Wisconsin Herd Roundtable: Catching up near the midway point of the season

What about D.J. Wilson?

TW: My simple take is that #PositiveDJWilsonTweets needs to play more basketball, whether he is with the Herd or the Bucks (situation permitting), just get him on the floor. Where would you say that you’re at with D.J. Wilson right now, considering his progress with the Herd, mini-breakout in the absence of Ersan Ilyasova, and possibly looking forward, have your expectations changed?

JT: Well, this certainly would be a different kind of conversation if we had it just a week ago, wouldn’t it? But getting down to brass tacks, it’s pretty simple that Wilson just needs more game reps, regardless of the team or level of play.

Adam McGee and I have weirdly talked about this at length on Win in 6 a few times before, probably around Summer League time when he’s played the most, but this is Wilson’s minutes total during his rookie season: 71 minutes with the Bucks in 22 appearances and 358 minutes while sent down to the Herd.

Now during a lot of those minutes, Wilson had his fair share of stumbles and quite honestly looked out of his element, both in terms of making the right decisions and displaying a level of confidence in his abilities. But making a final judgment on who Wilson is as a player, under that context, was a much different conversation than how Bucks fans talked about another 17th overall pick in the team’s not-so-distant past, that being Rashad Vaughn (for comparison, Vaughn logged 1,001 minutes in 70 appearances with the Bucks during his rookie season three seasons ago, plus a pair of flex assignments to the Canton Charge.)

Wilson still has plenty to answer in terms of his long-term NBA prospects obviously, but between his growing minutes with the Herd this season, what he’s done in that time (shooting 46.4 percent on 28 tries from deep) and after this mini-breakout this week where he’s capitalizing on crunch time minutes in key victories over the Detroit Pistons, New Orleans Pelicans and Boston Celtics, I keep coming back to how development curves are different for each and every player. Wilson has historically been that way too, after going through his journey in high school and college upon him getting drafted.

Above all else, the fact that there is now room to imagine Wilson finding his footing as an NBA player may be the biggest indicator of just how monumental the change from the previous coaching staff to Bud and Co. is for the Bucks, in terms of gauging the calculus of the team’s future supporting cast and general assets. I’ll turn it over to you on what you think of Wilson’s sophomore season after getting on my soapbox and presenting my optimism for why Wilson may indeed be an NBA player (beyond the title, of course).

But not before I yell WATTBA from the highest point of topography I can find nearby.

TW: Right up front, I’d be lying if I said that ‘what if D.J. Wilson is an NBA player’ and other, more exuberant possibilities, hadn’t crossed my mind a few times over the past few days, but I’m still going to proceed with extreme caution here. It’s no secret that I, and many others, were firmly on the cut or waive Wilson (for Tim Frazier or Tyler Zeller) bandwagon before the season began, and was certainly less than impressed when the Bucks picked up his third-year rookie option. In short, I was not convinced that he may ever provide more value to Milwaukee than either of those two players could have at the time, hence why ‘waste’ a roster spot. For better or worse, those decisions were made, and here we are — and I could not be happier if some crow has to be eaten!

Now, as you said, I think the optimistic tone of this discussion (admittedly, to varying levels) would have been quite different had Wilson not just capped off literally the single-best two weeks of his professional career, with a string of really solid nights for the Herd, and not only being playable, but a genuinely positive factor (on both sides of the ball) for the Bucks in legitimate backup minutes against no less than Blake Griffin and Anthony Davis.

Whilst these are extremely encouraging signs, aside from a handful of respectable performances with the Herd last season, this stacks up as essentially the only evidence that Wilson could turn into something more than another failed first-round pick for the Bucks.

Admittedly, perhaps we overlooked the extent of his hamstring injury suffered in preseason, or rumours of an excellent summer (with noticeable results physically). Maybe D.J.’s complementary skill-set just is not suited to asserting dominance in the G League, like a mid-first rounder should, or we called him a draft bust too prematurely in his player development curve.

Nevertheless, a handful of ‘really solid’ games is far too early to crown Wilson, make preparations for his maximum rookie extension and delete all of those #NegativeDJWilsonTweets.

Basically, as I mentioned earlier, we just need to see Wilson playing more basketball. #SampleSizeTheater remains the single biggest obstacle in evaluating Wilson both ways (positively and negatively, and I guess you could also double that up with offensively and defensively, too). Yet, the future does look a little (lot?) brighter, and ideally that means Wilson outgrows the Herd, and moves on to the Bucks bench as a guy Budenholzer can trust to knock down an open three, or hold his own defensively against opposing forwards (or small-ball centers? — This outcome changes the Bucks’ outlook dramatically, for the better). Only time will tell.

Similarly, Milwaukee’s two-way players, Trevon Duval and Jaylen Morris, have also spent some of their allotted days of service with the Bucks (guesstimates would have Duval at 1-2, and Morris at ~20, possibly more), what have been your initial takeaways from their time with the Herd, and do you think their NBA availability is being utilised appropriately?