The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Drew Olson at OnMilwaukee.com managed to find the clip of Andrew Bogut high-fiving the air after a made free-throw in Atlanta on Wednesday. I had watched it during the game and assumed I would never get to relive the moment, but thankfully someone caught it and put it up on YouTube and I’ll watch right after I bet online.

What does it mean? Well it’s amusing to say the least. A lot of OMC commenters went back and tried to say it was because of Bogut’s remarks about NBA players over the summer. I don’t think that’s it. We would have seen that all season long if that were the case.

What could it be? How about the idea that Charlie V and Player X (I’m not sure who the player on the other side was) had simply zoned out? Isn’t it possible that after losing twice to the Heat in a week, having to go on the road to Atlanta, and falling behind early that the players had mentally checked out?

If you watch the video closely, you can see Charlie V turn his head as Bogut makes the free throw to watch Zaza run out of the game. Possibly some sound over the speaker system snapped him back to life, but not in time to high-five Bogut.

In short, I really don’t think this is as big of a deal as everyone seems to want to make it out to be. It wasn’t a personal dig against Bogut. It simply was just a case of a losing team losing on the road resulting in players not paying attention.

Players are going to do a lot of things on auto-pilot as a season goes along, I think this was one of them that just happened to be caught on camera.

Bullet. Dodged.

While nobody has ever accused Peter Vecsey of being the most accurate, reliable reporter in the world, it’s still worth noting that he is reporting in the New York Post that Doug Collins has turned down a $5 million/year offer as the GM/Head Coach job of the Milwaukee Bucks, as well as $4 million for the GM job alone.

Apparently Collins, who didn’t want anything to do with the Bucks in 2003 or 2005, either, would still rather work in television.

It’s a good non-hire. Collins’ reputation as a coach was made by his handling of the young, developing Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. Funny how it is then forgotten that Collins was run out of Chicago because his constant browbeating of his young stars made Jordan so sick of him that he went to management and had Collins forced out.

In an excellent 2001 article for Slate.com, Bryan Curtis made the case of why Collins was a bad hire at the time for the Washington Wizards, and his article points directly at the two reasons he should not join the Bucks:

(1) He can’t coach big men:

What should worry the Wizards is that Collins has yet to develop a big man from scratch. Between 1986 and 1988, the Bulls spent three high draft choices on posts to take the heat off Jordan. Brad Sellers busted, Will Perdue languished on the bench, and even Horace Grant didn’t break out until two years after Collins departed. In Detroit, Collins larded the roster with slashers””Hill, Houston, Lindsey Hunter, Jerry Stackhouse, Malik Sealy””but never could locate a center. (Theo Ratliff, an awfully good one, sat at the end of the bench.)

(2) He is so high-strung as to make people fear for his sanity:

More troubling is Collins’ propensity to unravel in front of his team. As one Piston explained, “He was smart, but when he took things personally, he lost it.” Problem is, Collins takes everything personally. Often, after regular season wins and losses, he broke down in front of his players. (According to Sam Smith’s The Jordan Rules, MJ once told a group of players, “You may think you’ve got problems with your coaches, but, well, mine cries every day.”) After chasing Allan Houston out of Detroit, Collins told a stunned Pistons’ locker room, “As far as I’m concerned, Allan Houston can rot in hell.” He so poisoned the atmosphere in Detroit that Grant Hill””as unlikely a mutineer as you’ll find in the NBA””went to Pistons owner Bill Davidson and recommended that Collins be fired.

Vecsey’s Milwaukee source also says that Rick Sund (gag gag gag gag) is still the leading candidate to replace Larry Harris, while other candidates include the Wizards’ Tommy Sheppard (A Ernie Grunfeld disciple? Didn’t Grunfeld screw things up enough?), the Spurs’ Dennis Lindsey (now you are talking) and the Suns’ David Griffin (sure, why not?)

It is good to hear that the Bucks and Andrew Bogut are working on signing a contract extension, which will kick in after next season. But the real question is: how much should he get?

There are two things to consider when valuing Bogut’s contract extension , his age and production. While it’s hard to believe that averaging 13 points and 9 rebounds could actually have someone kicking around proposals that involve yearly paychecks of $15 million, that’s actually not so far off when comparing Bogut’s numbers to the contracts of his peers. Plus, Bogut gets a boost from the relative scarcity of semi-athletic big men compared to, say, six-foot-two point guards who shoot a lot.

