Milwaukee Bucks Roundtable: Expectations for the year ahead
By Adam McGee
Q1. What excited you the most about the Bucks’ preseason play, and what elements are you most confident they’ll be able to sustain in the regular season?
Theo Konstantellos (@theokon7): The most exciting thing was definitely the increased three-point attempt rate and the ball movement. We will definitely see a modern offense. I’m curious to see how this playstyle will hold up against better defensive teams in terms of efficiency. It will definitely look better than last year.
Jacob Katz (@JKatz_Bucks): It was all exciting, with a Giannis 25-minute triple double and an 84-point cherry on top with the first half performance last Friday against the feuding T-Wolves. I’m expecting Giannis to start at the same blistering pace he did last season. The three-point shooting volume will stay high compared to last season, but will most likely decline a little bit from preseason to regular season, unless non-shooters like John Henson are still encouraged to pull the trigger. Also, the fluid ball-moving offense should continue into the season and yield much better results than the offense of the last few seasons.
Adam McGee (@AdamMcGee11): The three-point shooting is the obvious standout, but it’s the last game against the Timberwolves that sticks in my mind. Watching Giannis operate with that much space, particularly from a playmaking perspective, was so much fun. Even with Middleton and Bledsoe on the bench, the Bucks’ offense looked exceptional as Giannis was able to attack through the heart of the defense and launch fizzing passes to knockdown shooters in the corners. The efficiency with which those shots are made will undoubtedly fluctuate throughout the year, but I believe those looks will be there for them every single night.
Rohan Katti (@rkattijr): On a scale of one to Michael Scott standing on a chair and singing “Everybody Dance Now”, I would say I was very excited by the preseason play. We always have to remind ourselves that it was just preseason, but this is the most exciting Bucks team in almost two decades, so I’m throwing caution to the wind and saying that all of the beautiful basketball in terms of offense we saw should translate to the regular season, and that should not be all that far fetched. The system that Mike Budenholzer has implemented will be there throughout the season, and while there will be dips in three-point percentages for some players, the constant ball movement and spacing for Giannis will be enough to compete with any team on any given night.
Isaac Sours (@why_gender_why): People have mentioned the Bud offense, so I won’t go into that, although I am about as excited as possible to see what Giannis can do when freed from the constraints of a 1990s-era system. Incidentally, I think Bud ought to get more out of Maker than we have gotten, which makes that pick feel like less of a miss. What is most interesting to me is the defense. We saw a glimpse of what a reasonable defensive scheme can do to a team like the Bulls (a team that may be bad, but has scoring talent) when implemented by Milwaukee’s roster: 82 points. They did this while breaking 100 on the other end. It appears that less ideal defensive performances against Minnesota and OKC were a product of players not being used to the new system, so I’m looking forward to seeing the defense really blossom over the course of the year.
Bob Polglaze (@BobPolglaze): I think the obvious answer is just how good the offense looked without running anything overly complicated. I expect the defensive improvement to show as the season goes on, as the players get a little more comfortable in the new scheme while unlearning years of bad habits. To me, the most sustainable elements from the offense will be the ball (and player) movement, the increased three-point rate, and the spacing for Giannis that comes with those. I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect the preseason three-point numbers to continue (hitting 41 percent on over 40 attempts per game is pretty impressive), but the spacing and threat of the attempts should allow this offense to keep rolling as it enters the regular season.
Jordan Treske (@JordanTreske): As pretty much everyone noted, how quickly the roster has taken to the new, modern offensive philosophy Coach Bud and his staff have instituted stood out by far and away as the most exciting part of their preseason play. I agree with Bob that it would be unreasonable to see the same kind of three-point efficiency translate over into the regular season, given the small sample size, but the principle remains the same in how it unlocks everything for Giannis’ wide ranging skills and others.
As a little bit of a curveball to go along with that, I am somewhat bullish on the notion that we’ll see an improved Bucks team when it comes to cleaning up on the glass. That’s not exactly a high bar to clear and again, their preseason production won’t sustain to the level of production they put in that regard, but the combination of the personnel additions they made this offseason and having strong rebounders like Giannis and to a lesser extent, Eric Bledsoe, will help matters. Instead of historically bad, the Bucks could just be mediocre on that front. Just imagine that!
Rob Gueldner (@_Rob_G_): Obviously the new offense has been very exciting to watch and I think that Brogdon’s addition to the starting lineup will be fun to watch develop throughout the season. I think watching Brogdon under the new coaching staff will be one of the surprises of this season as his three-point shooting fits perfectly into Budenholzer’s scheme. I think the amount of threes that they take per game will stay consistent but not at the record pace we saw in some preseason games.