GARY D'AMATO

D'Amato: Bucks players share in the blame for Jason Kidd's firing

Gary D'Amato

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Jason Kidd had a star in forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, who worked as hard as anyone, but even Antetokounmpo was prone to going one-on-three occasionally.

I’m not here to defend Jason Kidd. The Bucks were underperforming, inconsistent, muddling along with absolutely nothing to suggest they were suddenly going to figure things out. Whatever Kidd’s message was, it wasn’t getting through.

The coach had to go. That his star player told him he was getting the axe before general manager Jon Horst got around to it does not say good things about the way the organization is being run, but that’s another story altogether.

Here’s the thing, though, that the gleeful #FireKidd crowd is missing:

The players bear at least 50% of the blame for this mess. They helped get Kidd fired by failing to show up for too many games, by their indifferent approach to defense, by sharing equally in a frequently dysfunctional half-court offense.

Kidd excused away the Bucks’ maddening lapses by insisting that it was a young team. He said it so often that it might have become a crutch.

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We’re sloppy with the ball? We don’t defend the corner three? We don’t rebound? We over-dribble, go one-on-one too often, take bad shots too early in the shot clock, or tough ones too late?

Hey, we’re young!

Except it’s not true. This is Eric Bledsoe’s eighth season, John Henson’s and Khris Middleton’s sixth and Giannis Antetokounmpo’s, Tony Snell’s and Matthew Dellavedova’s fifth. Combined, they’ve played in nearly 2,200 NBA games. Even Malcolm Brogdon and Thon Maker each has played in more than 100.

They’re all complicit in Kidd’s firing. To his credit, Antetokounmpo almost never takes a possession off on either end of the court and hates to lose more than he loves to win, a trait shared by the great ones. But even he is guilty of occasionally forgetting he has teammates and going one-on-three.

It’s maddening to hear the players say, after lackluster efforts, that they’ve got to play harder, defend better, share the ball more … only to see them go out two nights later and do the same things.

If they know what they’re doing wrong, and it’s fixable, why don’t they fix it?

Certainly, coaching is a factor. It would be foolish to suggest that one of the great point guards in the game’s history doesn’t know the game well enough to teach it. So the logical conclusion is that something was lost in translation.

Whether the players were unwilling or unable to adhere to Kidd’s principles hardly matters. There is irrefutable evidence, in the form of a 23-22 record at the time of his firing, that he couldn’t get the team to play to its potential.

But the players don’t get a pass from me, and they shouldn’t get one from Bucks fans.

I have no idea how they will respond to Joe Prunty, but he’s been Kidd’s right-hand man so I suspect things won’t be much different unless everyone who pulls on a Bucks jersey takes a good, hard look in the mirror.

The players must be proactive about fixing their problems instead of excusing them away. They must hold each other accountable, or we’re going to get to the end of the season and say, “Yup, same old Bucks.”