Mike Budenholzer Refusing To Call Timeouts In The Final Moments With The Bucks Season On The Line Was Truly Mind-Boggling

Jeff Haynes. Getty Images.

When you lose in 5 games to an injured 8 seed as the #1 overall seed in the Playoffs, it means there was a whole lot of choking going on. For the Bucks, that could be a wide variety of people. 

There's Jrue Holiday's defense disappearing all series long while his playoff shooting woes continued. There's all that "best in the NBA" depth that ultimately proved to be worthless, there's Giannis

but as Verno alluded to, there's also the coach. 

I don't think it's a surprise that Erik Spoelstra coached circles around Bud, but what we saw in Game 5 was maybe the worst coaching performance we've ever seen in a high stakes playoff game. One of the biggest gripes with Coach Bud is the man loves to hold onto his timeouts. He just refuses to call them ever. 

Now this a fluid topic in a sense that there are times in a basketball game where it makes sense to let your players play through adversity. We see that all the time. But there are also situations where everyone with a working brains know you need to call a timeout and try and keep your season alive. 

Example 1 came after this play

This was probably one of the biggest collective "HOLY SHIT" moments in recent playoff history. Watching it, I was too stunned to speak. What a play call, what a finish. Yeah Bucks fans cried about a pushoff, but grow up. You'll notice that after that bucket, there was 0.5 seconds on the clock. You'll also notice this little detail

Advertisement

The Bucks had a timeout, which if taken would have advanced the ball to halfcourt. Did Bud or anyone on the Bucks use it? Nope. Instead they inbounded the ball and time expired. When asked about it, Bud gave quite the response

While Bud will get most of the blame here, where are the rest of the assistants? How does nobody call a timeout and just run some sort of lob play to Lopez or Giannis? Your season is on the line!

In OT, things didn't get much better. After another 5 minutes of not being able to stop Jimmy Butler or the Heat, the Bucks were once again in a huge position with the ball in the final moments, with their season on the line

Coming off a missed FT, I get not initially calling a timeout here. Try and get the Heat in transition, you have Giannis, just have him go to the rim. So I don't fault Bud for not calling a timeout right away.

But once it was clear that Giannis was stopped in transition at the 5 second mark and that play was dead? Call a timeout. If you thought it was bad that Bud left one on the board to end the 4th, well he doubled down and left two on the board to end OT

Advertisement

Instead, he let things unfold, the ball found Grayson Allen, and the Bucks season went up in flames. 

Now who's to say the Bucks score in either of those spots coming out of a timeout, but I'm pretty sure they'd at least find better options than what they ended up getting. If you didn't want to call a timeout when Giannis passed it, how about when Middleton passed up that midrange jumper to pass it to Allen? In that spot with your season in the balance, your best players need to be touching the ball. Just an all time blunder from Budenholzer.

The good news is maybe this will be the thing that finally gets the Bucks a new coach, which is something if you scan the internet is what Bucks fans have wanted for a while. This certainly isn't the first time we've seen this from Bud, but for it to happen in the first round against an injured 8 seed might be enough to finally pull the trigger. Could this be where Nick Nurse lands? I could see it.

They say coaches can't win you games but they can absolutely lose them for you, and I think this was a good example of that. There was no offensive strategy/tweaks in the 4th quarter as the Bucks 16 point lead started to dwindle, the end of game management was horrific, and now their season is over.

Let this be a lesson to every coach out there (especially Joe Mazzulla), timeouts are OK. You can't take them with you as you board your plane to Cancun, so make sure you actually use them when you need to save your season.