Bucks will interview Budenholzer again
The Milwaukee Bucks will meet with former Atlanta Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer for a second time on Tuesday, according to a league source. The follow-up interview to a meeting last week will also include members of the team's ownership group as the Bucks advance toward hiring a new head coach.
Beginning on May 5, the Bucks have met with at least seven candidates for their open head coaching position, including six outside the organization as well as Joe
Prunty, who closed the
2017-'18 season as the team's coach following Jason Kidd's firing in January.
The expectation was that general manager Jon Horst, who is running the search process, would recommend three or four finalists for the second round of interviews that would include ownership.
Budenholzer, an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs from 19962013 and the head coach of the Hawks for the past five seasons, is the first and only name to come out as a finalist as of Monday morning. He's the longest-tenured NBA coach — combining his years as an assistant and head coach in the league — among the candidates interviewed by Milwaukee over the past 10 days.
There is expected to be competition for Budenholzer's services. The Toronto Raptors, who dismissed head coach Dwane Casey on Friday, are "opening conversations with Budenholzer," according to an ESPN report as the Bucks prepare for their meeting with him on Tuesday.
During his five seasons in Atlanta, Budenholzer guided the Hawks to the playoffs four times, including a 60-win 2014-'15 season that ended in the Eastern Conference Finals and netted Budenholzer the NBA's Coach of the Year award in his second season as a head coach. Following that season, Budenholzer became the team's president of basketball operations for nearly two years, holding the final say in the team's basketball matters.
Along with the ability to get defensive results — the Hawks had a top-6 defense over the middle three seasons of Budenholzer's five-year tenure — he also is known for developing talent. The Hawks didn't make major free-agent splashes during his time there; rather, he took the group he inherited along with the young players he helped draft to create a solid team.
Outside of the regular season, Budenholzer has some experience coaching Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, albeit in a limited capacity. Budenholzer was an assistant under Gregg Popovich on Team Africa for the 2015 NBA Africa Game, a contest in which Antetokounmpo took part and played for Team Africa, representing his parents' native Nigeria. Monty Williams, also part of the Bucks' current interview process, was also an assistant coach for Team Africa.
Along with the aforementioned Prunty and Williams, the other coaches who interviewed for the Bucks' job were David Blatt, Steve Clifford, Becky Hammon and Ettore Messina.