According to Marsha Green of NBC Sports on Thursday, the Milwaukee Bucks have fired head coach Mike Budenholzer of Holbrook, Arizona. Having the best regular season record in the National Basketball Association at 58 wins and 24 losses was not good enough for Budenholzer to keep his job, as the Bucks were upset by the Miami Heat in five games in the first round of the playoffs.
Budenholzer was extremely successful in his time coaching the Bucks. He had a record of 271 wins and 120 losses for a regular season winning percentage of .693. Budenholzer’s 271 wins are the third most in Bucks history. Only Don Nelson at 540 wins and Larry Costello at 410 wins had more.
There is no doubt that Budenholzer’s firing has caught people’s attention. As of Friday morning, there have been 890, 600 views on Twitter of the Bucks’s official announcement.
Budenholzer was also the Bucks head coach when they won the 2021 NBA Finals. Only two seasons ago Milwaukee won basketball’s biggest team prize as they beat the Phoenix Suns in six games.
In addition to coaching the Bucks, Budenholzer spent an incredible 17 seasons as an assistant coach in San Antonio from 1996 to 2013, before being the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks from 2013 to 2018. While with the Spurs, Budenholzer worked under Gregg Popovich, the winningest head coach in NBA history with 1364 victories. There he also won four NBA Finals in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007.
With the Hawks, Budenholzer had a record of 213 wins and 197 losses. In 2014-15, he was named the NBA Coach of the Year, as Atlanta had a regular season record of 60 wins and 22 losses. Budenholzer also won the NBA Coach of the Year with the Bucks in 2018-19. Ironically, Milwaukee was at 60-22 too.
Now it will be mighty interesting to see where Budenholzer ends up. Could it be Toronto, Detroit or Houston, or another team that fires its coach so they can get Budenholzer on board?
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