Milwaukee Bucks: Trevon Duval’s promising point guard instincts

New Milwaukee Bucks two-way player Trevon Duval is far from polished across all aspects of his game at this stage, but his unrefined point guard play is worthy of some intrigue.

As he enters the NBA as one of the Milwaukee Bucks’ newest two-way players, Trevon Duval certainly has something to prove in more ways than one.

For starters, there’s no question that Duval carries a good sized chip on his shoulders after plunging from a blue-chip recruit coming out of high school to going undrafted in this year’s NBA Draft following his struggles during his lone season at Duke University.

Conversely, though, Duval’s struggles and his many limitations ultimately played significant factors in his introduction to the league coming with far less fanfare than what many envisioned not that long ago. Of course, that opened up the pathway for the Bucks to bring the 20-year-old into the organization under a two-way player capacity.

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As much as the concerns surrounding Duval’s game at this stage are too big to ignore, the raw base of talent and skills he possesses are tough to deny as well.

With that, the majority of Duval’s development and game reps over the course of next season will come with the Wisconsin Herd, though days up with the Bucks, both in practice and on game days, will surely be in store to some degree.

While in Oshkosh, Duval will surely look forward to acting as a greater focal point in an NBA-level setting compared to the role he assumed under legendary Coach K at Durham last year.

In fact, Duval’s point guard play may be the most intriguing element of his game that Herd head coach Jordan Brady will look to mold under his tutelage.

Duval’s pure point guard traits flashed in fits and starts throughout his one-and-done campaign with the Blue Devils last year as he averaged 5.6 assists per game as well as 2.8 turnovers per game, making for a 2.03 assist-to-turnover ratio.

Whether it was the willingness to push the tempo or unleash precise cross court feeds in transition, there was no knocking the raw instincts that Duval relied on as a lead ball handler. Rather, it was the questionable decision making Duval displayed that limited him from being a more effective and cleaner distributor with the ball.

Duval did some of this while addressing actual vision problems within his left eye midway through last season, which he had grown accustomed to living with throughout the majority of his life to this point.

As Duval told CL Brown of The Athletic earlier this year, the number of sight exercises and drills coordinated by Duke’s athletic trainers as well as the use of corrective lens helped transform his vision both on and off the court.

That obviously doesn’t fully absolve the flaws in Duval’s game as his issues obviously go beyond that specific ailment, but it certainly does supply some context into why some of the deficiencies in Duval’s development may be the way they are.

In any event, Duval is seemingly in line to run the show for great stretches while with the Herd next season. A number of bumps will surely be experienced along the way, but the fast paced tendencies Duval regularly plays with may end up being the right environment to grow his game when going against G League competition on a nightly basis.

A few months separate us from seeing all of this in action but it will be fascinating to track Duval’s development across all areas of his game all the same.