OldSchoolSnapper

One baseball player can't transform a team and the Bucks are in a vastly different circumstance. Counsell is getting rewarded for keeping a team together amidst adversity, overachieving to some degree and understanding/embracing the unique way the Brewers build a team and play. It's completely feasible he could be their manager for 20 years and never win a WS and I could justify that. The expectation for the Bucks is winning a championship now, at the very least getting there. The best player in the world has said he wants to see them doing all they can to win a championship. It's possible making the Finals means they get to keep him. It's a completely different, high stakes situation the Bucks are in. Again, I want to make it clear I was not intending to criticize Bud, just that I don't think he can continue to dominate the regular season without real playoff results. The quiet criticism of him already is that he can transform teams into winners but isn't a get-you-over-the-hump guy. He has won 60 games in another city before. There was no realistic expectation of ATL winning titles, but there is in MKE and I do believe he's going to feel the heat if they won't get there this season.

Hate to break it to you but it's your opinion too Nostradamus. That's kind of what fan forums are and I couldn't care less about the quantity of people agreeing. You can't state where Bud is coaching in 2022 as a fact. It would equally silly to name a replacement when the hot coaching names in 2-3 years won't be what they are today. It's also beside the point and as I think he's a great coach. This wasn't meant to be some indictment of him, just an observation that there's a ton of pressure on the Bucks. This isn't really even a unique take. It's out there and has been tossed around in the media before this year even started. I think he's for sure coaching next season no matter what, but no, I don't believe that if the Bucks were to go 60-22 next year and fail again, that his job is safe because they're winning a bunch of regular season games. And if they do lose again this year, you're going to start hearing that talk much more often. In any case this has gone down a rabbit hole I didn't intend. My only point was that Bud's seat is hot if they don't win the East, mostly because they are clearly the best team, and because ownership will blame him before they blame Giannis.

So the Bucks could win 60 games for four years, miss the Finals four times, and he'll remain the coach? Find that very hard to believe. The ownership of this team is not supermaxing Giannis and paying Middleton darn near it to lose conference finals.

There is absolutely a way. The billionaire investors who "want it all" are not going to sit back and watch a team win 60 games for three years and not even make the Finals in a watered down East. Giannis loved Jason Kidd too. There is a point where the owners don't care, and want someone to finish. These are not elementary school teachers, they're sharks. Not to mention ANY available coach will want Giannis if he's still in MKE. I don't think it comes to this as they'll win the East this season. But to say there is no way they get rid of Bud, or that he won't be under some pressure if they repeat last year's playoffs is just not true.

He already knows his options. His options are pretty much whatever he wants to do because anyone will sell their soul to have him.

Zero chance Bud gets let go if they don't win the East. Not this summer but that isn't what I meant. His seat is absolutely hot if they win 60+ games two years in a row and can't get out of the East. His reputation is already being a regular season paper tiger. Without even factoring in what Giannis does in 2021, I would be very surprised if they retained him after 3 seasons of failing to win the inferior conference with Giannis playing MVP basketball.

If the Bucks don't win the East, Bud's job is in jeopardy. It sounds ridiculous, but I don't think it's far off at all. This was mentioned earlier as well, but there's a decent argument for the Bucks winning the championship actually decreasing the chances that Giannis stays. I think Giannis already knows what he wants to do. The fact that he won't publicly say it does make me worry. He could squash all of this instantly if he 100% knew he was staying. I still feel like what I said earlier, that I think it's about 70/30 that he stays.

Saw this on Facebook yesterday and it really got to me. My kids are about the ages of the little ones in that video. Makes you almost sad he couldn't stay in Boston. I hope some fans come with him to Milwaukee in spirit.

This is a byproduct of success which has been substantial relative to most of the franchise's putrid history. I'm honestly exhausted of the payroll discussions and "win with Yelich now" stuff. I've been consciously avoiding the Brewers lately because it just got so annoying. At least wait for a losing season before doing this.

This is a byproduct of success which has been substantial relative to most of the franchise's putrid history. I'm honestly exhausted of the payroll discussions and "win with Yelich now" stuff. I've been consciously avoiding the Brewers lately because it just got so annoying. At least wait for a losing season before doing this.

