In June 2021, Rick Carlisle parted ways with the Dallas Mavericks after 13 seasons with the workforce, pondering he had a head-coaching job ready for him with a Central Division workforce. He did, although it wasn’t the one he anticipated.
The Milwaukee Bucks had been rumored for years to be occupied with hiring Carlisle. In 2018, the workforce employed Mike Budenholzer as a substitute, as a result of Carlisle was beneath contract with the Mavericks. The Bucks gained a variety of video games beneath Budenholzer, however after they misplaced the Japanese Convention Finals in 2019 after main 2-0, then had been upset by the Miami Warmth within the second spherical in 2020, Budenholzer was on the new seat.
He might have been on the verge of being fired because the Brooklyn Nets, enjoying with out Kyrie Irving, took the Bucks to Sport 7 of their second-round sequence, and appeared to beat them when Kevin Durant drilled a turnaround jumper behind the three-point line.
However Durant’s toe was on the road, and the sport headed to additional time, the place the Bucks pulled out a 115-111 victory.
That sport occurred two days after Carlisle resigned from the Mavericks. When the Bucks headed to the Japanese Convention Finals, the place they had been enormous favorites towards the Atlanta Hawks, Carlisle realized Budenholzer wasn’t going to be fired — particularly when the Bucks gained all of it a month later. As an alternative, Carlisle returned to the Indiana Pacers, the place he’d coached from 2003-07, an unfortunate tenure the place one of many NBA’s greatest rosters was destroyed by the fallout from the “Malice within the Palace” brawl in Detroit in 2004.
The remaining is historical past.
The Pacers remade their workforce in Carlisle’s first season, buying and selling most of their starters and buying Tyrese Haliburton. Carlisle is notoriously powerful on younger level guards, typically desirous to name his personal performs from the sidelines. His groups additionally typically performed a gradual tempo earlier than this stint in Indiana.
Now, he trusts Haliburton and his workforce performs with one of many quickest paces within the NBA. The Bucks have misplaced within the first spherical in three straight postseasons, the newest two by the hands of the Pacers. Milwaukee is on its second head coach since Budenholzer, who has been fired by the Bucks and the Phoenix Suns since Carlisle returned to Indianapolis.
And if Durant’s footwear had been half a measurement smaller, none of this will have ever occurred.
