Transcription provided by eCourt Reporters
GREG MATZEK: Bizarre situation that we’re all trying to get through right now. How are you managing the situation working from home and trying to get a lot of work done?
JON HORST: Yeah, I think, you know, like you said, I think many of us are in the same situation. I think that COVID 19 and this global pandemic has had a way of leveling the playing field and kind of normalizing or making everyone experience things in a very similar way. And in a lot of ways, of course, in very different ways. But I think the pillars for me of work/life balance has been a challenge, but I’ve learned a lot from it, you know, spending time with our families and making sure that we don’t look back on this time and regret not spending more time with our families. And with that being a silver lining and an opportunity to have time with our families right now has been something that’s been a focus of mine. And then just making sure as a leader in our organization, with Peter Feigin and Coach Bud, just making sure that we keep tabs on all of our staff and people that work for us and with us and making sure they’re doing okay and their families are doing okay and making sure that we’re keeping them focused and driven, of course, to our work and getting better every day and being ready to resume the season when it does happen — and it will happen at some point — while also making sure that they’re doing the same things in taking advantage of the opportunity that they might have with their families or for personal growth and professional growth.
So it’s an interesting time, a challenging time, but I think we’re making the most of it and very proud of the group that I work with and for the things that we’re doing in the Bucks organization.
GREG MATZEK: So how would you describe your typical day? You wake up and then what? How do you get from Point A to Point B?
JON HORST: You know, my typical day has not changed with the exception of two massive changes. So, the two things in my life that don’t exist right now is the constant travel and the nightly kind of consumption, I guess I would say, of games. And, you know, for me and since I’ve been in this role and really before this role, it’s very hard to say I’d be home for more than two or three days in a row at a time much less two or three weeks or four weeks. And so that part is completely different, not having basketball — sports in general, but basketball specifically to consume whether live or via video or TV as frequently. Those have been two massive changes. Besides that, I’m a pretty early riser, I wake up, I do my morning reading, I check in with my staff, really kind of based on those check-ins, you know, have action items and deliverables that come out of that and work on those and get through those throughout the day. You know, grab my workout usually sometime around 5 or 6 o’clock at night. Typically for me it’s a Pelyoton or a lift or going outside and riding the bike.
And then, you know, the piece that I get to do now that I don’t get to do is I get to wake up in the morning with my kids and go to bed at night with my kids and I get to have a family dinner. Those are things that I have not had a chance to do in a lot of years and taking advantage of those opportunities. But the routine and kind of a flow of my day is not a lot different, it’s just the location is different. And you take the travel element and the game element out of your daily schedule that’s been part of my life for, you know, well over a decade, that part’s different. That part’s weird, but the rest of the routine is pretty similar.
GREG MATZEK: So geography, writing, basic math, letter formation. I’ve got a 5 and a 3 year old, so that’s what I’m doing to start my day, and we go upstairs, the girls put the backpacks on and we set up a little school room to try and keep it as routine oriented as possible, and then I kind of get into my day. Are you kind of juggling that act of GM of the Bucks and teacher?
JON HORST: Greg, I do think I’m becoming a better father. I know I’m becoming a better executive, hopefully a better husband, but I’m definitely not as good as you. My wife is a rock star. My wife, Mia, she’s doing the home schooling. The kids have done a great job of kind of letting me be, letting me work for sure in the mornings before lunch and having my space and my time. And Mia really does the geography and math. And I think my daughter Sophie is a first grader, so I think today they were learning how to tell time on a clock. So, Sophie was really excited that she knew where you know, that 12 and 6 was 12:30. So that’s where they’re at. I’m getting the feedback from them. And I’m getting the end of the day summaries at the dinner table, but I’m not doing much of the teaching like you.
GREG MATZEK: Yeah, the reason I ask about your day, Jon, is because of what you just said. You’re on planes a lot and, you know, you’re trying to figure out what your playoff roster might look like and who your first-round opponent might look like and, you know, advanced scouting and things along that line, well, none of that really exists right now. Does this allow you to get a jumpstart on the MBA draft or are you still kind of looking at what a potential playoff could look like and who you might run up against?
JON HORST: No, I think that’s an interesting question and a good question. Respectfully, I would say that, you know, probably your summation on it is wrong, because all of that still exists. You know, there’s so much of that work that we do and that we’ve always done that is via video, via chats, you know, back and forth communications on email or text message or phone calls. The piece that’s not there is the face to face interaction, sitting in a room at a conference table kind of going over it that way. But so much of that work is done remotely because we’re a remote business, we’re a traveling machine. So, you know, we’re always on the road, we’re always having to figure out a way to be prepared for free agency or a draft or a playoff opponent.
So, a lot of those things still exist in our daily operation, our daily business right now. The thing that doesn’t exist is we don’t have a finish line. So, we don’t know when this is all going to take place and what exactly it will look like, but we know that it will take place. And we know that it will probably have a similar feel or look like it always has. And our league, you know, headed by Adam, Commissioner Silver, and the Players Association, and our ownership groups, these guys are doing — these people are doing an unbelievable job working toward the goal of having a resumption to the season, working toward a goal of making sure that we focus on the health of our society and the health of our players, first and foremost, and being a contributor to that effort to make sure that we have a healthier society and a society that gets through this together.
But we in Milwaukee, and I think every team that you would talk to, this is not that uncommon for us to be working a lot of the stuff remotely and fluidly, it’s just that we don’t have that endpoint, that target date for when these things will take place.
I’ll give you a great example: You mentioned a playoff opponent, there’s a high level of accuracy that we will end up playing the Orlando Magic or the Brooklyn Nets in the first round. There’s a half game that separates the two of them right now. We have a substantial lead in the Eastern Conference, and there’s a fairly big gap between those two and the sixth through two seeds. So, we have a pretty high level of confidence of what our one eight matchup will be when a playoff takes place, and so there’s been a ton of work that’s been done. Our analytics groups, our scouting groups, our coaching groups have done a lot of work preparing for those opponents. And it’s one of the things that we checked off on our to do list just today actually that we are, you know, in terms of preparation for those series, whoever that opponent will be, where that’s completed. So now we’ll move on to, you know, start studying what a second round opponent could look like. And I think that’s just one example of one area of our business that we’re continuing to work on and navigate.
