Milwaukee Bucks: Summer Of Point Guard Decisions Ahead

With doubts cast over almost all of their options at the position, the Milwaukee Bucks could have a busy summer on the lookout for point guards.

The Milwaukee Bucks have had five different players spend meaningful minutes playing the point guard position across the first 56 games of the 2015-16 season and it’s entirely possible that none of those five could be around to take a shot at it next season.

Backup point guards Jerryd Bayless and Greivis Vasquez will hit unrestricted free agency this summer, as will O.J. Mayo, who as strange as it would have seemed at the start of the season certainly has to be included in the team’s point guard discussions now.

Tyler Ennis has had a bizarre season ranging from occasional starting appearances early in the season, to frequent periods of registering DNPs on the box score. The 21-year-old is under contract next season, but with reports suggesting the team may have tried to trade him at the deadline, his future is certainly in doubt.

Then there’s Michael Carter-Williams, the man who Milwaukee traded for just over 12 months ago. The hope was that Jason Kidd would have been able to mold him into the team’s long term floor general, but Carter-Williams was another player whose name surfaced in trade rumors, and many of the whispers suggest that the organization has lost faith in him.

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This leaves the Bucks in for a busy summer as the franchise who always seems to be looking for a point guard, could even be searching for multiple of them this year.

It’s certainly not implausible to suggest that there’s a strong chance that the team could even add point guards via each of the draft, free agency and trades.

Even if the summer plays out as one where the Bucks trade for a new starter, sign or re-sign a veteran backup and draft a young guard with upside for the future, it’s really important that Milwaukee finally gets a handle on what they’re looking for from the point guard spot.

If you were to compile a list of all of the point guards who have passed through Milwaukee in the past two seasons, and then maybe add some players who they have been strongly linked with interest to at that spot, you wouldn’t necessarily find it easy to identify a common style or personality type.

The Bucks have been truly desperate to find a point guard, but you’d have to feel that they haven’t necessarily been sure of exactly the type of playmaker they were looking for.

In the long term, and even in the short term, the job of the point guard in Milwaukee should actually be pretty simple. It’s about staying out of the way.

Jan 8, 2016; Milwaukee, WI, USA; Milwaukee Bucks guard O.J. Mayo (3) during the game against the Dallas Mavericks at BMO Harris Bradley Center. Milwaukee won 96-95. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports /

With it seeming increasingly obvious with each passing day that the core pieces are in place across positions two, three and four, point guard and center become complementary needs.

The Bucks don’t need the league’s most creative, dynamic or versatile point guard to run their team. Each one of Khris Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker are capable of creating, therefore whoever runs the point alongside them just needs to be able to do enough to ensure those players aren’t burdened with that role every time down the floor.

The Bucks don’t need a do-it-all point guard, they need a do-enough point guard.

Whether they ultimately find that in one of the guys they already have or have to look elsewhere for it remains to be seen, but Milwaukee needs to stop concerning itself with finding a potentially dominant point guard and focus on finding the right type of role player to mesh with what they have.

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Mayo has been forced into that spot like a square peg in a round hole this season. The way he has functioned in the role should prove to be the prototype, now they just need to find somebody who is much better suited to doing it.

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