Yeah, I'm saying that they don't even advertise them to SSH. It's not in any of the marketing, and they don't tell you they sell them unless you ask.

That's not surprising to me since they do not even advertise the vouchers. If you don't specifically ask for them, the SSH reps will never tell you they exist.

I think the Bucks wipe out anyone in the East and would like to feel the same about the West, but I still have visions of crappy NBA officiating and LeBron carrying Kobe's legacy and TV needing 7 games etc. etc.

He never said what flavor they add.

I am not sure if we are misunderstanding each other’s points, or actually on the same side here. My point with that study link was not that we should scrap the regular season by any means, but actually the exact opposite. The length and results of the regular season are much more important to MLB than any other professional sport because it takes such an incredibly large sample size for results to actualize that match true talent levels. If the goal is to figure out who the best team is at the end of the playoffs than the best way to do that would be to significantly limit the total number of teams that get into the playoffs. If the goal aligns closer to entertainment value (and revenue for the teams), than I guess an argument can certainly be made for “the more the merrier” playoff approach. That isn’t the side I would choose, but I understand the argument. I know, I wasn't meaning to argue the link or what you were saying though I realize now it looks that way. I was just saying that I like the MLB regular season for the reason that it mitigates some of the randomness of the sport. 162 games is enough to establish who's good and who's not, and I'm not sure you could say the same if they played 80. I feel that the WC expansion was good, and provided just enough reason to keep fighting for a spot while still making sure the regular season feels worth taking seriously. I really do not want to see it watered down any more.

I know others have brought this up but I truly believe this is due largely to the fact that the league is heavily tilted toward the large markets. In the NFL and NBA, you have Patrick Mahomes and Giannis who will likely spend their entire careers in Kansas City and Milwaukee. As opposed to MLB, where you have Indians fans who are preparing to lose Francisco Lindor or Brewers fans who already lost Prince Fielder and are already preparing (3 years in advance) of losing Christian Yelich. Why invest your time, money and fandom in something so obviously gamed against you? I definitely think losing superstars is a big problem for MLB and competitive balance, but you can't say the NBA isn't large-market centric. The supermax is there, sure, but the players have a ton of power and bolt for large markets all the time. I think the difference is that there is a disproportionate number of basketball fans who are fans of players and not necessarily teams. Terrible NBA teams always use visiting stars in their marketing.

It's specifically not resonating well at all with youth minorities. I don't know specifically about hispanics but I know it is catastrophically failing with black youth leagues. Which is a problem for the sport because the county's demographics are going the other direction. The intensity of a lot of youth baseball comes with expenses and a lot of travel which is another problem. The sport in general needs to fix a problem at that level and it would help the MLB product. But the point about ticket prices and access to games is relevant too. I would guess that it can't be doing a whole lot better with Hispanics. It is hugely popular in Latin America obviously and like 1/3 of the MLB players are born there, but within the Hispanic population of the US I don't think it's quite as huge.

Nah, I don't reserve any fear. Not in getting through the East. In the Finals, sure, where either team from LA can probably beat them as I don't think either is going anywhere near 100%. LeBron doesn't do that, he knows the score. Both he and Davis can defend the interior and force the Bucks into needing to shoot well. The Lakers team in June just won't be the same one the Bucks play during the year. But the East? No. There's no reason the Bucks should lose. They are head and shoulders the best team in the East and the only way they lose is Giannis is getting hurt. If they just get flat out beat again, by a Raptors team with no Kawhi, that's a disgrace and they choked. They finished two games ahead of them last season with Kawhi resting a bunch. "Lots" of things can't derail the Bucks, they are 46-7. It's a very small number of things that can derail them and I would take just about any odds on them winning the East. There's no reason to not be supremely confident in the Bucks making the finals. It also makes difference how confident I am and I can't be overconfident because I have no influence on anything.

