This week, we’ve garnered your thoughts on trader drafter Jon. Often praised for his ability to secure heists via trade, Horst’s drafting reputation has, well… been a point of contention.
Prior to polling, it seemed that Bucks fans were largely down on Horst as a drafter, but what seems to be consensus and what’s actually consensus are sometimes two completely different things. As a teacher, I see this all the time. On this occasion, however, the voting—and consensus—is clear: Horst sucks.
In truth, it’s hard to ignore the reality of Horst’s draft selections. D.J. Wilson is out of the league. Jordan Nwora is too. Andre Jackson Jr. is hanging by a thread (though he may have found a lifeline), as are MarJon Beauchamp, Chris Livingston, Tyler Smith, and AJ Johnson—if they haven’t already dropped. You know it too:
G may: It was a failure in team building. There’s no reason to nuance it. He had picks. He missed worse than Rickie Weeks swinging for the fences on a curveball in the dirt in the leadoff spot.
R984: No high picks, sure. But look at where Miami picked the collection of good players we just got from them. 1 out of 6 isn’t good enough. Not nearly good enough.
Theshackman: No. And if you think about this as “overall return on draft capital” (picks traded away) it looks even worse.
While the majority of fans (51%) clearly think Horst has let the Bucks down with his selections, it’s not so cut and dry for all, with 36% of voters thinking it’s nuanced:
Knuckles: My answer then was in the middle: we need to draft better moving forward and fortify our floor, and lean into player development, but that is not where the Bucks were for a while. We have a new identity now to lean into and we should, but I also don’t want to ignore the nuance that led us to making some of these choices in the first place.
Sportsfanwisc: I went with the middle ground. The NBA as a whole gets a D grade for player development. Around the draft and polls such as this I scroll through NBA drafts as a sobering reminder out of 60 picks only 20 to 25 will play any meaningful minutes.
Kaz5: My point is only that drafting guys is really, really challenging. Even going off of the best information available at the time, no one really, truly knows what is going to happen. That doesn’t mean that you give each and every GM a pass every time, but keep in mind that nothing in the draft is certain.
Of course, the empaths among us, despite making up just 13% of voters, weren’t without rationale either:
BucksInMA:I think people are a little harsh – Donte outperformed his draft slot and Horst’s second round success in genuinely really good.
BenDrankin3000: I chose he has been treated too harshly. I think he deserves some criticism for drafting, I just think a lot of the criticism has been a bit over the top. He didn’t exactly have a ton of high picks to work with.
In all, it seems Horst has indeed lost broken his compass when it comes to the draft—at least as far as fans are concerned. Here’s hoping Burries’ and Ament’s play this season is good enough to start righting that ship.
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