The Bucks player personnel issues under LED

[Ron Swanson]

99% of free agent signings are overpays based on what they're worth in a vacuum, that's not the issue. Delly and Teletovic didn't just physically regress the second they put on Bucks uniforms. If your front office goes out and addresses an obvious issue such as "outside shooting", then all they can do is sign the players. The onus is on the coaching staff to maximize their skill set and put them in situations/roles that make sense.

Teletovic is shooting 42% from deep. Tony Snell is putting up 65% TS efficiency. Henson has actually played well the first 7 games as a whole. Yet we're 4-3 and have gotten blown out in all 3 losses. The individual puzzle pieces only matter if the one tasked with completing the puzzle has any **** clue as to how they fit together.

[emunney]

All NBA teams make what can be construed in isolation to be bad personnel moves because the personnel pool is filled with practically nothing but bad players. To indict one set of owners or one GM for swimming in that pool is parochial and misguided.

Sid--Don't have time to do it today, but compare the moves made by the Bucks compared to teams like the Blazers, Celtics, Rockets, OKC.

Not expecting the Bucks to hit on all those bad moves noted above. But what if you took just 2 or 3 of the many misses and put them in the "win" column? That's the difference between a good organization and a derp one.

Yep. It's hard to make good moves but that's the standard. Making good moves, getting not bad players. This is a competition and the player personnel part of it sets the stage for what happens on the court. Everything is relative, so if you believe that most NBA players are bad (a whatever sentiment if there ever was one), you still need to have players that are less bad than the teams you're going to be playing against, or you are failing the player personnel game. Particularly so when you're spending more on your bad players than 24 teams are spending on theirs.

There are teams who play this part of the game consistently well. We're not among them.

[Zeezprah]

I don't see which contracts you're "dumping". Of the four contracts we'd be looking to move, we are either taking back equal length or giving assets to cut off a year.

Teletovic is an expiring after this season. like I said in another thread, you could probably send henson and a 1st to someone like Brooklyn since that contract is somewhat on their timeline of other bad contracts they’ve taken on. Snell could probably be moved for an expiring and a 1st from a contender. These are just quick thoughts. I just don’t see this financial hell some are indicating. Obviously if we re-sign Parker to a big contract (I don’t want to do this), that changes things, but for now? It’s rwally not that bad.

[paulpressey25]

Particularly so when you're spending more on your bad players than 24 teams are spending on theirs.

There are teams who play this part of the game consistently well. We're not among them.

Think we've not spent enough time discussing the fact the Bucks have the 6th highest payroll in the league. You'd expect Giannis to have some serious help around him with that type of spending.

[Matches Malone]

My single biggest issue with this ownership comes down to Nepotism/Cronyism. Hiring staff with experience and/or knowledge doesn't always result in on-court success, but they aren't even giving themselves a chance at success because they look past more qualified candidates and pick friends and family to make important decisions.

And egg on my face for thinking two of the three owners understood what they were doing. I'm beginning to think all three have no clue how to run a basketball franchise from a personnel standpoint.

[ReginaldDwight]

Particularly so when you're spending more on your bad players than 24 teams are spending on theirs.

There are teams who play this part of the game consistently well. We're not among them.

Think we've not spent enough time discussing the fact the Bucks have the 6th highest payroll in the league. You'd expect Giannis to have some serious help around him with that type of spending.

I mean we pretty much only talk about dumping contracts, the issue is that we have so many 10 to 12 million per contracts that its hard to move more then one at a time.

Snell while has warts at least has show to be a playable nba rotation player. The others vary from playable to **** so its hard to move them out now. Obviously we would like to dump them all but at this point there has to be an idea of not just dumping them but getting quality players in. Going to have to look at moving assets like Thon and even Brogdon in the next few years for all star level players.

I think the biggest question mark for me me moving forward is Middleton. Is he our top wing going forward, or do we look at moving in another direction.

[DingleJerry]

I don't think you give up a 1st to dump contracts at this point, wait them out another year at least. It gets easier every year you get closer to their end and it's not like you're beating GSW anyway right now. Plus you're going to hand Jabari 25 mil anyway so it's not like you're going to have big time FA space. If a Plumlee type dump comes up for Henson, Mirza, or Delly. Sure of course you do it, but need those 1sts to try and get some help down the line (via the pick or using it on a trade to acquire talent). Also, if a trade comes up for a star you're going to need contracts to fill it out.

[raferfenix]

Brogdon is looking like a very good pick (provided his foot doesn't fall a part). Wouldn't minimize that.

Middleton's regression is most concerning to me but he also has a history of starting seasons off slow.

If Middleton is more Danny Green than Klay Thompson we might have a problem though.

We're relying on him to be our #2 top player but he's looking more like a fringe #3 or even a #4 guy.

[Treebeard]

I'll make a counterpoint to Sydney's comment that "most NBA players are bad". I'm assuming he was using hyperbole to prove a point - though I'm honestly not quite sure what his point was...

