Milwaukee Bucks: Evaluating Donte DiVincenzo’s rookie campaign so far

As polarizing as his arrival was after being selected with the 17th overall pick in this year’s draft, Milwaukee Bucks guard Donte DiVincenzo has shown he belongs within the team’s rotation thus far into his rookie season.

Through a little more than the quarter mark of the season, very little has been left to our collective imagination as it relates to what the Milwaukee Bucks want to accomplish in terms of their principles and overall philosophy.

Whether seen through the Bucks’ refined schemes and/or roles, things are very clearly defined and structured under new head coach Mike Budenholzer and the same goes for the team’s 10-man rotation, though recent injuries to players trying to lift the team off the bench have altered that in considerable ways.

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Among those regular contributors has been Bucks rookie combo guard Donte DiVincenzo, whom the Bucks took with the 17th overall pick in last June’s draft.

DiVincenzo’s entry into the organization and the league as a whole wasn’t without some consternation among the Bucks fanbase on draft night and seeing this year’s rookie draft class across the league in action hasn’t disappointed by any means.

But even with a small sample size that’s been made slightly smaller, given that DiVincenzo recently missed five straight games with a left quad strain, the Villanova product has held his own when his number has been called under Coach Bud.

Logging 17.1 minutes over his 17 appearances so far this season, DiVincenzo has averaged 5.8 points on shooting splits of .420/.263/.818, 2.7 rebounds and 1.4 assists.

Yes, DiVincenzo’s counting stats certainly don’t pop out by any stretch of imagination. Yet advanced metrics are telling a much different story of how impactful the Bucks rookie has been when on the floor this season.

Per NBA.com/stats, DiVincenzo currently holds the fourth-highest net rating of any player in the Bucks’ rotation at +13.8 points per 100 possessions. DiVincenzo’s complementary role has led to the Bucks’ offense humming when he’s on the floor, though his individual offensive rating (113.1) ranks slightly below their league-leading offensive rating collectively.

It’s been on the defensive end, though, where DiVincenzo is currently making his biggest impact on the Bucks so far into the year. Currently posting the best individual defensive rating of any player regularly seeing the floor at 99.2 points per 100 possessions, DiVincenzo’s gritty, competitive nature has lent itself well in an area that came with many concerns for the Delaware native during the pre-draft process, given his rather average physical tools, etc.

But as K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune relayed in early October following a Bucks preseason tilt with the Chicago Bulls, DiVincenzo received helpful tips from retired veteran point guard Kirk Hinrich over the offseason that helped him refine his technique when defending at the next level:

"“A big thing he helped me with that isn’t really normal in predraft stuff is defense,” DiVincenzo said. “We did so much defending. I had to get over screens. He was one of the best at that. I talked to different coaches throughout the draft process. And they said he was one of the best at not getting screened. He was just showing me veteran tips where I could get ahead of the game early.”The drills were one-on-one.“He’s competitive as hell,” DiVincenzo said. “He shared plenty of his personal experiences. First, he’d compete with me. He’d push me in that way rather than just telling me what to do in a drill. Then, if he saw something he used to do when he was younger, he would stop me and say, ‘Hey, this is how you get around that so you don’t get stuck.’ And he’d do the drill again to see if I adjusted to it, which really helped.”"

Putting those acknowledgements to the side for the moment, there’s no question there’s plenty of room for improvement for DiVincenzo in what remains of his rookie year.

He’s already had a few notable introductions to the league, with Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum‘s nasty ankle breaker on the 21-year-old from an early November tilt in Rip City the leader in the clubhouse at this point in the season.

Beyond that, DiVincenzo simply has to find some consistency when spotting up and launching away from beyond the arc as his current shooting percentages show. With that said, we’ve already seen DiVincenzo adjust well as it relates to his skills and touch attacking the basket, given he’s putting down 80.8 percent of his 26 attempts within the restricted area (small sample size, I know).

Needless to say, plenty of work lies ahead for DiVincenzo to make his rookie campaign a successful one, something that has been a rarity for recent Bucks first round draft picks.