Bud Appreciation Thread

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

Nick Nurse in 2019: “one guy is completely destroying us, I’m going to put 4 guys in front of him and make everyone else beat us”

Bud in 2023: “one guy is completely destroying us…I got nothing”

you just exposed yourself. you compared a guy who could score from anywhere on the floor including 25 ft away who was surrounded by shooters and was willing to pass first.... to a guy who can pretty much only dunk and would rather charge somebody then give the ball up.

not a great analogy

[midranger]

Yup. Giannis is Westbrook, and I exposed myself.

Cool story.

[Milbucks96]

The bucks probably should’ve won this series with everything that happened. I also think this roster is vastly overrated and that is a result of Buds coaching and helping them look better. Jrue is a great example of that.

[brewbucks]

Great times with coach Bud, he changed the franchise forever and the anticipation in summer 2018 along with the 2018-2019 was the best time ever as a Bucks fan knowing it was the start of a golden era. Forever grateful for the 2021 championship and the fun of the regular season blowouts in 2018-2020.

[Turk Nowitzki]

The bucks probably should’ve won this series with everything that happened. I also think this roster is vastly overrated and that is a result of Buds coaching and helping them look better. Jrue is a great example of that.

Nobody had these takes about "the roster being overrated" before this playoffs. If anything in the past it was largely the reverse, that the players were the ones propping up Bud.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

Yup. Giannis is Westbrook, and I exposed myself.

Cool story.

he literally is.... just less vision and more dunking to keep the efficiency up.

point is ridiculously one dimensional offense and super easy to guard at least in theory. it doesnt take a genius to "build a wall".... just players willing and capable enough to impose it.

so now youre a coach with a battering ram and a wall you cant break thru? the player has the iq of said battering ram? so what comes next?

you tell him to trust his teammates... guys who are all shooters and hopefully they make their shots. most of time they do sometimes they dont. the passes that are getting thrown are late and not that great. players have to play on their heels not their toes because of the way the ball moves.

middleton was the x factor. some new heady pg like hill or brogdon isnt gonna make a difference..... neither is any coach that tells giannis to chill like kidd did.

were all in on giannis. but this system is the only system that is functional and bud was a maestro at it

[Turk Nowitzki]

I'm also not trying to argue that the players should bear no blame. They were obviously not good and shoulder a ton of blame. I'm just not on board with resetting the narrative into "actually this roster always sucked".

[aboveAverage]

That 2018/2019 Bucks team was probably my favorite of the entire Bud era. We had a ridiculously good point differential and were regularly destroying teams by 25+ that year. Back then the guys cared about the regular season since we hadn’t had a good one in forever, the league hadn’t yet figured out Bud’s system, and Giannis back then was electric with his athleticism. The team and the city was revitalized after years of mediocrity. I love Bud for what he did with the franchise that season.

The addition of George Hill was so good, and we still had Brogdon as a ball handler as well. If we had Jrue on that team instead of Bledsoe, I’m pretty sure we would’ve won the title that year. Or if Mirotic played as well in the playoffs as he had in the regular season. Such a shame.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

I'm also not trying to argue that the players should bear no blame. They were obviously not good and shoulder a ton of blame. I'm just not on board with resetting the narrative into "actually this roster always sucked".

roster doesnt suck. tons of talent. but a nontraditional blend of it and extremely low offensive iq within the core of guys with the highest usage compared to the competition.

i wish i could get malcolm brogdons take on this move for example.

[Siefer]

Roster context:

Giannis - all world, but also was out for three of the five games. No outside shooting ability like Steph, Jokic, Jimmy, Embiid, etc.
Middleton - great player, not in good shape and a turnstile on defense at this point.
Jrue - gave up large part of our future assets. Couldn’t hold Jimmy under 50 points, while chucking and turning it over.
Brook - whole league gave up on this guy. Signed for $3mm deal
Grayson - most of you don’t consider him in the top 60 guards in the league. And you might be right.

Sixth men:
Bobby - free agent cast off with an attitude, signed with $3mm deal
Pat - free agent cast off, signed to $1.8mm min deal

Bud took that core and coached them into a title. But according to some on twitter, we should have multiple “chips” with Giannis already.

Again, I get the firing. I just don’t get the trolls running around cheering wildly.