I think we are all jaded as to how good the vast majority of the NBA players are. The 500+ players that make NBA rosters for part of a season are at the pinnacle of hundreds of thousands (millions?) of world-wide basketball players. The problem is that after the topmost tier (10-50) that are transcendent - for a time - the next tier drops off to merely superb; and so on.

I was being a little hyperbolic, true. Players like Delly and Telly and Snelly are all highly skilled, and NBA players generally are, I agree, the cream of the crop. But when we criticize personnel moves in the way pp did there is an unstated comparison to the very best in the world. Delly is good, but he's not Steve Nash, so acquiring him was a bad transaction at a premium price. Telly is good, but he's not Kyle Korver, so we're overpaying him. Snell is good, but he's not shooting 50% from three, so he's a disappointment.

My underlying point, and I expressed it poorly, is that we fail to make the Bayesian assessment of these moves. (OK, now I'm expressing it even more opaquely.) By that I mean we look only at the heads side of the coin, as though the tails side did not exist. Assessments of player personnel moves that start with the wrong initial beliefs -- in this case, that all journeymen perform to career norms in all settings -- are certain to disappoint because the conditional probabilities that inhere to Bayesian thinking are ignored. We think only about the rosiest outcomes without any sort of reasonable probabilistic assessment of outcomes, then criticize and complain because our expectations are unmet.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, GMs, or front offices, but in ourselves.

Thanks for clarifying your point - that does help.

I will agree that we set very high expectations - often unreasonably high. Bad luck (the double whammy of Parker's injuries) plays a role too.

Still, as Emunney points out, other more successful franchises consistently make better choices. They've managed to layer in protections for more than one outcome. I want the Bucks to do that too.

[Jimmmycrackcorn]

99% of free agent signings are overpays based on what they're worth in a vacuum, that's not the issue. Delly and Teletovic didn't just physically regress the second they put on Bucks uniforms. If your front office goes out and addresses an obvious issue such as "outside shooting", then all they can do is sign the players. The onus is on the coaching staff to maximize their skill set and put them in situations/roles that make sense.

Teletovic is shooting 42% from deep. Tony Snell is putting up 65% TS efficiency. Henson has actually played well the first 7 games as a whole. Yet we're 4-3 and have gotten blown out in all 3 losses. The individual puzzle pieces only matter if the one tasked with completing the puzzle has any **** clue as to how they fit together.

Could you imagine the collective groupthink on Jason Kidd's coaching abilities if he did not have Giannis?

Giannis.....a guy who Kidd had no say in drafting, and was gifted when he was given the keys to this franchise? Where would he be without Giannis? Out of the league, that's where.

[Bernman]

Jury is still out on the Monroe move when he was an asset last year and this one he's n/a because of small sample and the nagging calf injury. We'll find out when he comes back if he's a neutral or even better.

But I agree, we should be judging moves in retrospect, unless careers were unpredictably derailed by injuries. You're trying to make a prediction about how players will pan out, so it doesn't matter the perception at the time.

The moves under LED have been indisputably bad. And yes it's them/Kidd considering what we did or didn't do under Horst this offseason, as well as Hammond has done in Orlando. If we had an offseason like this: draft Isaac/Iwundu, sign Simmons for 3/20, sign Speights to 1/1.3, sign Mack to 2/12, sign Afflalo to 1/2.3, renounce Green; we'd be over the moon right now. Depth, upside, and no bad contracts. Opposite of us, outside the upside right now. Killed it during the ownership transition, and Dumars died in Detroit after he left. Our last two sets of owners have been nightmares to work with. The honeymoon period for our new ones is over. They extracted an extra hundred million or so from the public with deceits in the arena deal, and for that they and their friends could at least be hands off in personnel decisions so the city gets a better team built around Giannis (a gift to them) before he leaves.

[Jimmmycrackcorn]

Why is Ettore Messina not coaching this team?!?

[JHSFIVE]

Jury is still out on the Monroe move when he was an asset last year and this one he's n/a because of small sample and the nagging calf injury. We'll find out when he comes back if he's a neutral or even better.

But I agree, we should be judging moves in retrospect, unless careers were unpredictably derailed by injuries. You're trying to make a prediction about how players will pan out, so it doesn't matter the perception at the time.

The moves under LED have been indisputably bad. And yes it's them/Kidd considering what we did or didn't do under Horst this offseason, as well as Hammond has done in Orlando. If we had an offseason like this: draft Isaac/Iwundu, sign Simmons for 3/20, sign Speights to 1/1.3, sign Mack to 2/12, sign Afflalo to 1/2.3, renounce Green; we'd be over the moon right now. Depth, upside, and no bad contracts. Opposite of us, outside the upside right now. Killed it during the ownership transition, and Dumars died in Detroit after he left. Our last two sets of owners have been nightmares to work with. The honeymoon period for our new ones is over. They extracted an extra hundred million or so from the public with deceits in the arena deal, and for that they and their friends could at least be hands off in personnel decisions so the city gets a better team built around Giannis (a gift to them) before he leaves.