At 23 years old, age is a factor in Bogut’s favor. Not counting Greg Oden, only two of the other top 15 centers in the league are significantly younger, Andrew Bynum (20) and Andris Biedrins (21).

Bogut will be looking for a five- or six- year contract, covering him from the ages of 25 to 29. To see how that would stack up against the contracts of his peers, I made a chart of the top 15 centers in the league that shows their current contracts and their ages (I included the 5 year/$60 million extension that Emeka Okafor turned down last year).

I felt that averaging how much current centers are making at those ages would be a fair way to judge an extension for Bogut. While Bogut is clearly not at the level of stars like Amare Stoudemire or Dwight Howard, he has done more in his career than Chris Kaman or Tyson Chandler had done at the point where they signed their extensions.

25-to-29 year old centers average about $12.5 million/year. That number is right between the $15 million that Stoudemire/Howard make and the $11 million that Chandler/Kaman earn. So, $13 million a year sounds about right.

Five years, $65 million or six years, $81 million.

This would mean a starting salary of $11 million in 2009/10, increasing by $1 million per year until 2013/14 or 2014/15.

Compared to his peers, this is a reasonable amount. It’s a lot of money, but that’s NBA big man economics for you. At least the Bucks have the center spot locked up with a capable option for the next six or seven years.

But there’s a problem, and it’s a mess created by Larry Harris’ $100 million bench. If the Bucks don’t make a deal to rid themselves of some combination of Bobby Simmons, Dan Gadzuric or Charlie Bell by the end of next season, they might be paying the luxury tax. If I assume that the cap and tax level goes up by 5% each of the next two seasons, then the luxury tax will be $69.9 million in 2009/10. When setting aside money for draft picks for the next two seasons, they would currently owe $68 million to 11 players at that point. And that is assuming that Charlie Villanueva is gone and doesn’t include resigning Ramon Sessions.

Further complicating matters is that between the fact that attendance is down across the league this season and that the slowing economy is probably hurting the league’s revenues across the board, the salary cap might go down this year. This means that the Bucks might find them already projected to be over the luxury tax in 09/10.

That isn’t that big a deal if you are gunning for a title now, but means something else when you have won fewer than 60 games in the last two years combined.

This, my friends, means that the Bucks have to make a move to dump salary this summer.

This means they might have to give up a valuable piece in order to get an expiring contract back. Like Mo Williams.

The more I think about it, the more I think Mo will be shopped around this summer. He would have value to several teams that need point guards, and his contract is large enough that he could be packaged with Simmons (or Gadzuric, but most likely Simmons) to get a big, expiring contract back. Trading Michael Redd doesn’t work because, at $15.7 million next year, you can’t combine him with one of the Bucks’ dog contracts and get back a $30 million expiring contract.

I’ve come up with some proposals, and I’ll publish them tomorrow. But be forewarned, they are ugly. They work financially, and can even get the Bucks under the cap in 09/10, but they aren’t going to sell tickets. However, this team needs work, and these potential trades are a starting point for the necessary moves that will have to be made to eventually make this a good team.

Be forewarned: the trades that the Bucks will have to consider in order to accomodate an extension for Bogut will make you sick to your stomach.

No.

I know that since the team has been such a failure on the court, it reflects poorly on everyone involved in the organization. I understand that we fans are all frustrated by the results of having a poor team — the waste of both money and time from watching them. But of all the criticism levied at Herb Kohl recently, I cannot understand where most of it comes from. More than in any other sport, it takes an immense amount of luck to build a winning basketball team.

The small roster size means that the good fortune of having one great player fall into your lap on draft night changes the direction of franchises for 8-10 years at a time. The salary structure makes it almost impossible to sway good free agents to change teams. Once teams get good players, they stay put — it’s impossible to get fair value for a star in a trade, so they almost never occur.

The fact is, only luck is what stands in the way of Herb Kohl being lauded as one of the best owners in sports. If Atlanta had won the draft lottery in 2003, sending LeBron James to Milwaukee, or if Dwight Howard had gone to college for one year and been available in the 2005 draft then the Bucks would have gotten a player of a stature which they otherwise have no chance of finding elsewhere. But that’s not what happened.

What are the criticisms of Kohl? What is the truth about them?

