The Milwaukee Bucks arrived at Christmas Day 2015 with the unwelcome distinction of being the most exasperating team in the NBA.
It is of little comfort to the Bucks and their fans that by season’s end, the Chicago Bulls and Houston Rockets passed Milwaukee as elites in terms of eliciting exasperation. The Bucks let this season get away from them, and there’s no sense in spending too much time lamenting that development. The immediate focus for this organization is clear if 2017 is to restore what 2016 eroded: the identity of this franchise as one of the league’s up-and-coming outfits.
The Orlando Magic do not offer a situation identical to what the Bucks face. The Magic started this season well, at 19-13, before falling off a cliff in the next two months of play. The Bucks never really got going this season; in that sense, the two organizations followed different paths.
Yet, the common thread for Orlando and Milwaukee still very much remains: These young teams surprised the rest of the league to a certain extent, before being punched in the gut. The point of variance is that the trajectory and swiftness of regression acquired different dimensions.
The Magic unraveled within one season, reaching a certain height in early January but then failing to retain it. The Bucks reached their height within the course of the 2015 season. Their fall occurred within the context of the following season, a miserable trek in which they never really found themselves. One could perhaps debate which trajectory is worse, but that ultimately feels like nitpicking. The bottom line is that both teams are young, and both got pushed back by the league this past season, as is normally the case with players who are learning how to be pros.
Milwaukee fans shouldn’t allow one season to derail their dreams… at least not if the organization makes good decisions in the offseason and Jason Kidd — dogged by health problems this past season — is able to reset his own dial and adjust to his first subpar season as an NBA head coach.
The Bucks should be optimistic about their future because this guy (above) is blossoming into one of the league’s best players. Giannis Antetokounmpo has refined his game, marrying his explosive talent with better court sense and an increased understanding of how to use his body in various situations.
Milwaukee didn’t make a giant leap forward on offense this season, but its offensive rating did increase from 2015, which is noteworthy for reasons we’ll soon mention. Antetokounmpo is offering ample indications that he’s an anchor-level player, someone the rest of this team can latch onto in the seasons ahead. Giannis can draw enough attention that other players should be able to get open shots and enable this team to continue to improve at the offensive end of the floor.
That’s where the problems of the 2016 season come into play: Milwaukee simply did not (does not) possess many players who attempted large quantities of 3-point shots and hit them with any real consistency. Steve Novak was a trade-deadline acquisition who was supposed to have provided this specific boost to the Bucks, but he suffered an injury three games into his return to the arena (the Bradley Center) where he played college ball at Marquette. The rest of the roster — with the exception of Khris Middleton (353 attempts through Saturday, not quite an average of five attempts per game) — just doesn’t take many threes. Jerryd Bayless will finish the season with an average of roughly three 3-point attempts per game. He hits almost 44 percent, but his low shot volume reinforces the Bucks’ insufficient use of this weapon.
Given the Bucks’ uneasy relationship with the 3-point shot, the team’s defense — which is what carried them to the playoffs last season — needed to maintain its high level. Instead, the Bucks were blown away at that end of the floor in 2016. Their defensive rating fell by nearly seven whole points, from the top tier of the league to the lower half of the Association. The Bucks allow roughly six more points per game than they did in 2015.
The Bucks’ abundance of length, combined with Kidd’s defensive scheme, made them a tough team to solve a season ago. In the offseason, NBA coaching staffs figured out ways to puncture the Bucks’ defense. Kidd will need to make tactical adjustments this season, but he’ll also need to consider where certain pieces fit. Consider a player such as John Henson.
The North Carolina product missed an extended portion of this past season due to a lower back injury, but when he was in the lineup (through January), the Bucks didn’t thrive. Henson is only 25 years old, but his per-game minutes — normally in the mid-to-high teens — rarely go beyond 21 or 22 per game. The big-man rotation with Miles Plumlee and Greg Monroe is something Kidd has to put in place next season. Some might say the Bucks have depth at center, but if no one player stays on the court long enough to feel comfortable, the larger effort to develop effective, polished bigs will be undermined. Henson is therefore one representation of the Bucks’ in-between choices, particularly in the frontcourt.
In the backcourt, there’s no more in-between player than Michael Carter-Williams.
It’s well-known that Magic Johnson took time to turn what was a liability of a jump shot into an effective offensive weapon. Point guards who focus on their floor game and their defense might not develop their jumpers as quickly as they need to. However, these are not the early-1980s Los Angeles Lakers, and this is a league in which the 3-point shot matters to an extent the 1980s game never remotely considered. MCW has to develop his offensive game to the point that defenses can’t pay too much attention to Giannis or Middleton, and if this process of development doesn’t move along (quickly enough), the Bucks must consider — perhaps at the 2017 trade deadline — a different path for their future.
On balance, the Bucks have “good” problems. The progression of Antetokounmpo and the quality of Khris Middleton, plus the simple fact that Jabari Parker was able to play this season without injury and get baptized in the waters of the NBA, should give Milwaukee a better idea of where its core strengths lie. That these strengths are found in very young players — with many years ahead of them — should be a definite source of encouragement for the Bucks.
The challenge is to offer a supporting cast which can implement needed adjustments at both ends of the floor. If Jason Kidd can put the right pieces together, the memory of this disappointing 2016 season will quickly fade away. In fact, the past five and a half months might be recalled as a time when some necessarily painful growth enabled this organization to move forward.
