Milwaukee Bucks: 49 years in 49 days – 2013-14 season
By Ti Windisch
The Milwaukee Bucks moved basically their entire roster on their way to a horrible season in 2013-14.
The season: 2013-14
The record: 15-67
The postseason: Not quite
The story:
After the Milwaukee Bucks failed to win in six during the 2013 NBA Playoffs, the team basically imploded. Monta Ellis bolted immediately in free agency, and the team used the amnesty clause on Drew Gooden to dump his horrible contract.
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Additionally, Luc Mbah a Moute was traded for a Sacramento Kings second round pick, J.J. Redick was sign-and-traded away in return for a second round pick, and Brandon Jennings was traded for Khris Middleton, Brandon Knight and Viacheslav Kravtsov.
A few more new additions came from the 2013 NBA Draft. A draft day trade brought Nate Wolters to Milwaukee, and with the 15th pick the Bucks selected Giannis Antetokounmpo out of Greece.
Despite it being the literal worst season in franchise history, 2013-14 might also end up being one of the best seasons in franchise history. We’ll get to that later. For now, what’s important to know is that this team freaking stunk.
Brandon Knight took over the leading scorer role with both Ellis and Jennings gone. At just 22 years old he put up 17.9 points, 3.5 rebounds, 4.9 assists and 1.0 steals per game in just over 33 minutes each night.
Among players who appeared in a majority of Milwaukee’s games that season, Khris Middleton was second in scoring. He had an efficient first year with the Bucks that saw him post 12.1 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.1 assists and 1.0 steals per game. Efficiency is nice, but Middleton being Milwaukee’s second-leading scorer and also averaging barely 12 points per game was pretty clearly a problem.
The Bucks ranked 26th in offensive rating, 28th in points per game and 24th in pace. Those awful offensive numbers could belong to a decent team if it had a good defense. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, no team allowed more points per 100 possessions than the Bucks did that season.
It was Larry Drew‘s first and ultimately only year spent coaching the Milwaukee Bucks. It may not have been fair to expect Drew to accomplish much with the team he had, considering most of the players had never donned a Bucks jersey before, but they were unbelievably bad.
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Other players to average double-digit scoring numbers for that season include some really fun names: Ramon Sessions, O.J. Mayo, Ersan Ilyasova, John Henson, Caron Butler, Jeff Adrien and Gary Neal. What a season.
Giannis didn’t get to play all that much in his rookie year. He likely wouldn’t have made the team much better in his first taste of NBA basketball, but the young Greek Freak averaged 6.8 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game that season. He went from that to being a trendy MVP pick in a matter of four years.
Nobody on the 2013-14 Bucks was getting any kind of MVP love. The team won 15 games, worst in the NBA that season and in Milwaukee Bucks franchise history. It was rough.
Next: 49 years in 49 days: 2012-13 season
Still, between adding Giannis and Middleton that year and setting the team up with a great draft pick in 2014, the 2013-14 season might end up as the building block for some fantastic Bucks squads of the future.