Q&A with Bucks general manager Jon Horst on the Jason Kidd firing and what's next

Milwaukee Bucks general manager Jon Horst made the final decision on Monday — with the unanimous support of ownership — to fire head coach Jason Kidd.

Later in the week, Horst sat down with Journal Sentinel Bucks beat reporter Matt Velazquez to discuss the decision as well as what will come next for the franchise.

Q. Obviously you’re always evaluating your staff — that’s part of a GM’s job. When it comes to letting Kidd go, what changed or pushed that decision over the edge?

A. What pushes it over the edge is when you kind of look at everything in totality, you take a 360 view and you have this holistic view of the team, not only where you want to get this year and where you expect to be this year, but maybe even more importantly where do you want to be? Giannis (Antetokounmpo) is going to be here for however long, we know for sure for the four years. You hope for much longer beyond that. You look at all of that and you say, like, "OK, where are we trending?" It just felt like we were standing still when we should be climbing. This is an important year. Like I said, there’s a relatively small window in professional sports to compete at a high level, and we think we have a team that can compete at a high level now. Maybe a championship team, maybe not, but a team that can play at a high level. It’s proven they can play like a top-four team in the conference and we just haven’t shown the consistency or the ability to do that on a consistent basis. This felt like an opportunity or a way to try to maximize this season while also understanding that the long-term goal of this thing is to build toward a championship and we can get someone in place that will help us build toward a championship. That could be Joe (Prunty) and this staff and we’re very open to that and they have every opportunity to do that. If it’s not, we have the opportunity to have an exhaustive process and search this summer to find, hopefully, the person we think would lead us to that.

Q. You mentioned the staff and obviously three members of that staff — assistants Eric Hughes, Tim Grgurich and Frank Johnson — are no longer with the team. Why are those three gone?

A. I think, again, it’s really just a part of the process. I think, a couple things — if you look at our coaching staff now we’re actually kind of normalized in terms of size, numbers. We think there are people in the organization that have voices and skills and abilities that we’ve kind of freed them up to have louder voices, to have more of an impact on Joe and his staff. People that we think can maybe support Joe and balance Joe in a better way.

Q. When it comes to Frank Johnson, how much do you take into account the relationship he’s built with Jabari Parker in the short time he’s been here and how much time he’s spent with him?

A. I think all those things are important considerations, but at the end of the day, you can’t make decisions on one-off emotional reactions or one-off relationships. Whether that’s Giannis or Frank or Malcolm (Brogdon), whoever it is. Frank came in here and was asked to do a job. He did it at a really high level, did a great job of that. Jabari respects him and I think everyone in the organization respects him, but also it’s part of the business that sometimes things happen and for a variety of reasons people move on. Jabari will find someone else to be close to. And like I mentioned to Jabari, I feel like, "Jabari hopefully you’ll find your teammates to be close to, other coaches to be close to and other people in the organization." That’s what happens in a business; there’s transition.

Q. You mentioned people in the organization who could have more of a voice. Are you referring to the analytics-minded people or someone else? Where was the disconnect where Kidd maybe wasn’t hearing certain people enough?

A. I don’t know about that. I don’t know if there’s necessarily a disconnect you can point to. I just think in general as you continue to look at this, the team in our mind has room to grow and could have been more consistent and more productive. At the end of the day, the fresh approach, kind of a new voice in leadership we felt like was needed. Right now we think it can help. I’ve said this, if we kind of wanted to cash in the season and say, hey, we’re just going to stick with this and kind of ride the ebbs and flows and just see what happened, we would have just stood pat and not done anything and waited until a more natural time in the off-season. We think that we can jump-start ourselves right now. We can evaluate Joe, who we think is a really talented coach, and a staff we think is really talented and see how they perform in this environment. Maybe they’re the guys. If not, then we still have the opportunity to have someone else come in. I wouldn’t necessarily say a disconnect, it’s just what happens sometimes. I wouldn’t say analytics (was the group) they weren’t listening to or this they weren’t listening to, I just think that it happens sometimes in franchises.

Q. Was there ever a worry that, say Kidd stays and the team picks it up and they get to the playoffs and win a series. Was there ever a worry that you could then be stuck with a situation you may not want or is it you just didn’t think he could get them to that point?

A. If we thought we could accomplish our goals that we have — both short-term and long-term — with the staff that we had we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The whole reason that we did is we didn’t think we were on track to accomplish the goals we have now or going forward.

Q. The next decision you make as to who takes over, whether it’s Prunty or someone else, is a massive one. The past two major hires under this ownership group — you being one and Kidd being the other — regardless of if they resulted in hiring the right people, the outside perception is they weren't handled especially well. How do you approach this decision to make sure you get the exact right person and in the right way?

A. I don’t think we can guarantee that we get the exact right person, right? What you can do is you can have a great process, great conversation, great leadership and great support and you give yourself every chance to then get a great result. If you don’t have a great process and great support, great leadership and all those other things, you can hope for a great result — sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. I think your odds are far better if you go through the right steps that you get a great result. So we’re going to do everything in the right order in the right process and have ownership support — just like we had ownership support in this decision, you have the Eric Bledsoe trade. I think since I’ve been here there’s been a track record of — maybe some people say it looked a little bit messy the way things happened with Jason. I think when you get to the finish line in professional sports, because of media and agents and all the chatter that goes on, it gets a little cloudy always. That’s just what happens. The truth is we had a great process and plan in place, a great evaluation and we made a decision and we had a supported decision through ownership and we’re happy with where we’ve landed. I think that’s the same with the Eric Bledsoe (trade), it’ll be the same thing with the draft, it was the same thing with going forward with Tony Snell (in free agency) and all these other things. I think we’ve shown since I’ve been here, that we’re going to follow those things and hopefully get great results.

