hawks, Bogut went down after leaping up for a dunk on a fast break and being pushed by Phoenix Suns forward Amar’e Stoudamire, and subsequently landed on his right arm and shattering it in multiple places.
That Bucks team still managed to push the Hawks to a full seven-game series in the first round of the playoffs without Bogut and created a new level of expectations they had to meet the following season. And the Australian international was later named to the All-NBA Third Team following the 09-10 campaign.
But Bogut was never the same player and admitted to rushing back far too soon for what was essentially a 6-9 month injury as he talked about with the Pick and Roll in December of 2019:
"“I probably rushed back from it to be honest,” Bogut admitted. “I came back way too soon. It was essentially a 6 to 9 month injury, but I was back in four months.” The decision resulted in Bogut playing through injury, something that required additional surgery after the season concluded. “Every fifth shot I’d feel like someone stabbed me in the elbow. I knew something was wrong and in that offseason, I went and got a scope/clean out on it. I had surgery again on it and there was a massive chunk of bone just floating around in my elbow joint. Playing through that for a whole season was [tough].”"
Bogut’s injury, among plenty of other factors, cast an incredible pall over the Bucks’ disappointing 2010-11 season as they slipped down to a 35-47 record to miss the playoffs. In many ways, Bogut’s injury-prone career, marked by his arm injury, literally fractured what looked to be a promising era and eventually set the stage for his exit from the team.
Almost trading for Steph Curry
Having the chance to trade for a generational superstar and three-time NBA champion in Stephen Curry and not managing to do so seems like a mistake on the part of the Bucks, right? On its face, absolutely.
The truth is that it’s a little more complicated than that, though.
After suffering a fractured ankle a month into the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, Bogut was reportedly no longer viewed as the ‘untouchable’ piece the Bucks thought of him once upon a time. Furthermore, Bogut was open to a fresh start as ESPN’s Marc Stein reported ahead of that year’s trade deadline:
"“NBA front-office sources say that the Bucks, who have always swatted away trade inquiries for Bogut in the past, are now listening to pitches for the 7-foot Australian, who is said to be intrigued by the prospect of a fresh start elsewhere after more than two years of injury misfortune and teamwide tension under coach Scott Skiles over the past two disappointing seasons.”"
Trader John, the alter ego of then-Bucks general manager John Hammond, then entered the proceedings. Bogut was later dealt in a blockbuster deal to the Golden State Warriors, along with the disgruntled Stephen Jackson, in exchange for Monta Ellis, Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown.
But as the story goes, talks had originally centered around Curry. In the mind of then-Warriors general manager, Larry Riley, Curry’s place in trade discussions was a way to get the ball rolling as NBC Sports Bay Area reported on back in June of 2017:
"“Absolutely. The only way to get the trade started was to let them start talking about Steph Curry. That’s like going fishing, you throw some bait out there. A couple of things happened with that. I wanted to switch the deal over to Monta all along. But in order to get a conversation going, we had to do that.” “Well that was also the year Steph was having some ankle problems, and this is just me speaking, you’ll have to talk to [then-Bucks GM] John Hammond, but they became concerned about Steph’s future in regards to ankle problems that he was having. So in order to get the deal, we have to put Ekpe Udoh in it. And Ekpe looked like a player that could become a solid NBA backup. In all honestly, we had Ekpe for a year and half and I felt ‘Hey, I made a mistake with this one. This guy is not going to make it.” So we had an opporunity to correct a mistake and put him with Monta and get the center back we wanted.” “So there’s some credibility to the way that conversation actually started. But at the end of the day, I would have been kicking and screaming and tied down and everything else before I would have let Steph Curry go,” Riley said.”"
At the time, Curry’s ankle injuries were a source of great debate over his early career as he had suffered multiple sprains and went under the knife on a couple of occasions. Like Sisyphus, Curry’s perpetual ankle sprains reportedly led him to saying this as ESPN’s Pablo Torre recounted in February 2016:
"“Three months later, in July 2012, Curry was rehabbing with his personal trainer, Brandon Payne, when he made a startling confession: “I feel like I’ve been doing nothing but rehabbing for two years,” Curry quietly told him. “I feel like I’m never going to be able to play again.”"
Current Bucks owner Marc Lasry talked about how Curry’s ankle problems ultimately nixed the deal from the Milwaukee’s perspective in an interview with The Athletic’s Frank Isola ($) in January of 2019:
"“I don’t know if they can be light years ahead if they traded Steph Curry to the Bucks for Andrew Bogut,” Lasry says of a proposed trade before he purchased the Bucks, which has been reported as both fact and urban legend. “That was the deal. But the Bucks’ medical staff didn’t think Steph’s ankle would hold up. That killed the deal. So, I don’t know if that’s being light years. It’s luck. And that’s fine.” Lasry then smiled and added, “I think we got rid of that medical staff when we bought the team.”"
In theory, not angling for Curry changes the scope of the Bucks franchise, given the player he developed into and it’s arguably on par with losing out on Julius Erving as we explored last week, despite the differing circumstances and context (i.e. Bucks drafted Erving, Bucks never had Curry).
Yet, in an alternate universe where the Bucks get Curry in that trade package, there’s no guarantee that the most lethal 3-point shooter in NBA history would have delivered the same success in Milwaukee as he has experienced in the Bay Area due to those same ankle issues.
After all, it was Curry’s injuries that necessitated a four-year, $44 million extension, a deal that was considered risky at the time, and spawned how the Warriors were able to do the very things that made them the juggernaut they became as they decade wore on. How would the Bucks have dealt with Curry’s contract extension talks at the time? There’s simply no way of knowing.
Essentially, swapping Bogut for Curry would have been viewed as trading damaged goods for damaged goods. And given the state of the Bucks at the time, it would have been incredibly hard to envision them having the resources and infrastructure in place to help Curry find a solution to his long-standing ankle injuries and sprains.
As for the real centerpiece of the Bucks’ deal with Golden State, let’s just say Monta Ellis doesn’t look back on the trade too fondly and his Bucks stint as a whole.
Luckily, the Bucks have been able to finally step off of that awful treadmill of mediocrity and have went on to form a memorable era of Bucks basketball after many long and painstaking years. Bucks fans will certainly never forget the era that it all came out of, that’s for sure.