The average ticket price has risen from $22.77 (2007) to $32.99 (2019). It doesn't take a smart person to figure out the problem with MLB baseball. But yes, let's jack up the whole system to spark an interest. Attendance for most major sports is dropping: - From 2014 to ’18, attendance across the FBS (college fb) fell by 7.6%. - Here’s how the NHL’s minus-1.32% decline from 2013-14 to 2018-19 compares to the other major sports leagues. Major League Baseball (MLB): minus-5.88% National Basketball Association (NBA): plus-2.59% National Football League (NFL): minus-1.98% Major League Soccer (MLS): plus-17.56% Out of the five major sports leagues in the United States, three of the five, including the NHL, have posted declines in average attendance between 2013-14 to 2018-19. Two of the leagues posted growth, the NBA and MLS. If you’re wondering why the MLS percent change jumps off the charts it’s due to their success in expansion, Atlanta United has been able to consistently average 50,000 in attendance since its debut in 2017. I think there are too many options to watch games at home. Not only that but the at-home experience is WORLDS ahead of what it was even in the early 2000s. Go watch some highlights of games from that era if you don't think so. You used to flock to one guy's house because he had a "big screen TV" and I hardly know any homeowners whose main TV is less than 60 inches. The financial crunch is obviously a factor in the attendance too, but there are a bunch of factors working together. Thus you have "fan experience" as a requirement in all new stadiums. New restaurants, shopping, etc. "Districts" around the stadium. The game is not enough.

Actually, no. Here is a really good study done at Cornell about the randomness of the four major professional sports leagues (Overview Link and PDF Document Link). MLB is subject to the most random outcomes of the major professional sports. Here is a blog that uses the above study results to sum up the randomness of the post-season as compared to the NBA, Rethinking our playoff philosophy (on the role of chance in the postseason)... There is a lot more to dive into about the randomness of baseball outcomes, but that sort of captures the gist of how unique MLB variance actually is. Great, let's just scrap the regular season altogether then. We can have these awesome random outcomes with last year's Orioles winning titles. I don't understand why people want to make qualifying for the playoffs a complete non-achievement. Like it is in the NBA.

I think that people are way overstating the randomness of baseball. These 80-win teams are not going to be come 100-win quality teams with any regularity if they expand the playoffs. The WC teams have won the WS, but they are mostly pretty good. There are teams like the 83-win Cards, sure, but the .500 teams are still going to have Mt Everest before them trying to take out teams like the Dodgers, staffs like the Nationals. I really doubt it would make that much of a difference in the end.

The Wild Card game is a Game 7. The team that invested in better pitching won. The Brewers go as cheap as they can get away with, every year, and lost. The Brewers have also never drafted & developed a pitcher like Strasburg. Oh please. They needed a ball through the legs and the most dominate reliever in baseball to blow the game. This is so disingenuous. They were a coin flip away from being sent packing by the Brewers despite their "investment" in better pitching.

Well yeah, but I was referring to the playoffs being a money-making gimmick. Nobody takes the first round of the NBA playoffs even remotely seriously. They could get rid of the first round tomorrow and nobody would care. There are no fans legitimately thinking their 38-42 team is "in the playoff hunt." The entire existence of professional sports is a "money-making gimmick." You could say that about any form of entertainment, we are not solving world hunger here.

Does that really work? Because there have been years the Bucks make the playoffs as an 8 and absolutely nobody cares. I guess people will take a chance to see LeBron play a couple games but I remember a season against the Pistons where I was able to get lower bowl seats for like $15. I was in high school and sitting with Milwaukee's elite for the playoffs because nobody gave a crap.

The NFL is going to have 9/10 win teams doing crazy stuff because the season is so short and the nature of the game dictates that. There is really not much difference between 9 and 11 wins especially if any key players have been injured. If I'm looking at both Giants teams that won the Super Bowl, that's exactly what happened with big injuries costing both teams several wins. Same thing with the '10 Packers where Rodgers missed two games they lost. Those wild card teams are never bad, they're typically good teams that came together late or had injuries. The bad ones almost always get crushed by good ones. But one of the reasons MLB gets away with having a "tough" playoff qualification is the idea that over 162 the cream has enough time to rise. That's less true in football. It's really hard to claim after 162 games that you deserve to be in the playoffs if you couldn't manage being one of the top 5 teams. I suspect that others are correct and a less intense change will be made. But IMO they've struck a perfect balance right now between the lunacy of the old days where one league champion made the "playoffs" and the NBA system of "who cares until the conference semis."