Q. How much does having more time to go through this process help? Co-owner Wes Edens mentioned over the summer that in the business world, high-level positions like this usually involve a much longer search process than their equivalent positions in the NBA. So, having from now until into the summer to make this decision, how much does that help?

A. I think it absolutely helps. One reason, like I said, is we get to evaluate and discuss and work with someone who we truly think is a very viable candidate and a really qualified coach in Joe Prunty. Listen, it’s a pretty hot job. We probably could have brought someone else in today to do this. There’s probably a number of people who aren’t working who we could say, ‘Come do it.’ We really want to see what Joe Prunty can do with this opportunity as well as his staff. We think these guys are really good. So that’s No. 1. That will help. No. 2 is having time. ... During the season, Joe’s the head coach — we’re not going to be out there looking for a head coach during the season. We’re going to make this evaluation, we’re going to be pure to that and honest to that. Now, it’s inevitable we’re going to get flooded with information. We can’t control that. So we’re going to take a lot of information in and internally we’re going to evaluate and discuss, look at it and work on it and do our due diligence as we’re evaluating here. But time doesn’t hurt; time can only help here.

Q. People have talked about Kidd as someone who might have been controlling or hard to deal with. Did you experience any of those things? Was this a personality issue at all?

A. Absolutely not. I respect Jason for what he’s done in this league. I enjoyed working with him. I actually think we had a really strong working relationship between he and I. At the end of the day, this for us came down to where do we think this team should be right now, where do we think they can get and who gives us the best chance to do that. We just felt like at this time, truthfully, making a change would help us have the best chance now and going forward. Listen, this is a tough business and people are really competitive and really strong-spirited, so do you always have moments? Of course, you have moments. But Jason, I have personal respect and professional respect for Jason and I think he’d say the same thing about me. Not only in my time as general manager but before that, I’ve always enjoyed my time with Jason.

Q. Obviously, when you become a general manager in this league you know there are going to be hard personnel decisions and other types of decisions. What’s this week been like for you as a person living through this?

A. For me, it’s been challenging, it’s tough because of what I just said. I have a personal appreciation and I truly felt like a friendship with Jason. I really enjoyed working with him, so it’s not fun, it’s not easy to do that. If you didn’t like someone, it wouldn’t be any fun. If you really like someone, it’s even harder. So that part of it is hard. How do I get through it? Making these tough decisions, I get through it because I trust the process and the evaluation and the work that went into getting to that and because of that I can feel convicted in doing the right thing. I know that my only goal and agenda is to do the right thing for the franchise. And at the end of the day, these are unbelievable learning experiences and opportunities for me to continue to grow my career and my profession while hopefully continuing to put the organization in the best chance for success. We want to win championships here. We want to be good for a long period of time and win championships. I feel like as long as I’ve done everything I can to help the franchise get to that point, I can be convicted of what I’m doing. This was one of those decisions.

Q. Was it difficult in any way to get the unanimous approval of ownership?

A. Difficult? No, I wouldn’t say difficult. That is one of those things where you go through your process, you give recommendations, you have fact-based information, you have really productive conversations. It wasn’t like you say, "Hey, we’re going to do this" and you get three yeses. That’s not how it works. There’s a lot of conversation and communication that goes into making any decision, particularly one that’s at the level of something like this.

Q. There’s a sense Kidd and the organization may not have been aligned on certain issues. Were there any issues like that and on what points did you not mesh?

A. Honestly, Jason wants to win as much as anyone. I think Jason wanted to win championships. I think he did everything he felt like he could do to win championships, to put us in a position to do that. We had a really healthy working relationship with discussions from rosters, different transitions, (etc.). Again, this isn’t like there was this huge alignment issue and we didn’t see eye-to-eye on this. I know with coaching changes, sometimes it’s like the coach wants to do it this way and the front office wants to do it this way — that’s not the culture and the environment I wanted to have and create when I got this job. I wanted to be collaborative and be working with everyone and have everyone share ideas and share thoughts and be supportive of everyone. I think that was the goal of this franchise and that’s still the goal and that’s something we’re going to continue to build toward. ... This team’s really good and you only have so many windows to have a team that’s really good. We want to take our best shot at it this year and we want to have an opportunity to continue to work on it next year going forward. This is a transaction that we felt like helped us do that.

Q. The defensive scheme Kidd had, how much of that is the scheme that he wanted? How much of that is a collaboration? It worked his first year and since then has fallen toward the bottom of the NBA. Can you speak to the viability of that plan or how maybe it might differ going forward?

A. I think what you’re going to see with Coach Prunty and Sean (Sweeney) and the rest of the staff is I think you’re going to see a group of guys who are going to simplify the things that we do offensively and defensively so that we can really focus on the things that our guys are good at, really try to accentuate their strengths and kind of minimize some of the weaknesses of our team. I think you’re going to see a group of guys who are willing to adapt, change things maybe on a game-to-game basis or over a period of time. I’m not a coach; I’m a general manager. I don’t want to get in there and try to coach them on X’s and O’s just like they’re not going to get in and try to tell me about the cap or certain ways to put deals together. Or we’re not going to go down and tell Troy (Flanagan, director of performance) and his group how to manage a knee ailment or a shoulder issue or anything like that. What we will do is we’ll have really open, honest conversations at a high level between Troy and Coach Prunty and myself and Peter Feigin on the business side as to things that we just see at a high level at the top level that we think we can improve on or challenge each other, like, "Can we do this better, can we do this better?" I think you’ll see with Coach Prunty that he’s going to be very willing to adapt and be flexible and try things differently to really help our team get to the right level, which I think will be great for us.