This post made me sad

[Jimmmycrackcorn]

Our last two sets of owners have been nightmares to work with. The honeymoon period for our new ones is over. They extracted an extra hundred million or so from the public with deceits in the arena deal, and for that they and their friends could at least be hands off in personnel decisions so the city gets a better team built around Giannis (a gift to them) before he leaves.

nailed it

[Topmosker]

I would add as a Positive Move, the trade of Ennis in exchange for Michael Beasley. Beas performance was decent. He gave the offensive spark plug we needed last season in our second unit.

[ackypoo]

we rushed a rebuild and did irreparable damage to our immediate future.

[Jimmmycrackcorn]

most everyone is looking at the bucks ownership situation as glass half full.....


-no more meddling Herb Kohl
-hired big name coach
-cool new logo/logos
-cool new uniform sets
-budding megastar in Giannis (they lucked into this one)
-shiny new palace to basketball going up downtown

but this is all just lipstick on a pig. the sad reality of the bucks ownership is....


-don't know jack s*** about running a basketball team
-refuse to trust those that do (Hammond)
-more meddling than Hammond
-nepotism
-ego
-make PR moves to deflect
-never answer to the public

[sidney lanier]

Going to have to look at moving assets like Thon and even Brogdon in the next few years for all star level players.

Not to pick on you, RD, but it's this kind of "why don't they just spin straw into gold?" expectation that I'm talking about in my earlier posts in this thread. Our gut instinct is to see personnel opportunities exclusively from our own perspective, as though every trade didn't require a partner, every free agent availability didn't have a history, and no team except us ever has draft busts.

Every team gets dealt an imperfect hand. Trades seldom improve it much. Luck and randomness play huge parts in the way moves come out.

I do agree that playing a bad personnel hand well is the essence of coaching, and I understand that many posters believe that Kidd is a lousy card player in this regard (I don't).

But right now we're sitting at a $2/$4 limit Texas holdem table. Let's see how Kidd does when the stakes start getting serious later this season and next season -- when this team is at full strength, considered a serious contender, and the expectations ramp up in importance beyond the sting of an embarrassing October loss or two.

[ReginaldDwight]

99% of free agent signings are overpays based on what they're worth in a vacuum, that's not the issue. Delly and Teletovic didn't just physically regress the second they put on Bucks uniforms. If your front office goes out and addresses an obvious issue such as "outside shooting", then all they can do is sign the players. The onus is on the coaching staff to maximize their skill set and put them in situations/roles that make sense.

Teletovic is shooting 42% from deep. Tony Snell is putting up 65% TS efficiency. Henson has actually played well the first 7 games as a whole. Yet we're 4-3 and have gotten blown out in all 3 losses. The individual puzzle pieces only matter if the one tasked with completing the puzzle has any **** clue as to how they fit together.

Could you imagine the collective groupthink on Jason Kidd's coaching abilities if he did not have Giannis?

Giannis.....a guy who Kidd had no say in drafting, and was gifted when he was given the keys to this franchise? Where would he be without Giannis? Out of the league, that's where.

Im gonna tell you guys something but here in New York whenever I talk bucks with someone whose an NBA fan they always mention J Kidd being a good coach. So I think the perception is that he is still a good coach who untapped Giannis by playing him as a point forward.

[Licensed to Il]

I think the initial list is pretty fair. Personally I have decent optimism Brown is a useful bottom of the rotation guy, Jabari will still be a valuable contributor, and Thon can be a starting caliber NBA player (it takes a while with bigs, especially ones so raw and inexperienced). Nevertheless, Vaughn and Wilson trouble me in that I can't see any NBA attributes in them, let alone enough to justify/outweigh their obvious sub par attributes.

Part of the problem, is that so many of our guys are complimentary players that they can't stress/challenge defenses when Giannis is out. Like, Delly is a decent player if he is your combo guard off the bench. If you are expecting him to set up others against OKC's top unit he is going to look bad.

Telly is just garbage, a 3 point specialist who struggles to shoot threes at an above average percentage and doesn't hustle. I'm done defending him.

Middleton played awful last night, but is by no means a bad player or signing. I think we just have everyone outside of Giannis slotted too high. For example, if Middleton is your 2nd best player you are in trouble but if he is your 3rd you are in good shape. Brogdon would be a phenomenal 2nd guard, next to a stud, but he is not the caliber who can score and defend the other team's best backcourt guy. The list goes on and on. Imagine for a second Jabari was an all star caliber player, healthy, and out there every night... suddenly you feel a lot better about everyone else's role. I don't know how to make it happen, but this roster really needs an elite backcourt player that can get in to the paint, set up bigs (Steven Adams feasted last night off of interior assists), and then play off Giannis when he is in.