What’s Wrong With The Milwaukee Bucks?
The Milwaukee Bucks went into the All star break on a 8-1 run over their last nine games. Riding high having won 30 games before the All Star break for the first time in over ten years. The core of Brandon Knight, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton were starting to look legit, and with the thought of adding Jabari Parker back next year things were looking bright for Bucks fans.
All was well and then a trade happened. I’m not going to go over all the reasons why the trade was the right move, or why it wasn’t. There are hundreds of articles on the matter. Even a few on Behind the Buck Pass. RIGHT NOW.
More from Behind the Buck Pass
- Bucks 2023-24 player profile: Can MarJon Beauchamp take a leap?
- Piecing together the Milwaukee Bucks’ dream starting 5 in 5 years
- Predicting Thanasis Antetokounmpo’s 2023-24 stats for the Bucks
- Grade the trade: Bucks land reputable backup guard in swap with Pacers
- New workout video should have Milwaukee Bucks fans excited
Since the trade the Bucks have gone 2-5, their offense has looked like a flaming pile of hot garbage, while their defense has been good enough to keep them in games but not good enough to win them games.
Has this fall from grace happened because the Bucks made a trade and ended up out smarting themselves? Did Kidd and Hammond think they could trade arguably their best player and just plug someone else in and keep trucking? Or did the Knight trade just happen to coincide with a gigantic crash back to earth for our veterans that had been out performing their averages?
Before the win streak the Bucks played 44 games. In these 44 games Jerryd Bayless averaged 32 percent from three, Jared Dudley averaged 40 percent from three, and O.J. Mayo averaged 35 percent from three.
Making huge contributions off the bench and providing valuable spacing for the aggression of Giannis and Knight at the time. Then the Bucks went on their crazy 8-1 run where the aforementioned guards averaged a scorching 44 percent from Bayless, 55 percent from Dudley, and 35 percent from Mayo.
Since then, the Bucks trio of bench guards have been trying their hardest to get back to their career averages, OJ has been missing time and shots due to an apparent hamstring injury, Dudley has been in and out of the lineup with a re-aggravation to the knee that caused the Clippers to pay us for him, and Bayless has gone from spot up, off the ball facilitator, to ball-dominant chucker. All while shooting under 30% from three, after the break.
Overall the Bucks as a team have just not shot very well, they’ve run the same offense and the same plays as they did with Knight. They’ve gotten about as many open shots as they usually get, they have just not been knocking them down. Some of this can be contributed to the Knight trade as he was a VERY good knock down jump shooter. However, one player is not the reason for such a gigantic down-swing in makes.
Thanks to Brett Abramczyk (@RW23_) for the table above
On top of poor shooting from everyone post break, adding three new players into your rotation mid season is hard, especially when it is a starting point guard that has a play style so different from the one he is replacing. It takes time for players to adjust to each other both on the offensive and defensive ends.
One underrated aspect of Kidd’s defense is how much teamwork is involved. When you play guys all taller than 6’6″ from positions 1-4, constant switching is the name of the game. However constant switching requires constant talking, something I am almost certain Michael Carter-WIlliams didn’t have a lot of in Philadelphia.
The amount of communicating on defense that is required can be heard on the broadcast constantly, and especially pre-break when Dudley was choreographing the defense. Constant talking and moving is what makes the Bucks defense so potent. It’s also something that has been lost with the decision to move Dudley to the bench. Without him in the starting lineup you have 3 guys who speak English as a second language, Khris Middleton who is a very quiet person, and MCW who has been with the team for about 10 days.
It’s no wonder why our deffensive rotations have lacked since the All-Star break, and its something that should improve more as MCW gets familiar with the defense and the calls.
Carter-Williams has already started to show promise. In his first game as a Buck he had no problem talking to Giannis about going hero ball mode. He also had no problem telling Giannis to go for more Alley Oops as he will hit him in the hands, or the top of the back board. MCW has shown flashes of why Kidd and the Bucks wanted him, but he has also shown flashes of why the 6er’s traded him.
In the end this quote from Marc Lasry in an interview with Bloomberg TV in early September sums it up.
"You know I’d love to tell you it’s going to take a year, [but] I don’t think so. I think it’s going to be somewhere around three to five years. I think it will take a while."
I think right now we have the best team in the NBA that’s under 23. So if you sort of look at it, we have a great group of young guys and the question is how well are they going to develop. We think they’re going to develop really well, so I think within three years we’ll end up being a pretty formidable team.
We will just have to wait and see.
Go Bucks.