I'm not close to a Bud hater, and I'm pretty bummed about how this has all shaken out, but you're playing pretty fast and loose here by combining the state of affairs last week with how things looked in 2021.

[Sigra]

you just exposed yourself. you compared a guy who could score from anywhere on the floor including 25 ft away who was surrounded by shooters and was willing to pass first.... to a guy who can pretty much only dunk and would rather charge somebody then give the ball up.

Ok, true. But coach that cares about playoffs should know that the way how Giannis plays in regular season will not work in playoffs. After 2019 we all saw that there will be "the wall" in playoffs. What Bud did to prepare team for that? He did nothing. He kept same regular season system because it works in regular season. We were extreamly lucky to win it all in 2021. That kind of luck shouldnt be expected. Ever again.

[tydett]

Budenholzer does not deserve blame for the organization never being able to get a good playmakers to serve as our lead guard and provide a steady hand for halfcourt offense.

He does deserve blame for not teaching or enforcing on Giannis to become a better playmaker more reliably than he showed, or to develop a system that could take advantage of our limited playmaking more effectively as a counterpunch when teams adjusted to our base offense.

Assuming your premise of Giannis being the issue, GoS, if he was alright with Giannis playing the frustrating square-peg-into-circle-hole bullrush style, then he deserved to be fired for complacency. If he was unable or unwilling to try and get Giannis to play differently, then he deserved to be fired for incompetence.

[Milbucks96]

The bucks probably should’ve won this series with everything that happened. I also think this roster is vastly overrated and that is a result of Buds coaching and helping them look better. Jrue is a great example of that.

Nobody had these takes about "the roster being overrated" before this playoffs. If anything in the past it was largely the reverse, that the players were the ones propping up Bud.

I have said plenty times that Bud elevated players like Jrue, Khris, Brook, and even Bledsoe. Guys like Blazza, and others have called the overall talent on the roster jus alright multiple times but usually get called negative or whatever. I’ve said this is the least talented team to win a championship in a long time. Idk any other team that has only had one all nba/hof guy win the championship.

I mean were Jrue and Khris all star guys before Bud? Or did they get elevated to that because of our system? We literally have one player that can hit a pull-up jumper lol one of the most important skills come playoff time.

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

you just exposed yourself. you compared a guy who could score from anywhere on the floor including 25 ft away who was surrounded by shooters and was willing to pass first.... to a guy who can pretty much only dunk and would rather charge somebody then give the ball up.

Ok, true. But coach that cares about playoffs should know that the way how Giannis plays in regular season will not work in playoffs. After 2019 we all saw that there will be "the wall" in playoffs. What Bud did to prepare team for that? He did nothing. He kept same regular season system because it works in regular season. We were extreamly lucky to win it all in 2021. That kind of luck shouldnt be expected. Ever again.

before we played the way we did with bud we had even less regular season and playoff success. mids and giannis were well into their primes and couldnt get out of the first round. bud instantly changed that and we became a juggernaut.

sure teams can make a wall but were still dependent on giannis ability to break it with a pass instead of more force. that will ALWAYS be an issue and im not sure the fix is a completely new system for these players. i dont believe for a split second some new system will work better than the one we have. and even if it was possible you still have to convince giannis he isnt the focal point of the offense anymore because of course "theres a wall giannis".... "you cant go thru it giannis"

giannis as a decoy will fail. giannis as the primary ball handler and distributor will fail. telling giannis hes off ball will fail.

we were the best we could be with bud and we won a title luck or not.

now were gonnan be a worse team and i predict giannis efficiency falls off another cliff even further than it did this year.

the best situation we can have is to take a bud disciple and do the exact same **** and hope we get lucky again. firing bud was dirty as **** and moronic. im pissed the more i think about it i get more pissed

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

Budenholzer does not deserve blame for the organization never being able to get a good playmakers to serve as our lead guard and provide a steady hand for halfcourt offense.

He does deserve blame for not teaching or enforcing on Giannis to become a better playmaker more reliably than he showed, or to develop a system that could take advantage of our limited playmaking more effectively as a counterpunch when teams adjusted to our base offense.

