sunsbum wrote:Wet blanket checking in… bucks fans hated him the years leading up to the championship and wanted to get rid of him badly. Wins the chip, still fired a year later.
That's because they had the best record and lost in the playoffs twice. He took the same team Kidd coached to 44-38 to 60 wins...but losing to Kawhi and the Raptors who had been in the ECF a few years in a row without Kawhi.
Bledsoe was their 3rd best player. Lopez hadn't improved his 3pt shot a lot yet.
The next year they were crushing the league until Covid hit....then upon return got upset in the 2nd round by Miami....not that was bad. I remember Zach Lowe writing about how they were so far ahead of everyone pre Covid but just lost their mojo a bit after the 3 month break.
But they finally get rid of Bledsoe and add a solid 3rd best player in Jrue and a nice role player in Portis and beat us in the finals.
As we know, if a coach suddenly takes a team to a really great record, expectations are through the roof, and if they don't win it all, or lose a tough 6 game series in the finals or 7 game series in the semi finals, the fans hate the coach, even though the grass isn't greener as we've seen with Vogel, getting swept in the first round and looking terrible all year.
The Bucks have gotten worse post Bud as did the Hawks.