He’s a meddler. I could never understand this one. He owns the team. It belongs to him. Shouldn’t the owner have a say in how his own team is run? It seems like this criticism stems from a couple of areas. Kohl has frequently been known to look over the shoulders of his management team with regards to the draft. However, in the last few years, Kohl has had very good reason for this. Look at the Bucks’ draft history since 1996:

1996: Traded Stephon Marbury (#4) for Ray Allen (#5) and a future pick
1997: Traded Danny Fortson (#10) and others for Ervin Johnson (wrong Ervin)
1998: Traded Dirk Nowitzki (#9) and Pat Garrity (#19) for Robert Traylor (#6)
1999: No Pick (This was a convoluted deal that I can’t figure out, but somehow Denver took James Posey)
2000: Traded Jason Collier (#15) and 2001 pick for Joel Pryzbilla (#9)
2001: No Pick (Pryzbilla trade)
2002: Selected and actually kept Marcus Haislip. He’s having a nice season in Italy.
2003: Selected TJ Ford (Glenn Robinson trade)
2003: Traded away own pick in Ray Allen/Gary Payton trade
2004: No pick (traded to clear cap room in 2000, Atlanta selected Josh Smith)
2005: Selected Andrew Bogut
2006: No pick (Jamaal Magloire trade)
2007: Selected Yi Jianlian

So since Kohl went almost 10 years with his crack staff screwing up almost every single draft, why wouldn’t he become more hands-on? Besides, his political sway turned out to be necessary once Yi came along.

He has also been criticized for impeding Larry Harris’ attempts to do anything this season, but that comes with very good reason. The last time he allowed a GM to have free reign at the end of his contract, Ernie Grunfeld managed to trade away Ray Allen AND a first rounder for three months of Gary Payton (highlights of tenure included getting arrested in a strip club, saying he hated Milwaukee, and losing in the first round), and trading Sam Cassell for Joe Smith. Four days after the Cassell trade, and after having dumped the Bucks’ picks for the two following seasons, Grunfeld quit as GM of the Bucks and was named GM of Washington the very next day. Grunfeld may as well have kicked Kohl in the nuts on his way out.

Don’t you think that Kohl has gotten screwed enough by his management team? There was no reason to fire Harris before the start of the season — he had to see what this team would be able to do when healthy — but once it turned out the answer was “not much”, he had to but the reigns on Harris to make sure that he didn’t pull another team-killing debacle like Grunfeld (you know, like trading for Zach Randolph — adding long term salary and a guy with character questions who plays the same position as your first round pick).

He’s cheap. Come on. Obviously the payroll isn’t going to go cruising into luxury tax territory, but it is always within a few million dollars of the league average. Considering that three of the Bucks’ top six players are on their rookie contracts, this payroll is well within reason (above the salary cap and $4 million below the league average). How quickly people forget that Kohl “won” a bidding war to get Mike Dunleavy, hired Grunfeld away from the Knicks and made George Karl the highest paid coach in the NBA. After getting in bed with that bunch of lunatics, why would Kohl spend the big money in 2003, when he promoted Harris, especially since the teams’ future had been mortgaged by Grunfeld and Karl anyway?

Actually, by trying the inexpensive coach/GM route for a while, I think Kohl made a wise move. I’m convinced that coaching and personell decision are more about lucking into great players than anything else. It’s telling that only two NBA coaches have ever won titles with two teams — Phil Jackson and Pat Riley — and they have Shaquille O’Neal in common. I remember the reaction when the Bulls hired Jackson (“What? Who? But Doug Collins is great!”) and I’m sure the reaction in LA was similar when Magic Johnson ran off Paul Westhead and forced the Lakers to promote Riley. How many high-profile college coaches have tried and failed in the NBA (answer: nearly all of them). What is the common thread about every big-name NBA coach? They started off as a small name. So why wouldn’t Kohl give it a shot with cheaper coaches?

He chose the wrong ones, that’s for sure. But that’s besides the point.

He doesn’t care about winning. I don’t know how anyone could own a professional team for this long, regularly take operating losses, see your initial investment increase by a factor of 10, and not sell out if they don’t care. I understand why people would be frustrated by the teams’ inaction this season and see that as a sign of not being interested in improving the team, but it’s not that easy to just start making moves. For starters, if you propose a trade the other team has to accept it — and they aren’t going to do so unless they are giving back something they don’t want. This isn’t baseball, where you can trade a couple of utility infielders and setup men at any time — a two-for-two player trade in the NBA means changing 15% of your roster. It’s a big deal.

