Milwaukee Bucks: The Perils of Being Young, Good and Bad All at Once

In a season that has started with a mix of good and bad, there’s a need for calm inside and outside of the Milwaukee Bucks organization.

Expectations are a very strange and fluid thing. If there’s any NBA team that should understand this, it’s the Milwaukee Bucks.

Having entered last season with high hopes following a competitive playoff series and with a big-money free agent signing in tow, the Bucks fell flat on their face. This year, they looked set for significant improvement thanks to the internal growth of their young stars, and then one of those key cogs suffered a potentially season-ending injury just as training camp convened.

Those two scenarios may ultimately end up seeing the Bucks miss out on their respective targets of the previous summer for two seasons running, but the differing journey for each campaign leaves less of a through line to draw conclusions from. That becomes a positive and a negative in its own right.

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The Bucks were never going to compete for a championship this year. With the perfect season they may have just sneaked their way into the second round of the Playoffs. When Khris Middleton, undoubtedly the team’s most reliable performer from last season, went down injured, the team’s dream ceiling for 2016-17 plummeted significantly.

Regardless of any canned soundbites from the team or the media, expectations needed to change. More specifically, they needed to move away from win totals being used as a measure for success. This needed to be about development and growth, both individually and as a team.

When a team has spent the best part of two decades of building and rebuilding towards nothing, development is not the word that anybody wants to have to invest their time and energy in. It’s a measure that will hold a different relevance for every party involved, from coach, to player, to fan, and as such it’s almost impossible to quantify or gauge in the moment.

It’s easy to cheer a remarkable win against the Cavaliers, but it’s different in trying to see the positives from games that end up in late collapses against the Spurs, Hawks and Wizards.

In other words, this can quickly lead to a sense of impatience. Details like strength of schedule become increasingly immaterial in light of questioning how a team can go from winning five of their last six to losing three straight in the space of a week. The search for answers can easily lead down blind alleys. It becomes more about identifying a scapegoat than finding answers.

It could be Jason Kidd‘s fault for not staggering his starters.

It could be Jabari Parker‘s fault for any number of defensive lapses.

It could be Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s fault for careless late game turnovers.

It could be John Hammond’s fault for signing off on Miles Plumlee‘s new contract.

In reality, it’s both all and none of those people’s fault. Like so much in sport, as in life, the answers lie in the grey area rather than the bold and brash, black and white.

In fact, if you were to draw up a Venn diagram of NBA teams who are good and NBA teams who are bad, you’d find the Bucks where both intersect. Mired in the middle as they have been for the best part of the last quarter of a century.

That’s an important detail to remember when assessing where the Bucks currently sit too. Even with fond memories of a team who could have won it all in 2001, the franchise hasn’t been good, never mind great, in a long time. When you’ve only finished above .500 in five of the last 25 seasons, something needs to change and change significantly.

This is the thinking that has led some NBA teams to systematically tank, year after year, in an attempt to shift the future odds in their favor. The Bucks on the other hand have been lucky. There may not be a whole lot of fun in being average, but out of only one truly awful season, a group filled with promise and potential ultimately emerged.

That stroke of luck meant the path to Milwaukee’s current crop of talent was relatively painless, but it perhaps did everybody a disservice. Sure, the times were never good, but they were rarely bad enough for a hard-worn patience to burn through.

As a result, when the Bucks reached the playoffs with a .500 season in 2014-15, the ownership, the front office and the fanbase were all set to kick on. The moves got bolder, the confidence rose, and then even the smaller disappointments led to a heightened sense of dissatisfaction.

The real problems arise when things get taken for granted. When I recently tweeted out the above clip of Giannis gliding towards the hoop in all of his glory, the statement I accompanied it with inspired some reactions that opened my eyes.

At a time when Antetokounmpo’s name is being mentioned in similar company to many of the game’s all-time greats, it didn’t seem like too much to stop and consider how lucky the Bucks were to land such a potentially transcendent talent. As multiple replies and quote tweets started to roll in, a different reading of the situation emerged.

For many, there was no greater thought to it. The argument was the Bucks deserve Giannis because of countless years of mediocrity.

The problem is that the NBA is not a meritocracy. It’s not always about getting rewarded for doing the right things, and it certainly isn’t the place for a sense of entitlement. Fate, luck and a host of miscellaneous factors can intervene at any given time.

As Giannis continues to get better, what should be an immeasurable sense of joy for a future of endless possibilities also turns the heat up in terms of the team’s current direction. That’s not unfair, but it’s important to take stock of the team’s current direction (and whether we’re even really getting to see it in full effect) before the finger-pointing begins.

In that regard, it feels as if the better the Greek Freak plays, the harsher every other member of the Bucks will be judged. It’s been a while since the Bucks have had a player with the potential that Antetokounmpo has (try way back in 1975), but it’s important to realize what makes Antetokounmpo special is that every player can’t play or be held to his incredibly high standards.

Framed by a sense of entitlement that was fueled by the years of mediocrity or having eventually found a potential franchise-changing star again, it’s easy to see how, for some, living and breathing possession by possession becomes the only way to digest what this team is and what it eventually can be.

Yet nothing is that immediate. Furthermore, it’s impossible to judge what the Bucks can be when, without Middleton, they’re not even what their current roster has them constructed to be right now.

The Bucks are at a point where every bad play or mistake shouldn’t be viewed as a fatal flaw in their long term plan. They’re young, they’re learning and they’re working towards improving.

Is the center situation ideal? Of course not, but it remains too soon to decry it as the iceberg that will sink Milwaukee’s Titanic. Is Jabari’s defense worrying? Sure, but he’s averaging just below 20 points per game at 21-years-old.

Now is not the time for the Bucks to get overly busy, as with a clean bill of health and further internal development they may be closer to competing than it currently appears. At this point, “Own the Future” may feel like a tired and trite marketing slogan, but it captures some truth for how the people of Milwaukee needs to approach this team right now.

For a franchise and a fanbase that has been starved of success for so long, what’s the harm in waiting a little longer for things to click into place?

Sure, there’s a chance it all doesn’t pan out for this team, but having the patience to afford them the chance to reach their full potential is a much better option than making flippant, reactionary decisions and asking “what if” for another 25 years to come.

Next: Win In 6 Podcast #90: What Have We Learned About Jason Kidd This Season?

Own the Future, or at the very least, wait for it.