Milwaukee Bucks: Where does Mike Budenholzer stand in his run as coach?
By Dalton Sell
Following another disappointing playoff trip, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer faces plenty of pressure in shepherding the team this 2020-21 season.
Since Mike Budenholzer took over as the Milwaukee Bucks head coach in the summer of 2018, no team has had more success in the regular season.
With Budenholzer at the helm, the Bucks have built up an impressive 116-39 record over the past two regular seasons and their dominance has reached historically great levels. However, they have flamed out in both trips to the postseason during his tenure. While the struggles of his best players in those moments deserve some of the blame, Budenholzer has been seen the lion’s share of criticism fall at his feet.
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Whether you believe that is fully deserved or not, Budenholzer’s playoff shortcomings have only grown more magnified over his two years in Milwaukee.
The stakes of falling short of reaching the 2019 NBA Finals and losing four straight games to that year’s champions, the Toronto Raptors, saw Budenholzer trying to find a solution as Toronto snatched away that Eastern Conference Finals series away from the Bucks.
The same circumstances and Budenholzer’s steadfast beliefs in his and the team’s system proved to be their downfall against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Semifinals this past year.
That was especially relevant to their defensive scheme which the Heat have exploited with their lethal 3-point shooting and multiple playmakers on the floor. On top of that, Budenholzer’s minutes distribution between his players, notably Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, increasingly drew the ire of Bucks fans and caused plenty of head scratching from observers in and around the league.
Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer on playing Giannis Antetokounmpo 35 minutes & Khris Middleton 36 minutes in Game 3 loss to Heat: “It’s a high level. If you’re going as hard as these guys are in a playoff game, 35, 36, I think that’s pushing the ceiling.” pic.twitter.com/z8idPePGKq
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) September 5, 2020
Many questions revolve around the Milwaukee Bucks this season and the biggest is Mike Budenholzer being able to be more adaptable.
With all of that setting the stage going into this Bucks season, one where he will have a revamped roster at his disposal, Budenholzer faces no shortage of pressure of finding the answers to the questions that have plagued the Bucks in the playoffs previously.
The Bucks went out of their way to eliminate speculation that they would entertain firing Budenholzer after how last season ended, but that doesn’t mean that pressure hasn’t dissipated on the two-time Coach of the Year. To that point, in The Athletic’s extensive list of prediction for this NBA season ($$), it was very interesting to see Budenholzer earn the most votes (15) for which NBA head coach has the biggest hot seat going into the season, if not completely unsurprising.
The Bucks’ front office made the necessary moves to retool the team’s roster in hopes of better success in the playoffs. The addition of Jrue Holiday is massive on its face, but in the context of Eric Bledsoe’s substantial playoff failures, the upgrade Holiday poses to fix their biggest flaw on the court, at least on paper.
The pressing questions hanging over Antetokounmpo and his long-term future have fallen by the wayside after he signed his five-year supermax extension that gives the Bucks some much-needed security and extends their current contending window.
With most, if not all of the Bucks’ offseason moves made with their playoff struggles in mind, the onus is increasingly on Budenholzer to learn from his own mistakes made in each of the last two playoff runs.
There’s no question that Budenholzer still stands as a great NBA coach as he is one of the biggest reasons why the Bucks are in this position to begin with. The system and principles that he and his staff have prioritized in Milwaukee have unlocked the Bucks’ superstar on down and turned the team’s potential into something more substantial and rewarding on the court.
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This is not the same Bucks team that has faltered when it has mattered most and time will tell how it all comes together moving forward. The bigger question is whether Budenholzer can avoid falling in the same pattern of mistakes that led them to reworking their roster this offseason in the first place.