No. 3 – His conditioning tactics
It’s no secret that the Milwaukee Bucks, for the most part, have been a poorly conditioned team for the past five years with Budenholzer at the helm. Come playoff time, there have been many occasions when players looked very winded with heavy legs, especially Khris Middleton.
Although he was injured for a good part of the season, Middleton was clearly not in game shape. He has never fully looked conditioned to play heavy minutes during his time with the Bucks.
This is mainly due to the fact that Mike Budenholzer played his starters 30-32 minutes per game on average throughout the regular season. He would do this with the hopes of preserving them come playoff time.
With Nick Nurse as head coach, guess who will no longer be averaging 30-32 minutes per game? The answer would be all of the Bucks starters.
Nurse is notorious for playing his starters heavy minutes during the regular season. While some may criticize this approach, this can only help the starters to be well conditioned and in game shape come playoff time, when they aren’t sucking wind.
Nick Nurse is a highly regarded and respected coach. He is capable of getting the most out of his players and is somewhat of an overachiever.
The dangling carrot for Nick Nurse to coach the Milwaukee Bucks is the opportunity to coach Giannis Antetokounmpo in his prime…right now. Based on that alone, it makes the head coaching vacancy an extremely attractive job.
He would bring a different coaching style and lineage with him, which the players and fans will welcome with open arms. There is no doubt that he is the best man for the job and would improve the team’s performance come playoff time, most importantly.
Stay tuned for more Milwaukee Bucks analysis.