Assuming your premise of Giannis being the issue, GoS, if he was alright with Giannis playing the frustrating square-peg-into-circle-hole bullrush style, then he deserved to be fired for complacency. If he was unable or unwilling to try and get Giannis to play differently, then he deserved to be fired for incompetence.

good playmaker types like hill and brogdon werent some fix to manage the team and take the ball out of his hands man. weve had good players in that role. now if youre suggesting a paul, or curry, or lillard..... guys who giannis would let actually subject him to less usage then maybe you have a point but weve been there done that with "good playmakers". and in alot of ways that was kidds approach his final years and giannis did not thrive with the ball out of his hands nor did the team thrive anyway. we know that approach failed then we can assume it would again.

bud implemented a plan that EXPLOIVELY brought the absolute best out of giannis and this team immediately... resulted in 2 MVPS, a championship, a Finals performance that may have the best of alltime.

maybe weve hit a ceiling and we should all accept we wont be remembered as a dynasty and thats ok. we should have just kept at it working hard and tinkering with what got us here.

so no... im not going to condemn Bud for not getting the most out of Giannis by trying to instill the same **** Kidd tried for years before. Bud succeeded with Giannis. If the next guy takes more of a hardline with him like Kidd did then these 5 Bud years will be remembered for why he is TOP 50 instead of just another Shawn Kemp type and we can all talk about it with Giannis playing at his next stop

[Sigra]

you just exposed yourself. you compared a guy who could score from anywhere on the floor including 25 ft away who was surrounded by shooters and was willing to pass first.... to a guy who can pretty much only dunk and would rather charge somebody then give the ball up.

Ok, true. But coach that cares about playoffs should know that the way how Giannis plays in regular season will not work in playoffs. After 2019 we all saw that there will be "the wall" in playoffs. What Bud did to prepare team for that? He did nothing. He kept same regular season system because it works in regular season. We were extreamly lucky to win it all in 2021. That kind of luck shouldnt be expected. Ever again.

before we played the way we did with bud we had even less regular season and playoff success. mids and giannis were well into their primes and couldnt get out of the first round. bud instantly changed that and we became a juggernaut.

sure teams can make a wall but were still dependent on giannis ability to break it with a pass instead of more force. that will ALWAYS be an issue and im not sure the fix is a completely new system for these players. i dont believe for a split second some new system will work better than the one we have. and even if it was possible you still have to convince giannis he isnt the focal point of the offense anymore because of course "theres a wall giannis".... "you cant go thru it giannis"

giannis as a decoy will fail. giannis as the primary ball handler and distributor will fail. telling giannis hes off ball will fail.

we were the best we could be with bud and we won a title luck or not.

now were gonnan be a worse team and i predict giannis efficiency falls off another cliff even further than it did this year.

the best situation we can have is to take a bud disciple and do the exact same **** and hope we get lucky again. firing bud was dirty as **** and moronic. im pissed the more i think about it i get more pissed

Eh, I dont expect to be that lucky ever again. It was incredible luck. If Nets lost only 1 of their 3 superstars we would lose in 2nd round. They lost 2 of their superstar and almost beat us anyway if not for one toe being on 3pt line. Hawks had 2-2 and I am 100% sure we would lose that series if Giannis didnt get that knee injury. We played so much better without him in last 2 games in that ECF. And then we got weak Suns in finals only because of Warriors and Lakers injuries. And then we got some alien playing in Giannis body. It wasnt Giannis for sure. Inteligent, patient, inside paint only (didnt shoot single 3 IIRC), even hiting FT great. Magic indeed. Plus we will never have that Middleton again. He is done.

Its posible this team will completly fall apart without Bud. Maybe Giannis ask for trade very soon. But you see, I will not be very upset if he does. Our window with Giannis is closing anyway. Next 3 years at best.

[brewbucks]

That 2018/2019 Bucks team was probably my favorite of the entire Bud era. We had a ridiculously good point differential and were regularly destroying teams by 25+ that year. Back then the guys cared about the regular season since we hadn’t had a good one in forever, the league hadn’t yet figured out Bud’s system, and Giannis back then was electric with his athleticism. The team and the city was revitalized after years of mediocrity. I love Bud for what he did with the franchise that season.

The addition of George Hill was so good, and we still had Brogdon as a ball handler as well. If we had Jrue on that team instead of Bledsoe, I’m pretty sure we would’ve won the title that year. Or if Mirotic played as well in the playoffs as he had in the regular season. Such a shame.