Kohl owns a team that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. He pays them plenty, he has paid plenty for management in the past (with disasterous results), he oversaw a team that nearly made the finals a few years ago. He clearly cares about putting a winner on the floor. That’s why I find the theatrics of some fans recently wearing bags on their heads and cleverly parading past Kohl at a recent game to be quite distasteful.

The fans are frustrated and want changes, I understand and agree with that. But they don’t happen overnight — especially after the trade deadline! There is nothing the Bucks can do until June to change anything (except fire Harris and/or Krystkowiak).

There is no comparison between Herb Kohl and Donald Sterling. But some people seem to like to think there is.

The team management structure is convoluted. This one is a valid point. A few weeks ago, Gery Woefel brought up the fact that the Bucks are the only team in the league, besides the Clippers, who use a contract negotiation committee instead of letting the GM handle it himself (usually along with a cap guru who knows the CBA and makes sure the numbers work). I can see how this must be frustrating — agents negotiate a contract and have to wait for it to get “approved”, the GM loses face with the agents and players because he needs permission to do his job. But every team has a budget, and with long-term ramifications to every deal, those budgets have to be flexible. I’m sure that almost every GM, while not having a contract committee, has to speak directly with the owner on any major deal. I have a feeling that this committee exists because Kohl, being a Senator and all, usually has more pressing business to deal with than to give his okay to extend a contract offer to a fifth season.

This “committee” is in bad form, though.

Kohl listens too closely to a small circle of “basketball friends”. This is definitely a valid complaint. It seems like Rick Majerus’ name always pops up around Kohl, and it is really frustrating when every hire seems to come from the same “networking tree” (Karl is a friend of Majerus, Harris is Del Harris’ son, Stotts was an assistant under Karl, Krystkowiak was a Bucks player, Rick Sund — rumored future GM — once worked for the Bucks). But this is how business and politics work — you stick around who you know, or risk getting stabbed in the back by who you don’t. You know, sort of like what happened with Ernie Grunfeld.

If the results on the floor were better then Kohl would be a genius for surrounding himself with a small circle of “experts”. But they haven’t, so Kohl is close-minded.

It’s a shame — and unlucky — that this team hasn’t come together in the way everyone would like it to have. It’s annoying when we invest financially and emotionally in a product that doesn’t deliver. If Bucks tickets for this season were a gallon of milk we would have returned them because they were spoiled.

But that’s not Herb Kohl’s fault. Most of all, he’s been screwed over by the people he’s hired.

You want bad owners? Here are some bad owners:
Donald Sterling
Glen Taylor
George Shinn
Howard Schultz/Clay Bennett

The truth is that there is only one way to win in the NBA: get lucky and draft a superstar.

Well the potential for the windfall profits from Yi Jianlian’s successes are highly documented, what effect has he had so far?

We’ve heard stories about the millions upon millions of viewers watching Bucks games in China. What kind of influence has it had locally?

At a recent game I took photos of the Chinese influence on advertising in the Bradley Center. The side of the court that is displayed during televised games (on the table with the announcers and rotating ads) is definitely targeting a much broader audience than the Bucks fan actually inside the Bradley Center.

Most of these are simply rewritten ads to include Mandarin, has their been an increase in advertisers or simply an increase in audience? Peak answered that question when they started advertising all over the Bradley Center this year after announcing a deal with the NBA and hiring Shane Battier as their spokesperson.

Peak ad

Briggs and Stratton ad

Kohler ad

There was a Rockwell Automation ad that I didn’t get a picture of, thankfully the Journal Sentinel did. They also indicated that for a minute of cumulative display time advertisers can expect to pay into six-figures.

The best parody of the “Where Amazing Happens?” campaign I have seen yet.

Bob Costas thinks Brett and I live in our mothers’ basement. I don’t know if he’s tired and stressed from the long and cold winter (I imagine it’s hard to constantly fly to warm destinations), but he clearly hates his own fan-base.

Before rumors get out of hand, I would like to tell you that that sadly isn’t true.

In all fairness, Costas appears to have misdirected anger. If you read the original story, he was angered that fans voted for the Denver Nuggets in an ESPN poll about which Western Conference team wouldn’t make the playoffs. Isn’t that more a problem with the poll and the ESPN employee that created it? I mean the Denver Nuggets were the most obvious choice for a society that has been taught to choose the most-correct multiple choice answer. Perhaps Costas should be more concerned with the employees at ESPN, and a little less with fans actually openly participating in the discussion.

