The Bratwurst - Milwaukee Bucks Blog

It’s a pleasure to write this post tonight. With the Bucks’ recent slide, there’s been way too much negativity written on this site and now I get to highlight the good things that Larry Harris has done since becoming GM in 2003.

Here are the seven best moves he has made. It is worth noting that while Harris has failed to catapult the Bucks into NBA greatness, he has done a good job of creating a team that is competetive when healthy. The 2003-04 team was a major surprise (and only a late season slide from having home court advantage in the first round of the playoffs) and the 2005-06 team actually probably overachieved in large part to the moves highlighted in this post.

And now: Larry Harris’ seven best moves as GM of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Very Good Moves:

2004: Traded a second round pick (Bernard Robinson) to Charlotte for Zaza Pachulia. Despite some questions about his age and athleticism, Pachulia played very well in his one season with the Bucks. He raised his game in every way over his rookie season with Orlando, and the Bucks played much better with him on the court than off (although this might have something to do with “Dan Gadzuric as an effective player” being a myth). It’s too bad the Bucks screwed up his ensuing free agency.

2004: Traded Tim Thomas and Joel Przybilla for Keith Van Horn. Any time you work a deal with Isiah Thomas, it’s a good one. Too bad Harris hasn’t called Isiah more often. The Bucks saved a year on Van Horn’s contract, which gave the Bucks significant cap room after 2005. That expiring contract made it much easier to deal Van Horn the following season when it became obvious that he didn’t care about basketball any more than Tim Thomas did. Losing Przybilla was unfortunate, but he hadn’t done anything to that point of his career and if he had shown any potential up to that point than the Bucks could have offered him a minimum deal the following offseason just like anybody else. It was hard to believe that he’d ever turn into anything useful.

2005: Traded Mike James and Zendon Hamilton to Houston for Reece Gaines and 2 second round picks (2006 and 2007); traded Keith Van Horn to Dallas for Alan Henderson, Calvin Booth and cash. These two trade deadline moves were savvy ways to get well under the salary cap after the season and have plenty of room to resign Michael Redd to a max deal and also sign other players. While it seems obvious that any GM would do this in order to afford to resign an important player, Chris Mullin had botched the exact same situation when Gilbert Arenas had been in a similar situation with Golden State. So give Harris some credit for his forward thinking here.

2006: Traded Joe Smith for Ruben Patterson. I was against this trade from the beginning, thinking that by no means did I want a head case like Patterson in the locker room. However, he remarkably turned into a model season in the final season of his contract, and after injuries felled the entire rest of the roster he was their best player on many nights. However, all that good work didn’t help the 32-year-old Patterson rebuild the image that he had spent 10 years in the NBA trashing, as he was only able to parlay his best season in seven years into a non-guaranteed deal with the Clippers for the veterans minimum, and he was subsequently cut. Joe Smith had a decent season for Denver and Philadelphia, but predictably missed about 20 games to injury.

Great Moves:

2004: Signed Mo Williams as a restricted free agent away from Utah (3 yrs/$5 million). This was a great bargain and Williams has developed into a player who is now reasonably paid at 7 times the price. Williams didn’t play much for Utah in 2003, so one has to assume that Harris had his eye on Mo when he was drafted. However, since the story is that the Bucks’ 2003 picks were actually made by Michael Jordan (who was about to purchase the team in a deal that later fell through) Harris didn’t get the chance to take Mo himself in that draft. Instead the Bucks took Keith Bogans and subsequently sold him to Orlando, while Mo went 4 picks later. Interestingly enough, under the collective bargaining agreement at the time, it is possible that if the Bucks had taken Mo, they would have been the ones to lose him for a pittance a year or two later.

2005: Signed Charlie Bell (2 years/$3 million). Harris deserves credit for being one of the first GM’s to figure out how to mine an important source of talent: American players with a too small/too slow rep coming out of college who became big time players in Europe. Bell was a valuable, inexpensive backup to Michael Redd for a season, but playing a much bigger role for an awful team seems to have gone straight to Bell’s head, as shown in his contract negotiations last offseason.

2007: Drafted Yi Jianlian. Talent aside, the financial implications of having Yi on the Bucks may be so important that they keep the team in Milwaukee. His impact is that big. Selling broadcast rights to 10 different stations in China that reach a billion viewers per game, in-arena signage to Chinese companies, plus royalties on 100 million Yi jerseys will make a huge difference in the Bucks’ financial future. On the court, Yi’s development will determine how far this team can go over the next few seasons.