Milwaukee Bucks general manager Jon Horst is, quite frankly, one of the best executives in the history of the franchise. He and Ray Patterson are the only two general managers to ever build a NBA Championship-winning roster in Milwaukee. While he has had his failed free agent signings and draft picks, his successful transactions far outweigh them.
While Horst was not the one who drafted two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, he is the one who convinced the eight-time All-Star to sign two supermax extensions to remain in Milwaukee. He also first orchestrated the Jrue Holiday trade, which culminated in that aforementioned NBA title. Last season, he dealt Holiday for NBA 75th Anniversary Team point guard Damian Lillard.
Perhaps not surprisingly, these are all reasons why Horst, the 2019 NBA Executive of the Year, was the target of the Detroit Pistons’ search for their next President of Basketball Operations.
The Detroit Pistons Wanted to Interview Milwaukee Bucks General Manager Jon Horst
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As reported earlier, not only did the Pistons want to interview Horst to be their next President of Basketball Operations, but Horst was also interested in talking to them.
However, the Bucks did not even let talks begin as they refused to grant Detroit permission to talk to Horst, who is under contract with Milwaukee for another two seasons.
If Horst is angling for a higher-paying job, and if the Bucks want to keep him around longer than the next two years, they may have to promote him from general manager to the aforementioned title he would have had if he had been offered the job from Detroit.
Horst is a Detroit native and got his start in NBA front offices with the Pistons.
NBA Insider Suggests the Milwaukee Bucks Would Have Wanted Compensation from the Detroit Pistons for Jon Horst
In a recent article that updated the Pistons’ search for their next President of Basketball Operations, NBA insiders James L. Edwards III and Shams Charania suggested that the Bucks may have been asking for assets from the Pistons in exchange for Horst:
“The Pistons were denied permission to interview Milwaukee’s Jon Horst last week, league and team sources tell The Athletic. It is possible that the Bucks were posturing to get assets from Detroit in order to take Horst, who signed a multi-year deal with Milwaukee in 2021. However, the Pistons have decided to move on to other candidates.”
It is worth noting that one of the Bucks’ goals this season is to get younger. It is also worth noting that Detroit was just awarded the fifth overall pick in this year’s NBA Draft.
If Milwaukee was trying to get a draft pick or two in exchange for their general manager, that might have been enough for the Pistons to back away.
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