The dream is coming true
Five-year plan coming to fruition
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – When Wes Edens and Marc Lasry bought the Milwaukee Bucks in April 2014, they knew they had gotten themselves into a long-term project. There was literal building that needed to be done to both update the team’s facilities and keep the franchise in Milwaukee. There was also a rebuild that needed to happen with the team’s roster, which at the time of their purchase was concluding a 15-win season.
The pair of billionaire hedge-fund managers from New York knew change wasn’t going to come immediately. They had lofty goals but recognized it would take a series of steps rather than a giant leap to achieve them.
Their hope was with a combination of grit and patience they’d bring about real change on the court and off it in about five years.
It hasn’t quite been five years, but as Edens and Lasry joined the rest of the NBA at all-star weekend, they did so knowing their efforts have been bountifully fruitful. The franchise they bought for $550 million – with input from co-owners Jamie Dinan, Mike Fascitelli and a stable of local owners – is now valued by Forbes at $889 million.
More importantly, the Bucks built Fiserv Forum, a sterling new arena downtown that in its first year is averaging more fans (17,431)
than the sellout capacity thanks to eager crowds and standing-room tickets. They also added a state-of-the-art practice facility and the on-court product is worthy of both those things as the Bucks entered the all-star break at 43-14 – the best record in the NBA.
“I think this was the hope of the fiveyear plan when we talked about it,” Lasry said Friday from the court of the Bojangles Coliseum where he participated in his fourth all-star celebrity game. “It’s all come together, which is great. A lot of that is a little bit of luck and hard work. … Everything has gone as well as we could have hoped.”
The process, though, certainly took time.
When they took over, Lasry and Edens knew the business side of the franchise was their top concern. The team needed more and better staff, better marketing and more of a presence in the city. They also needed to figure out how and where to build a new arena to keep the team in Milwaukee.
There were hirings and firings as things started to take shape. There was plenty of lobbying from Milwaukee to Madison, particularly by team president Peter Feigin, and little by little the pieces and money fell into place for all the construction projects.
“The business side, as you’d expect, went pretty much as we hoped it would,” Edens said. “I say ‘as you’d expect’ because we’re in the business world, so in theory, we should be really good at this.”
The basketball part of the operation took more trial and error. Their inherited team, with an awkward change to Jason Kidd as head coach – Larry Drew was still the coach when the Kidd news leaked – and little tweaking to the frontoffice, went from the worst record in the league to the playoffs in 2014-’15. Then the roster turned a bit and the Bucks missed the playoffs the next year.
While the Bucks’ business operations and construction projects were moving along, the team itself was in danger of getting stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity. In the summer of 2017, though, the franchise faced a critical junction when general manager John Hammond took for the same job with the Orlando Magic after recognizing ownership didn’t view him as a longterm fit.
What ensued was a general-manager search that didn’t play out well in the public. Assistant GM Justin Zanik was considered the heir apparent, but the franchise instead opted to open up a wider search. The owners took their time to come to a consensus, ultimately settling on Jon Horst, who had already been with the team and at 34 became the league’s youngest top executive.
With the events of the past couple years under Horst's direction, including the firing of Kidd, hiring of coach Mike Budenholzer and the reshaping of the team’s roster around MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo, both Edens and Lasry voiced the opinion Friday night that Horst should be the leading candidate for the league’s executive of the year award.
“Hard to overstate how important he’s been; not just him, his whole staff,” Edens said. “When I was looking for a GM to replace John when John decided to go to Orlando, it was very important to me that we were a data-driven organization. At the end, you need to make great judgments and those are subjective, but they should be backed up by and a product of great analytics and data behind it. Jon has been a huge step in the right direction. … He’s done an amazing job. I think he gets the right recognition for it; he certainly has from me.”
With all eyes in the league focused on Charlotte and the weekend’s all-star festivities, the Bucks’ meteoric rise has made them a contender worth discussing and taking seriously. Both Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton are deserving all-star representatives while Budenholzer and his staff are patrolling the sidelines. The Bucks have the league’s best record, are the only team not to lose two games in a row and own an elite plus-9.8 point differential. Milwaukee's ceiling remains something of a mystery, too, since newly-acquired forward Nikola Mirotic has yet to take the court.
Five years ago, all of this was a twinkle in the eyes of Edens and Lasry as they began the journey of NBA ownership. But for as far as they’ve come, they know they’re not finished. They still have grand plans to continue converting downtown Milwaukee, particularly the area around Fiserv Forum, into a premier destination to live, work and play.
More importantly, they believe their high hopes for the team itself are now attainable.