My exact thoughts. That time period will forever replay in my head such great times as a Bucks fan and the feeling of unlocking new levels that entire season along with the brand new Fiserv Forum was like living in a dream. What a time

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

Ok, true. But coach that cares about playoffs should know that the way how Giannis plays in regular season will not work in playoffs. After 2019 we all saw that there will be "the wall" in playoffs. What Bud did to prepare team for that? He did nothing. He kept same regular season system because it works in regular season. We were extreamly lucky to win it all in 2021. That kind of luck shouldnt be expected. Ever again.

before we played the way we did with bud we had even less regular season and playoff success. mids and giannis were well into their primes and couldnt get out of the first round. bud instantly changed that and we became a juggernaut.

sure teams can make a wall but were still dependent on giannis ability to break it with a pass instead of more force. that will ALWAYS be an issue and im not sure the fix is a completely new system for these players. i dont believe for a split second some new system will work better than the one we have. and even if it was possible you still have to convince giannis he isnt the focal point of the offense anymore because of course "theres a wall giannis".... "you cant go thru it giannis"

giannis as a decoy will fail. giannis as the primary ball handler and distributor will fail. telling giannis hes off ball will fail.

we were the best we could be with bud and we won a title luck or not.

now were gonnan be a worse team and i predict giannis efficiency falls off another cliff even further than it did this year.

the best situation we can have is to take a bud disciple and do the exact same **** and hope we get lucky again. firing bud was dirty as **** and moronic. im pissed the more i think about it i get more pissed

Eh, I dont expect to be that lucky ever again. It was incredible luck. If Nets lost only 1 of their 3 superstars we would lose in 2nd round. They lost 2 of their superstar and almost beat us anyway if not for one toe being on 3pt line. Hawks had 2-2 and I am 100% sure we would lose that series if Giannis didnt get that knee injury. We played so much better without him in last 2 games in that ECF. And then we got weak Suns in finals only because of Warriors and Lakers injuries. And then we got some alien playing in Giannis body. It wasnt Giannis for sure. Inteligent, patient, inside paint only (didnt shoot single 3 IIRC), even hiting FT great. Magic indeed. Plus we will never have that Middleton again. He is done.

Its posible this team will completly fall apart without Bud. Maybe Giannis ask for trade very soon. But you see, I will not be very upset if he does. Our window with Giannis is closing anyway. Next 3 years at best.

agree with almost everything you wrote except our window wasnt closed. we looked like a clown show in the playoffs the year before we won the title. we got run through by miami and then clown showed them the next year on the way to a ring. this year they got us back.

that is the way of it. we arent the damn bulls or the warriors or lakers or celtics during their dynasty runs. were more like the sloan jazz or nowitski mavs. the only difference is with the 3ball and the parity because of it.... any team can beat anybody now even in 7 game series. pre salary cap and repeater tax dynasties like we knew them are probably gone for good and ALL TEAMS will be trying to win this way.

the way i see it you put yourself in the best chance you can and you go and you go and you try to keep the window open as long as possible. we were the odds on favorite this year and it didnt work out big deal in the BIG scheme of things with this roster.

so in my mind.....one year in this league doesnt affect the next and our window was still wide open. with luck and health we could have definitely won another one...... but in my mind we just did the 2nd worst thing we could have possibly done short of breaking up the team to hurt our chances.

so yes in my mind....the end will come soon now. maybe after giannis is gone we can convince bud to come back. i love rooting for competitive teams

[GHOSTofSIKMA]

on the bright side it will be interesting to see who gets another ring first bud or the bucks

god im so pissed. i need to take a break

[yannisk]

Nick Nurse in 2019: “one guy is completely destroying us, I’m going to put 4 guys in front of him and make everyone else beat us”

Bud in 2023: “one guy is completely destroying us…I got nothing”

you just exposed yourself. you compared a guy who could score from anywhere on the floor including 25 ft away who was surrounded by shooters and was willing to pass first.... to a guy who can pretty much only dunk and would rather charge somebody then give the ball up.

not a great analogy

This guy who can score from anywhere has played in this league for long time and has faced other teams and coaches apart from Bucks. Somehow only Bucks and Bud could make him look like Michael Jordan.

The other guy who can only dunk, has two mvps and a ring and has managed to win more, score more, score more efficiently, give more assists, rebound more etc etc. Somehow he is your problem for a long time. It's good to hear some fringe opinions from time to time