2018 NBA Season Preview Series: Milwaukee Bucks

With a good crop of teams to choose from, all of which I think we expect to make the playoffs next season, I can’t say I was surprised by how even things were. Normally I can tell who will probably be a run away winner in these polls, but with each of these teams entering the 2018-19 NBA season with a handful of intriguing stories, I certainly don’t mind who ended up coming out ahead. The Bucks are an interesting team in that they are pretty deep in their rebuild and don’t really have much to show for it in terms of team success. I feel like the Bucks are one of those teams where we all think they should be good, but when it’s all said and done nothing really changes. Now obviously before we dive into where they currently are as a franchise and what you can expect moving forward, we first should look back to how their season looked last year

2017-18 Season Highlights

Outside of Bucks fans, I’m not sure the general NBA fan really understands what life is like being a fan of this franchise. To be honest before I started digging into the Bucks for this blog, it didn’t really become clear to me what MIL fans have had to deal with. Did you know this franchise had made it past the first round of the playoffs just once since 1988? Did you know that the one time came nearly 20 years ago in the 2000-01 season? That’s essentially 30 years of either missing the playoffs (16 times) or losing in the first round (12 times). I know there are some franchises that are struggling right now, but I don’t think we really talk about this when it comes to the Bucks. What’s crazy is they’ve had some great talent too! From Gary Payton, to Glenn Robinson, to Ray Allen and Michael Redd, to now having Giannis & Co, I found this fact to be a little crazy. Normally a franchise filled with this type of futility never really has the talent to make you think they are capable of anything else, but with the Bucks it feels like for my entire life they should be better than they really are. But this isn’t a blog meant to upset Bucks fans everywhere, but to look at their upcoming season with reason for optimism. As we do in every blog, here is how their roster looks right this second

At a total of $118,118,216 the Bucks currently have the 16th most expensive roster in the NBA. Given the talent on their roster, that’s actually not half bad. It would be even lower if not for the $7M they are currently carrying in dead cap money, but all things considered for a “small” market, this is isn’t a situation where ownership refuses to spend money on their roster. Now hitting on guys like Brogdon and Maker who are main rotation players playing for essentially pennies certainly helps, but on paper Bucks fans have every reason to think they can absolutely be among the top 3 or 4 teams in the Eastern Conference.

But here’s the thing when it comes to MIL, they cannot stop underachieving. I think we can all agree they employ one of if not THE best overall player in the East. It’s not exactly a hot take to suggest Giannis will for sure be in the MVP discussion based on his development, and if that’s the case it’s only fair we start treating him with the same sort of expectations that we had for other MVP candidates. His team NEEDS to take a jump in my opinion. They have the talent, the conference is weak enough, and while their coaching may be a question mark, at the end of the day this is no longer a team that can win low to mid 40s and hover around the 7/8 seed. Their series against the Celtics showed they can compete on that elite level, so we know they are capable. So what’s the deal? Why does it seem like MIL can never get over the hump? Well for me, it starts in one place.

To put it bluntly, the Bucks defense stinks. I mean stinks out loud. Out of every team that made the playoffs in the East last year, only the Bucks had a negative point differential. For those who don’t know what that means, basically opponents averaged more points against them than they averaged as a team. You look at all the legit teams in the league, point differentials tell you the story in my opinion. Hard to find a team that is really good, that has a negative number there. This team has so much length, it’s hard to imagine their Drtg would be so poor, but a 107.1 number (17th in the NBA) is unacceptable. Given their talent, I wanted to dig a little deeper and see just who the problem guys were, so I looked at everyone who played at least 1,000 minutes last year for MIL and was still on the team. Guys like Middleton (111), Snell (114), Brogdon (113), and Maker (110) were by far the biggest liabilities. That surprised me because I always considered everyone on this list a plus defender, but they just didn’t show up on the defensive end last season while all of them were main rotation guys. I’m not sure if it was a system issue or what, but opponents shot 46.8% against MIL last year (20th in NBA) and while they did a decent job in limiting 3PM, in terms of opponent 3P% they still struggled, holding teams to just 37.2% which is 25th. Things didn’t get much better when you look in the paint either, as their 47.3 paint points allowed put them 23rd in the league.

It’s actually pretty interesting when you look historically, because since 2010, the Bucks have had a team Drtg of 103 or less just twice. In the last 5 seasons (aka the Giannis years) they put up 110, 109, 108, 102, 112 team ratings. Again for a team this long, with one of the best two way players in the league, their inability to defend makes no sense to me. So even if you wanted to just blame things on Kidd, it’s not as if they got any better with Prunty calling the shots.

On the offensive side, one thing is clear and that’s MIL does not really want to kill you from behind the arc. It’s just not a huge part of their offensive approach. Last season they made just 8.8 3PM a night (27th) while taking just 24.7 3PA (24th). The three point shot accounts for just 24% of their points, which you guessed it, is at the bottom of the league. So how do they score? Well, since they have Giannis, they run a lottttt of isolation and are actually pretty effective with 0.92 points per iso possession (7th). They’ll also kill you in the P&R with either Brogdon/Giannis/Bledsoe as they put up a respectable 0.88 points per possession (6th). But when it comes to MIL, I would say their biggest impact on either end is what happens in transition. The one thing you have to know with this team is if you turn it over, you’re dead. That’s what they want to do, they want to run. A total of 19.4% of their plays are transition plays which is 2nd in the entire league, and only three teams have a higher scoring frequency in transition plays. With guys like Giannis that isn’t all that surprising, but what they also to a great job of is limiting YOU in transition. They gave up just 10.1 fast break points a night last year, which was the third best in the league, and seeing as how they were just outside the Top 10 in turnovers, to beat them you’re going to have to do it in the half court.

When you look at this roster, there are a ton of reasons to be optimistic. First off, Khris Middleton is legit as hell, and anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t been paying attention. To me he is one of those classic guys who performs at an All Star level, but because it’s a popularity contest may never get the recognition. They have a nice mix of young promising talent with proven NBA veterans, plus they also just unveiled this badass brand new training facility

which everyone knows is an important first step towards making progress on the court. I think their additions of Pat Connaughton, Donte DiVencenzo, and Brooke Lopez, as well as bringing back Ilyasova is going to help from a depth perspective, but also help spread the floor and give Giannis more space to do Giannis things. Obviously there is a ton of pressure on him, but everything we’ve seen from him tells us he’s ready to take that big time leap.

The Bucks are famous for underachieving, they’ve certainly done that for the last 30 years, and you can call me a sucker for buying into this group, but I don’t think we’ll have another 7/8 seed season if everyone stays healthy. There is just too much talent in my mind. Who knows if they get back to the level they were during the 1980s where they were winning 50+ every year, but this team has a few more seasons of trying before maybe it’s time to consider blowing this up and starting all over. The NBA is going to jam Giannis down out throats (for good reason), now that LeBron is out of the East, I just hope the rest of the team lives up to the hype.

Official Greenie Prediction: 48 wins