The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

According to Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, front office change might be around the corner.

“Among league executives, there’s a belief that the Bucks are close to declaring everyone available, except for Yi Jianlian and Andrew Bogut. Larry Harris is fighting for his job as general manager. Owner Herb Kohl mandated playoff contention in the offseason, and the Bucks are spiraling. ….. For now, Bucks officials have told others in the league that communication between Kohl and Harris has become scarce.”

Yesterday on Sportsradio 1250 WSSP, Steve “Sparky” Phifer reported that Kohl was at Bucks practice yesterday and was speculating that this might signal that a trade is near.

However, I believe that Kohl’s attendance and recent low levels of communication between Kohl and Harris might have a more benign cause: The Iowa caucus was on January 3rd, and Kohl is only a freaking Senator who has other things to worry about than what his basketball team is up to. So my guess is that Kohl just happened to be in the midwest for the caucus and swung by Bucks practice.

So the question is: should Harris be fired?

If I was Herb Kohl then the answer would be yes.

I know I just wrote a long series saying that Harris has done a good job considering what he has had to work with, but the owners’ perspective has to be a little different. His primary thought has to be: Is my money being well spent.

Well, every long-term player move that Harris has made has blown up in his face (with the exception of Michael Redd and it’s too early to judge Mo Williams, but that looks good) .

Contracts to Simmons, Gadzuric and Bell all look like mistakes — ones that will be expensively filling roster spots for years to come. Does the acquisition and retention of Mo make up for this? Not for a 30 win team (although giving an extension to TJ Ford and then seeing his neck problems continue to be an issue would be a problem as well). You can justify having a near-luxury tax team with no roster flexibility for the forseeable future if you are winning 50+ and challenging for the finals. But not for one that has been relatively healthy and is 12th in the conference.

The Yahoo! article also insinuates that Kohl was under the impression that Yi would be more dominant and is angry at Harris for selling him on the Chinese player, but I find that hard to believe. Yi has been perfectly good, and the money that must be rolling in from new revenue sources would make any owner happy.

The article floats Rick Sund and Doug Collins as potential replacements. I don’t like either one. Sund has Milwaukee ties but as GM of the Sonics was the architect of the worst defensive team in the history of the NBA (Sorry, no link because all I can find goes to John Hollingers’ ESPN insider, but trust me — the 05-06 Sonics were the worst ever). Sund also made only one really good move with Seatte — getting Ray Allen for Gary Payton. So why hire the guy whose shining moment was taking advantage of you? Doug Collins has been working in TV for a long time for a reason — he’s way too hyper to be a coach and has no front office experience. Real good commentator, though.

I’ll think more about who I would like to see replace Harris should it come to that, but I still think that the problem isn’t so much him. But maybe it is time for someone to take the fall for this teams’ underachievement.