Jumping off the treadmill of mediocrity

Team-building is not science or art. It's opportunity and chaos.

Jul 6

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

A Laughing Bravo With His Dog, Hendrick ter Brugghen

My most vivid memory of the pre-Giannis 2010s Milwaukee Bucks is the brilliant Kevin Arnovitz’s seminal ESPN piece from 2013 titled “What’s up with the Milwaukee Bucks?” This is the piece that brings the phrase “treadmill of mediocrity” into the mainstream. This is the apologia for the non-Presti, non-Process route toward team-building, a show of what reality is like for front offices whose owners will not sign off on three straight 20-win seasons in the name of draft lottery glory.

Essentially, Arnovitz tells the story of teams who cannot bring themselves to co-sign institutional tanking, with Herb Kohl’s Bucks as the centerpiece. Here’s an elevator pitch for the strategy:

At one point or another, most executives at least float the idea to their owner of starting from scratch. But for reasons ranging from civic responsibility to anecdotal evidence, Kohl and Bucks management decided some time ago that they couldn’t seriously entertain a tanking strategy. Instead, they’ll strive for respectability year in and year out. Since dynamic scorers tend to look past Milwaukee in free agency, the Bucks will focus first on building a top defense, then look to add durable perimeter scorers who can nudge their offense above the league average mark.

This story was published three months after the Bucks took Giannis Antetokounmpo with a middling first-round pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. And the Bucks proceeded to have a nightmare season. I wrote a piece in November — just 12 games into Milwaukee’s season — about how everything had gone wrong. The Bucks had pledged to ignore the concept of the tank, yet the tank came for the Bucks all the same. Milwaukee ended up with the league’s worst record, the franchise’s worst season ever (by five games!) and the No. 2 pick in a weird little draft. They took Jabari Parker. This was seen as a really nice star talent to add to the mix of young veterans and dice roll prospects.

There’s no need to belabor everything that happened in the wake of all that, with Jabari’s injuries and poor translation, with Larry Sanders’ exit, with Giannis’ rise from patron saint of NBA Twitter to legitimate basketball hero. But it’s funny what got Milwaukee off the dreaded treadmill of mediocrity, isn’t it? It looked like it would be a fluke disaster season leading to a fluke No. 2 pick with a fluke scoring star falling into their lap. Instead, the fluke disaster season and No. 2 pick are completely irrelevant to the modern status of the Milwaukee Bucks as NBA finalist. It was the No. 15 pick in 2013 — a middling pick for a middling team — and a second-year second-rounder trade throw-in who featured heavily if unconvincingly on that disaster 2013-14 team. That gnarly, nearly unwatchable 2013-14 Bucks team had the two most important ingredients for the 2021 Eastern Conference champs, two guys who stayed right there in Milwaukee. The high pick coming in the next draft? Immaterial. Literally every other player on the roster?* Immaterial.

* A brief tangent. Other than Giannis and Khris Middleton, the second-year second-rounder I’m referencing above, only one player from the 2013-14 Bucks played at all in the NBA this season: Ersan Ilyasova, who signed with the Jazz in March and played less than 150 minutes this season. Everyone else is out of the league. Brandon Knight worked out for the Bucks in March. The team signed Jeff Teague instead.

The Bucks were truly on a treadmill of mediocrity, trying to win games, fill seats, build a strong defense, find some durable scorers to add to the equation. They found a generational talent at No. 15. They won a trade of hot young point guards when the gangly throw-in turned out to be a future two-way All-Star. That’s a helluva way to jump off the treadmill.

To me, it just reaffirms the chaos theory of NBA team-building. Models are useful, plans are necessary. Just don’t rely on your processes or philosophies to hold true. For good and for bad, building an NBA team is full of unpredictable events. The Bucks, four wins from a championship seven years after a hellish chaos, are the model example.

Score

Wings 96, Liberty 99 — New York hit an all-time high of 15 threes. The three-point revolution has hit every league in the world.

YES Network @YESNetwork

🚨NEW RECORD🚨 @SamBam32 hits the 15th @nyliberty three of the night, the most in a game in franchise history!

Schedule

Bucks at Suns, 9 p.m. ET, ABC (GAME 1)

Links

Melissa Rohlin at Fox Sports on Devin Booker’s basketball education under his dad Melvin.

Nate McMillan is no longer the interim head coach for Atlanta. Kudos to him.

Rachel Nichols apologized to Maria Taylor and her colleagues on The Jump. We aren’t sure if Kendrick Person or Richard Jefferson requested to speak on the subject as well or whether Nichols or the production team wanted that to happen. Her motioning to Perk after her 25-second comments seems a bit odd, though.

gifdsports @gifdsports

A teary-eyed Rachel Nichols addresses leaked audio in which calls Maria Taylor a "diversity" hire...Kendrick Perkins and Richard Jefferson comment on the situation as well

David Thorpe at TrueHoop trying to ascertain who might win the Finals based on when Giannis will be back. ($)

On Sunday, Dream star Chennedy Carter started but left the game a few minutes in and didn’t return. The team said she was not injured. On Monday the Dream suspended Carter indefinitely due to conduct detrimental to the team. The Next’s Spencer Nusbaum reports that another Dream player tried to talk to Carter during a timeout and Carter got mad. A tweet from late last night from Dream star Courtney Williams seems relevant.

Courtney Williams @CourtMWilliams

If you know me, you know how I get down. I never initiate controversy, I’m too old for that now. I was brought up different in this league. You respect your Vets & Coaches, whether you agree or not. Y’all stay safe out there though 🙏🏽

Meanwhile, here’s what Dream co-owner and official Renee Montgomery has to say about it. This franchise has had a pretty wild 2021 season.

Renee Montgomery @ReneeMontgomery

Building a winning culture means holding ourselves accountable as a team. As we grow through situations, we will work towards helping our players in all aspects. No need to panic, it’s part of the grind ✍🏾#DoItForTheDream

Z. Winter paw 🏳️‍🌈 @leafsnivy

@ReneeMontgomery should I be worried about the state of the dream?...

Chris Paul addresses criticism from players, including his friend LeBron James, about the condensed season potentially leading to more injuries. Honestly, all of the bubble and 2020-21 season stuff is the canvas for the most potential disagreement within the players’ union since 2012. It’s a small miracle there wasn’t greater backlash from a set of players against playing this season to the point it required further concessions from the league. I think CP3 and Michele Roberts — and the league, from the other side — navigated everything well. That said, every major American athlete union agreed to play fairly normally structured seasons this year. I’m not sure what the alternative was because no players’ union — not even the WNBPA or NWSL — pursued it.

Share

Andrew Bogut claims the Victorian state government in 2019 threatened to withdraw millions in grassroots Australian basketball funding if Ben Simmons didn’t play in pre-World Cup warm-up games against Team USA. As Simmons didn’t want to play in the World Cup, the Australian national team coach had to work out getting Simmons minutes in the warm-up games while still preparing his rotation. Simmons ended up not playing in the warm-up games. The money still came through, and the government says Bogut is mistelling the tale. It sounds like a rumor that spun out of control as various people tried to pressure Simmons to play for the Boomers in 2019. I don’t think it’s going to happen, folks.

Speaking of international play, it sounds like Dennis Schroder is now interested in playing for Germany this summer after the squad made the Olympic men’s tournament. Free agency starts August 1, which makes this tricky.

Questions only Matt Brown would think to ask: thanks to the new NIL rules, can an NCAA athlete now set up an OnlyFans?

And finally: