Six months of events, from a change of ownership to the restructuring of an organization, to the drafting of Jabari Parker to the trades for head coach Jason Kidd and forward Jared Dudley and a future first round draft pick have led to the official, on-court start of the 2014-15 Milwaukee Bucks season – the beginning of training camp today at the Cousins Center in St. Francis.

From the start of their ownership in the spring, Wes Edens and Marc Lasry had made it clear that the franchise was going to head in a new direction, with the end goal being a return to championship expectations.

To get there however, a foundation would have to be laid with young talent, and then built upon.

"It’s a process," Edens acknowledged. "It’s both having a better quality team on the court, that’s for sure, it’s having a belief that there is a vision about what we’re trying to accomplish, and it’s the game day experience itself.

"You want to make it so it’s a great place to come and fun to come with your friends and your family and enjoy good basketball. All those things are what we focus on."

When Kidd was acquired from Brooklyn in July, however, one wondered if the timeline had changed. As a first-year coach, Kidd led the veteran-laden Nets to the second round of the playoffs.

There, the expectation was to at least contend for an Eastern Conference championship, if not an NBA title.

This year, in Milwaukee, the two cornerstones of the franchise – Parker and Giannis Antetokounmpo – are 19 years old. Draft pick Damien Inglis is another teenager.
The average age of the 16 players who are either 2014 draft picks or have NBA experience is just 23.75 years.

"We’re just going to say we’ll take one day at a time," Kidd said. "There is no expectations for us to win a championship or for us to compete (for one). The expectation is for us to get better each time we take the floor."

General manager John Hammond said that while losing is not a foregone conclusion – "I know these guys on this roster want to win games. I know the coaches want to win games" – he said the edict from ownership hasn’t changed.

"We look here and say that the important thing is to let it happen naturally, organically, not try to expedite the process," he said. "That would probably the worst thing for us to do right now. That we’re going to improve in the old theory of improving from within, that that’s going to be very important to us, to see that kind of growth."

Kidd also acknowledged it will be a process, one that will include mistakes from him and the players.

"There’s a learning curve that we all have to go through, coaches and players," he said. "So, we ask our fans to be patient. But we also ask them to come out every night and support us.

"There’s going to be times when we do mistakes. There is no perfect game, there’s no perfect player or perfect coach, but we’re in this together."

That said, everyone involved in the organization understands that to reinvigorate the fan base, to garner support for public financing, and even to create a positive chemistry within the locker room, coming out on the top end of the box score is the best way to do that.

"As a sports fan, it’s always better when you’re winning," Lasry admitted. "When you’re losing, everyone’s having a harder time. I think for us, I think we’ll definitely be a lot better than we were last year, and we’ll see where we go from there."