The Bucks have agreed to a multiyear contract extension with general manager Jon Horst, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports.
This will end any speculation that the Bucks’ ownership group was contemplating a change at the top of its front office chain. Horst has been the Bucks’ GM since 2017. During that span, the team has made the playoffs in all eight seasons and has a .647 winning percentage, second-best in the league.
The Bucks won the 2021 championship but haven’t gone deep in the Eastern Conference playoffs since that run. They lost in the conference semifinals in 2022 and were knocked out in the first round in each of the past two seasons. They currently trail Indiana 2-0 in their opening-round series.
There had been speculation that Suns owner Mat Ishbia might pursue Horst if he were made available. Milwaukee denied Detroit permission to interview Horst for their top executive job last summer before the Pistons chose Trajan Langdon.
There has also been speculation that Giannis Antetokounmpo might want out of Milwaukee if the Bucks flame out in the postseason again. Horst made the blockbuster deal for Damian Lillard in 2023 after Antetokounmpo publicly wondered whether they had a championship-level roster.
This winter, the 42-year-old Horst commented on his feelings about keeping Milwaukee among the top contenders for the title.
“It’s still the awesome responsibility to try to take this franchise and maximize the window that we have now as best we can,” Horst said. “What we think gives us the best chance to win, and figure out how to continue winning going forward. There’s a very narrow set of opportunities that we felt that we could do that, and this was one of them.”
Uh oh… bye Doc.
Not sure how can extension is warranted. The team is old and there’s no draft capital to help revitalize. Don’t know what the Bucks ownership sees that the fans don’t
Trading Jrue for Dame has not yet come close to making the Bucks a better team. It is possible other teams simply got better faster, and perhaps that was building before the Bucks won the title. Hard to say, and I suppose you’d have to consider who you’d bring in at GM that could possibly do anything about it at this point that Horst couldn’t do given the current constraints, so you may as well keep what you’ve got.
The talent is there, so it sure seems like you have to put Doc in the hot seat for not doing more with it. Tough to watch these superstars in their prime just not getting back there.
Horrendous extension. Giannis in MIL has been like KG in MIN, they are wasting his prime on a team that has nothing left. At this point they won a title in spite of Horst rather than due to him, most of the moves they’ve made in the last 4 years were mistakes.
KG never won a ring in MIN.
He came close in 2004, until Cassell got hurt in the Conference Finals.
The Bucks have won one playoff series since winning the title in 2021. They let PJ Tucker walk to save money (when his acquisition was among the biggest reasons they won), and gave big contracts to Bobby Portis (who plays the same position as Giannis, as Joe Smith did with KG) and Pat Connaughton instead. Connaughton will be making 9.4M next season after making 9M this season as a 13th man, while they have to literally BEG players to START for them at the minimum each year.
They have also drafted abominably, and rarely find players on the margins. MIL didn’t forfeit five first-rounders as MIN did with the Joe Smith signing, but they might as well have.
Might as well, the roster is essentially frozen for a few more years, and there are precious few resources to even tweak it from here. Why not reward the guy who made the deal that brought them a title, and kept Giannis in the fold (no Holiday, not title, and no title, no Giannis). The biggest negative on his resume is the Lillard deal, and few were questioning that at the time, in part because it was reportedly done to placate Giannis. In any event, the Lillard deal isn’t as relevant as some believe. It was Middleton’s mysterious injury (that never healed) that slammed MIL’s window shut. Since that injury, they’ve punched out in the first round with both Holiday and Lillard.