Bucks News, Trade Ideas, Transactions - Grayson Extended - 2/$20 million

[BigO]

I would have thought the board would bask in the championship glow for awhile before reverting back to form. I thought wrong.

The entire reason for raising the Hammond contribution was to "bask in the championship glow". It was meant as a reminder of the long process to get here and to give overdue credit to a guy no longer with the Bucks. In raising it, I even stated that I thought Horst has done a decent job and extolled specifically his signing of Lopez and Portis.

I don't believe Hammond is/was given enough credit for his major contribution and tried to stay away from the obvious wrong moves he made. But Hammond hate is hard to give up.

[emunney]

Giannis a great pick by Hammond? Yes.

Jennings for Knight and Middleton a great trade by Hamilton? Yes.

Hammond a good GM? No.

We wouldn't have won the championship without Hammond? Impossible to say, but my personal belief is that it's more likely that we'd have won a championship if he'd never been GM than if he was still GM.

[BigO]

Giannis a great pick by Hammond? Yes.

Jennings for Knight and Middleton a great trade by Hamilton? Yes.

Hammond a good GM? No.

We wouldn't have won the championship without Hammond? Impossible to say, but my personal belief is that it's more likely that we'd have won a championship if he'd never been GM than if he was still GM.

Well, personal belief based on facts is great. Personal belief based on... is not so great.

Again, a simple concept of recognizing the contributors to a championship is being turned into its opposite. One can speculate all they whether we would have won a championship anyway without Hammond, but there is no speculation that he made probably the best two decisions in franchise history.

Picking Jabbar and trading for Big O were also huge, but they were obvious moves. Giannis and Middleton were out of the box moves.
Lets move on. I have no more arguments to be made.

[Iheartfootball]

I've got no horse in this race but all that comes up for me when I read this discussion is...

Watch on YouTube

[emunney]

Giannis a great pick by Hammond? Yes.

Jennings for Knight and Middleton a great trade by Hamilton? Yes.

Hammond a good GM? No.

We wouldn't have won the championship without Hammond? Impossible to say, but my personal belief is that it's more likely that we'd have won a championship if he'd never been GM than if he was still GM.

Well, personal belief based on facts is great. Personal belief based on... is not so great.

Again, a simple concept of recognizing the contributors to a championship is being turned into its opposite. One can speculate all they whether we would have won a championship anyway without Hammond, but there is no speculation that he made probably the best two decisions in franchise history.

Picking Jabbar and trading for Big O were also huge, but they were obvious moves. Giannis and Middleton were out of the box moves.
Lets move on. I have no more arguments to be made.

Look at his track record. They were accidents.

[giannis and 1]

How do we even know how much influence Hammond had on the Giannis pick. Maybe he just took the guy that the scouts agreed on?

[jute2003]

Giannis a great pick by Hammond? Yes.

Jennings for Knight and Middleton a great trade by Hamilton? Yes.

Hammond a good GM? No.

We wouldn't have won the championship without Hammond? Impossible to say, but my personal belief is that it's more likely that we'd have won a championship if he'd never been GM than if he was still GM.

Well, personal belief based on facts is great. Personal belief based on... is not so great.

Again, a simple concept of recognizing the contributors to a championship is being turned into its opposite. One can speculate all they whether we would have won a championship anyway without Hammond, but there is no speculation that he made probably the best two decisions in franchise history.

Picking Jabbar and trading for Big O were also huge, but they were obvious moves. Giannis and Middleton were out of the box moves.
Lets move on. I have no more arguments to be made.

Look at his track record. They were accidents.

Middleton might have been luck but Giannis certainly fits the Hammond 1st round MO. He has no issue taking risks in the first and the little known kid from Greece was pretty damn risky.

[theFireBlanket]

Hammond hired Horst, end of discourse.

[ShootingtheJ]

How do we even know how much influence Hammond had on the Giannis pick. Maybe he just took the guy that the scouts agreed on?

If Mark Cuban had listened to his head scout, Donnie Nelson Jr,, they'd have Giannis. He didn't.

[Dick Tate]

Hammond hired Horst, end of discourse.

My “John Hammond - 6 Degrees of Separation: Championship Edition” DVD is hung up in shipping. I’m so bummed!

[Jez2983]

How do we even know how much influence Hammond had on the Giannis pick. Maybe he just took the guy that the scouts agreed on?

If Mark Cuban had listened to his head scout, Donnie Nelson Jr,, they'd have Giannis. He didn't.

The story was always that Drew was the one who pushed for Giannis, as Atlanta had scouted him a bit. So what BigO is saying is that we should be thankful that Hammond hired Drew. That was actually his best move.

The Middleton stuff is actually hilarious. Like if Hammond was hell-bent on Mids, why didn't he start all season or be announced as the centrepiece of the trade.

Lol.

[midranger]

Well, personal belief based on facts is great. Personal belief based on... is not so great.

Again, a simple concept of recognizing the contributors to a championship is being turned into its opposite. One can speculate all they whether we would have won a championship anyway without Hammond, but there is no speculation that he made probably the best two decisions in franchise history.

Picking Jabbar and trading for Big O were also huge, but they were obvious moves. Giannis and Middleton were out of the box moves.
Lets move on. I have no more arguments to be made.

Look at his track record. They were accidents.

Middleton might have been luck but Giannis certainly fits the Hammond 1st round MO. He has no issue taking risks in the first and the little known kid from Greece was pretty damn risky.

Giannis isn’t terrible/contributed nothing to the Bucks/out of the league… so I disagree.

[midranger]

Obviously, there are butterfly effects where everything ends up completely different with a new GM, but looking just at the 2011-2012 draft/season’s moves with just the Warriors, there’s a pretty clear path to a championship team for a GM who doesn’t favor Stephen Jackson and Monta Ellis over Klay Thompson (or Kawhi Leonard) and Steph Curry.

[engelmartin]

if only we hadn’t traded dirk

[HKPackFan]

How do we even know how much influence Hammond had on the Giannis pick. Maybe he just took the guy that the scouts agreed on?

If Mark Cuban had listened to his head scout, Donnie Nelson Jr,, they'd have Giannis. He didn't.

The story was always that Drew was the one who pushed for Giannis, as Atlanta had scouted him a bit. So what BigO is saying is that we should be thankful that Hammond hired Drew. That was actually his best move.

The Middleton stuff is actually hilarious. Like if Hammond was hell-bent on Mids, why didn't he start all season or be announced as the centrepiece of the trade.

Lol.

In the Giannis book it mentions how badly Atlanta wanted him, and Hammond wanted to break away from tradition of helping the playoff run and went for Giannis even though it was not following the kohl strategy.

And he said he didn't want to repeat the Darco mistake and decided to surround Giannis with as much care as possible to keep Giannis mentally and emotionally ok.

It was nice to see Hammond was trying to take care Giannis's wellbeing from the very beginning.

It was also interesting when kohl asked who's the best player in like year one or two and all coaches and gm were like, Giannis. And kohl was incredulous. There's some nice gems in the book.

[higharc]

https://nba.nbcsports.com/2021/08/31/owner-says-bucks-will-lose-money-this-year-isnt-counting-playoff-revenue/

Look, (the luxury tax) is a big part. I’m not going to tell you it’s not. I mean, it’s just — if you sign somebody for $5 million, you’re not signing him for $5 (million), you’re signing him for $25 (million), $20 million. You sort of look at that, and you’re trying to figure out, ‘Alright, look, if we’re going to do that, OK, there is a cost to it. Yeah, we want him, but that’s going to cost us $25 (million) or that’ll cost us $35 (million).’ I mean, whatever the numbers are. And I think we’re very focused on that. Look, we’re a small-market team. It’s expensive. I mean, for us, this year we’re going to lose quite a bit of money.

What’s quite a bit?

Um, well think of it this way, we (will) break even before the tax (laughs). … So the tax is real money. (The tax is) what we’re going to lose. You’ll make it up. You’ll make some of it up as you move along in the playoffs, obviously, and that factors in. You’re like, ‘Well look, I know I’m going to lose ‘X (amount of money),’ but if we get to the playoffs, it starts going down.’ But yeah, it’s real money for us. But at the end of the day, the goal is that you want to keep winning a championship, so you’re going to spend the money.

Full interview in the Athletic for those subscribed

[ReasonablySober]

If only there were other avenues than basketball revenue for the uber rich owners to make money.

[MikeIsGood]

I mean, I get it. You won’t want to operate at a loss. And even being uber rich, I don’t think we can really say that they should just because they can.

But I also don’t really buy it. Maybe it’s true, but seems unlikely to me for whatever reason. Like you just won a championship and are operating to break even in the regular season? No business person would want in on that model, surely.

[Ron Swanson]

Current franchise valuation for the Bucks is at $1.6 billion according to Forbes. LED bought the team for $550 million in 2014. They've literally made a billion dollar profit in 7 years. At least he said one of the quiet parts out loud (we're not counting playoff revenue), but this is classic "woe is us rich folk" talk and it's a whole load of BS.

[ajb905]

I mean, I get it. You won’t want to operate at a loss. And even being uber rich, I don’t think we can really say that they should just because they can.

But I also don’t really buy it. Maybe it’s true, but seems unlikely to me for whatever reason. Like you just won a championship and are operating to break even in the regular season? No business person would want in on that model, surely.

The billionaires purchased the team for $550 million with a gift from Kohl and WI taxpayers footing a large amount of the stadium in 2015. Forbes valued the Bucks at $1.6 billion in February 2021, can't imagine it's worth less after the chip.

I think every person would want in on that business model. I'm not cutting them any slack about if they are running on an operating loss during Giannis's window.

https://www.forbes.com/teams/milwaukee-bucks/?sh=193be08a690f