In ESPN.com’s Daily Dime, Marc Stein reports that Larry Krystkowiak “has roughly zero chance of keeping his job beyond this season, no matter who gets brought in to replace Larry Harris as Bucks general manager.”

This isn’t much of a surprise, as Krystkowiak has shown no ability to tailor his coaching style to his players. He was successful in college. I mean no disrespect when I say he did well at Montana, and that’s where he belongs. After all, he went 42-20 in two seasons there and won a game in the NCAA tournament. He clearly can coach, just not so much coach professionals.

Whoever the new coach is depends on who the new general manager is. Stein also writes:

“Harris’ successor, I’m told, will be charged with finding a coach with more experience after a run of younger coaches: Terry Porter, Terry Stotts and Krystkowiak. Job No. 1 for the new man thus will be making a clear determination on what kind of talent Milwaukee really has.”

Let’s not forget that Kohl has a track record of making the expensive, splashy coaching acquisition. Mike Dunleavy was a hot coaching commodity when Kohl outbid several teams for him, and George Karl was the highest paid coach in the game for a while (at $7 million a year).

So, who will the main targets be?

John Calipari: I know I’ve spent all season pounding Krystkowiak as a college coach, but in defense of Calipari, by working at UMass and Memphis, does that really count? Calipari’s first NBA gig with the Nets was a failure, but he also had to deal with the Stephion Marbury factor. At Memphis, Calipari is running the Dribble-Drive Motion offense, which sounds uniquely suited for the Bucks’ personel. It basically involves spreading the floor to an extreme, with four perimeter players stetching the defense and the center setting up on the weak-side block. This is supposed to open driving lanes and create easy drive-and-dish opportunities for the penetrators. The Nuggets and Celtics have both installed parts of the offense into their packages, with quite a bit of success. Apparently Calipari had problems relating to his players with the Nets, but since then he has spent time as an assistant with the Sixers, and remember that he did have the impossible task of dealing with Marbury. Marc Stein’s story also says that the Bulls are hot after Calipari, and they would also have good personel for the DDM offense.

Larry Brown: He sure would be expensive, but should the Bucks hire Donnie Walsh then Brown would likely be the main target. Bringing Brown in, though, would probably herald major changes in the roster. For his reputation as a “teacher”, Brown has never succeeded with a young team and has spent his last several jobs constantly campaigning to trade young players to bring in role players “who play the right way” like Dale Davis and Eric Snow. Lets not forget that he blew the Olympics a few years ago by burying Carmelo Anthony, Amare Stoudemire and LeBron James on the bench. Should Brown be hired, I’d guess that Andrew Bogut would get a nice contract extension and everybody else would be on the trading block immediately.

Rick Carlisle: He has only accomplished two things in his pair of previous head coaching stints: racking up wins and annoying management. He overacheved with the Pistons, but was so rude to Joe Dumars that he got fired. He built the Pacers into contenders, got them into the playoffs even after the Palace Brawl, but was so hard to deal with that when the Pacers finally slid into mediocrity last season, his two best friends — Walsh and Larry Bird — seized the opportunity to fire him. The New York Daily News, in their stories about Walsh to the Knicks, claim that Carlisle would not be a likely Knicks head coach should Walsh take over at Madison Square Garden.

Jeff Van Gundy: Honestly, I hope they don’t go in this direction. Van Gundy-coached teams play the most boring clutch-and-grab style I’ve ever seen. Sure he gets results, but he also would have a ton of growing pains as he, like Brown, would complain to no end until the entire roster, besides Bogut, is shipped out for players who can defend. Plus, Van Gundy has quit on both of his NBA jobs, citing burnout. I’d rather not have a coach about who you have to wonder whether he will show up.

Scott Skiles: If he’s interested, you’ve got to think he’s like the chance to come in and try to stick it to a division rival. Skiles would probably not be a very good fit with most of the personalities on the roster. He has gotten pretty good results in the past, though.

And one dark-horse who I’d like to see considered:

Jeff Bzdelik: He turned the Nuggets around from 17-65 in 2002-03 to 43-39 the following season, and never seemed to get a fair shake in Denver. He was always on the hot seat for no good reason (basically he won too much with a rookie Carmelo Anthony, while management wanted another high draft pick and a big-name coach) so when Karl became available, Bzdelik was forced out. He is a good coach who deserves another shot.

