Scott Skiles DONE In Milwaukee; Baby Mamas On High Alert

So that is it. In early January 2013, the Milwaukee Bucks and Scott Skiles agreed to go their separate ways, which is the polite front office way of saying the marriage was over and nobody wanted to fight about the furniture. Jim Boylan, his longtime assistant, slid over a seat and took the clipboard. The Bucks were hovering right around .500 at the time, which is about as Milwaukee as a basketball team can get.

I have been arguing about this move in my league chat since the news broke, and I want to put my thoughts down while they are still warm. Some of my buddies think Skiles was the problem. Some think he was the only adult in the building. I land somewhere in between, with a lean toward the second camp.

About that headline

Let me explain the "Baby Mamas" line before anybody writes in. It is a joke about the young guys on this roster and everybody who babies them. Skiles was famous for being hard on young players. He benched people. He stared holes through rookies who missed a rotation. He did not do warm hugs at the end of practice. So when the news hit, the picture in my head was of every young Bucks player, and every agent, parent, and AAU coach who has ever protected one, letting out a giant sigh of relief. The babies are free. The people who raise them are on high alert, wondering what the next coach will be like. That is the whole bit. Moving on.

What Skiles actually built in Milwaukee

People forget how good the 2009-10 season was. That was the "Fear the Deer" year. Brandon Jennings dropped 55 points in a game as a rookie, Andrew Bogut was playing the best ball of his career before that awful elbow injury, and the Bucks went 46-36 and pushed the Atlanta Hawks to seven games in the first round. Milwaukee was fun. Milwaukee was annoying to play against. Skiles had a group of mostly unremarkable players defending like their mortgage depended on it.

That has always been his calling card. Look at his history:

• In Phoenix, around the turn of the century, he coached a playoff team before leaving midway through the 2001-02 season.
• In Chicago, he took over a young Bulls team in 2003 and turned it into a tough defensive group that made three straight playoff trips, before getting fired early in the 2007-08 season.
• In Milwaukee, he took a roster with modest talent and squeezed a winning season and a playoff series out of it in his second year.

There is a pattern there. Skiles arrives, the team gets tougher, the team gets better, and then, after a few years, everybody gets tired of each other. He is the coach version of a really intense personal trainer. You get in shape. You also stop answering his calls.

And for the trivia crowd, this is the same guy who handed out 30 assists in a single game for the Orlando Magic back in December 1990, a record that still stands. A man who was that good at setting up other people should have been better at managing a locker room. Or maybe that is exactly why he expected so much.

The take I keep hearing, and why I do not buy it

The popular opinion going around is that Skiles "lost the locker room," and that a players' coach will unlock this roster. Get somebody who smiles more, give the young guys freedom, let Jennings and Monta Ellis cook, and the Bucks will take off.

I do not buy it. Here is the problem: Jennings and Ellis in the same backcourt was always going to be an adventure. Two small guards who love to shoot and do not love to defend. A softer coach does not fix that. A softer coach probably makes it worse. Skiles was the guy forcing those two to at least pretend to care about defense. Take him away and you might get more points, but you will give up more too.

The young bigs are a different story. Larry Sanders was turning into a real shot blocking presence, and John Henson was a rookie with long arms and a lot to learn. If Boylan gives those two more minutes, that could genuinely help. But that is a rotation fix, not a culture fix. You do not need to remove a coach to play your young bigs more. You just need the coach to play them.

A players' coach is great until the players need someone to tell them no.

What happens next

My prediction, and I put this in writing in our group chat so I cannot run from it: the Bucks sneak into the playoffs as a low seed, get run out of the first round by one of the East heavyweights, and spend the summer arguing about whether to pay their guards. That is not a disaster. It is just the middle, which is the worst place to live in the NBA.

For the front office, this is the real question. Firing or parting with a coach is the easiest move you can make. It is also the one that changes the least if the roster has the same holes. Milwaukee needs a long term plan, either commit to the young core and develop it, or swing big for a star. Halfway is what got them here.

For fantasy owners, and I know some of you are reading this for exactly that reason, here is my quick take:

1. Larry Sanders is the guy to grab if he is somehow on your waiver wire. More minutes plus blocks is a winning fantasy formula.
2. Brandon Jennings and Monta Ellis probably get a little more freedom. Volume goes up, efficiency probably does not.
3. John Henson is a sneaky stash in deeper leagues. If the rotation loosens up, he will get looks.

I argued about every one of those three picks with my league last night, by the way. Nobody agreed with me on Henson. We will see.

Where Skiles goes from here

I would put my fantasy trophy (a very ugly bobblehead) on the line to say Skiles coaches again. Teams that are soft and need to learn defense will keep calling him, because his track record of making bad teams tough is real. The question is whether he can ever stick around for the second chapter, after the toughening up is done. So far, the answer has been no in three different cities.

Maybe he does not care. Maybe he likes being the guy who comes in, cleans up the mess, and leaves before anybody gets sentimental. There are worse ways to have a career.

Meanwhile, the young Bucks get to exhale. Enjoy it, fellas. The next guy might be nicer, but he will still want you to rotate on defense.

If you want more of my basketball rants, they live in the NBA section. And if you are more of a fantasy person, my long running struggle with one particular running back is in Can I Trust Larry Johnson Again?, and our Fantasy section has the rest of the waiver wire arguments.