Milwaukee Bucks: Are we seeing Mike Budenholzer’s last stand?

As the Milwaukee Bucks veer toward a calamitous end to their 2019-20 season, Mike Budenholzer’s future with the club is on uncertain ground.

For much of the year, the Milwaukee Bucks‘ 2019-20 season was a dream. Now, it has quickly devolved into a nightmare.

The Bucks are one game away from elimination in their Conference Semi-finals series with the Miami Heat. If Game 4 on Sunday afternoon goes as the series has gone to this point, the Bucks will literally see their life in the bubble burst and be faced with a humiliating exit that very few saw coming, or at least coming this early into the playoffs.

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Uncertainty around the Bucks is running rampant, with all of the speculation surrounding superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. And the same may eventually be true of head coach Mike Budenholzer.

That statement would be one that very few, if any Bucks fans would have entertained at any point throughout this season. Especially not after the Bucks tallied the league’s best record and had eclipsed the standard they set following their 60-win season and run to the Conference Finals last year.

But desperate times may call for desperate measures and the way the Bucks have crumbled before our eyes, even if they mount some miraculous stand and actually win a game in this series, has forced the organization to stare in the mirror.

When the two-time NBA Coach of the Year arrived to Milwaukee, they were in dire need of a new direction, a new voice and some semblance of a fruitful culture to lean on. A franchise that was starved for any kind of success and was nearing on a near-two decade drought without a playoff series win, the Bucks certainly possessed a desirable core, with superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo obviously being the crown jewel.

Budenholzer and his coaching staff brought an instant cache and laid down a viable foundation towards success. In turn, the Bucks not only turned into a winner, at long last, and talk of championship aspirations from players and officials finally looked to be legitimate for the first time since the days of Don Nelson, Sidney Moncrief, Marques Johnson, and so on.

As of now, those aspirations have gone unrealized and the catastrophic way this Bucks season is ending has led to them looking as lost as they have ever been in the Budenholzer era. And the circumstances behind the Bucks’ collapse, in a championship-or-bust season, couldn’t be more damaging towards such a respected coach like Budenholzer.

And that leads to this uncertain place we stand today, where pondering over Budenholzer’s future in Milwaukee is now a necessary question to ask (With hindsight, news of Budenholzer selling his Milwaukee-area mansion stands in a different light now, wouldn’t you say?).

For some, jettisoning the coach that finally helped bring basketball respectability back to Milwaukee sounds preposterous on the surface, even in the face of an all-time humiliating playoff exit. For others, there may be no other course of action with the Bucks having reached the end of the line and bracing for their doomsday scenario in regards to Antetokounmpo’s free agency in the summer of 2021 (or whenever next offseason actually is).

This was the very scenario that Budenholzer was specifically brought in to combat, as a result of the Jason Kidd era having long run its course amid plenty of dysfunction, instability and above all, middling success. For that, it wasn’t exactly a high bar that Budenholzer and co. had to clear in terms of general competency, but during the past two regular seasons, the Bucks under Bud had passed that test with flying colors.

For that to be paired with two straight playoff collapses and not even getting out of the second round this year is unfathomable.

Of course, plenty of credit goes toward the Heat, a historically terrible matchup for the Bucks, for essentially neutering Antetokounmpo in the series, routinely taking advantage of the Bucks’ defensive scheme and rattling their proverbial cages. Just as was the case against the Toronto Raptors in last year’s Conference Finals.

Through it all, though, Budenholzer’s steadfast belief in his system and his stubbornness with regulating the minutes load of his brightest stars, all while under siege, has never shined brighter under the spotlight. In many ways, the Bucks have lived by the system and they are certain to die by it as well. The year-long talk of lessons being learned in the aftermath of last year’s Conference Finals exit have proven to be untrue and bizarre postgame anecdotes have only exacerbated the problem.

Given how hard the Bucks have crashed and burned, no one is above blame, even beyond Budenholzer.

Certainly not the soon-to-be two-time MVP, who has struggled in a high-profile manner and whose long-term future in Milwaukee is unknown. Certainly not an organization that after losing to the Raptors in the Conference Finals, decided against going into the luxury tax and fully capitalizing on what could have been the peak of this title window. And there will be plenty more overarching inflection points from the last few years that will be rehashed in the coming weeks, months and years.

In an offseason that was already uncertain, the Bucks will be at the center of a brewing hurricane of speculation that will be all centered on Antetokounmpo and his future in Milwaukee. A Bucks organization and ownership that had preached a long-term vision of title contending will certainly be flung into action, salvaging any hope they can inspire in Antetokounmpo believing this is the team where he can realize his dream of winning an NBA championship.

Everything will be on the table and the first decision to fall may revolve around the man who played a key part in putting Bucks basketball back on the map not that long ago.