Timing is a funny thing. Larry Harris is fired on the same day that my season ticket renewal package arrives in the mail (printed on the envelope: “Important renewal information: No price increase for 08-09!”). Last season the renewal package arrived a couple of days after Terry Stotts was fired. Coincidence? I think not.

Anyway, it means that now is the time to say goodbye to Larry Harris. History will remember his tenure as a failure, and while that is true when looking at the results on the court, it is unfair as well. I’d prefer that his period as Bucks GM be remembered as one where he consistently did the right things only to see them work out poorly.

2008 is a lousy year to decide to run for President. The country is sliding into a recession caused by a credit implosion, skyrocketing commodity prices threaten a horrible period of stagflation and we are stuck fighting a war that has no easy outcome in sight. I often wonder why Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain would choose now to run, rather than wait until 2012.

The answer is that some jobs must be filled. Sometimes the luck of the draw means that winning a coveted job means you are doomed to failure because of the circumstances around them.

This happened to Larry Harris.

He inherited a Bucks team that had been completely mortgaged by Ernie Grunfeld and George Karl’s shortsighted mismanagement. Grunfeld had already traded away the Bucks’ 2003 and 2004 first round picks (but had added Atlanta’s 2003 pick) and had turned Sam Cassell, Glenn Robinson and Ray Allen into little more than Joe Smith, Desmond Mason and TJ Ford (making the Cassell trade three days before leaving the Bucks job and four days before taking the Washington job). Harris took over a team with no bargaining power and no draft picks. He was set up for failure from the beginning.

NBA GM’s sometimes get a bad rap as sit-on-your-hands types who are afraid to make big moves. That is unfair. For all the great trade proposals you can come up with, the other team has to agree to them in order for them to be consummated. For all the scouting you do to find undervalued players, the days of a Manu Ginobli or Tony Parker slipping through the cracks is gone. The way an NBA GM succeeds has to do with one thing: luck. You can do all the right things, but it can all still go awry. Harris made bold moves throughout his tenure (until the reigns were clearly slapped on him this season) with his signing of Bobby Simmons and trades for Jamaal Magloire and Charlie Villanueva. Good moves at the time, but they turned out to be players who couldn’t live up to their billing.

Harris had one opportunity to change the direction of the franchise and he missed, by selecting Andrew Bogut over Chris Paul. No matter how good Bogut is or will become, he will never be a top-5 player like Paul is now. But can you really knock Harris for taking Bogut? Just by saying “I liked Paul more at the time” (which it’s funny how everyone now says they felt) is different than actually being the GM and making the choice. It’s a lot easier to find decent point guards than it is good big men. What were the odds that Paul would become a superstar so quickly? If Harris had kept Ford would people still be complaining?

Regardless, Harris’ biggest failing as a GM was his undying optimism about his players. He clearly felt that his core of very good players was ready to become a great team, as he said before the 2005-06 season that they were ready to make the second round of the playoffs. But that’s the funny thing about basketball , collecting good players doesn’t automatically mean you have a good team. The parts have to fit together. The group needs chemistry and a collectively well-rounded skill set. They need one leader and plenty of other pieces who are happy with their roles. Harris never learned that.

This team needs major changes. Harris was the person that assembled the group, but now it will take a new person to assess what the team has and how to turn those incompatible pieces into a real team.

Larry Harris tried to build a winner in a lousy situation. But at least he leaves the team in better shape than he got it , no better on the floor, but with more young talent and all their upcoming draft picks. At least they are in a better position to build for the future than they were in 2003.

————–

My five part series “Grading Larry Harris” is available here:
Part One: The Okay Moves
Part Two: The Winners
Part Three: The Losers
Part Four: The Move That Cannot Be Categorized (Bogut over Paul)
The Conclusion

The Bucks announced today that Larry Harris’ contract will not be renewed and he is leaving the team immediately.

After being told that the team would allow his contract to expire, the team and Harris decided to part ways now.

This makes sense on all parts. With the story breaking that the Bucks had been in contact with Donnie Walsh (and past rumors about Doug Collins and Rick Sund), it was clear that Harris would not be retained.

So who will the new guy be?

What does this mean for Larry Krystkowiak?

All questions to explore in the coming days.