Milwaukee Bucks: Raptors championship success points to opportunity

The Milwaukee Bucks will have a different perspective to most on the Toronto Raptors’ championship, but they can’t lose sight of what it says about them.

As the Toronto Raptors bested the Golden State Warriors to claim their first ever championship, there will undoubtedly have been a moment of reflection for all involved with the Milwaukee Bucks.

For most teams around the NBA, the Raptors’ success will stand as a lesson on the virtues of going all in and making bold moves when an opportunity presents itself for an already very good team.

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For the Bucks, though, there’ll also be a very different perspective.

Having seen how the Finals ultimately played out, and the misfortune with injuries that befell the Warriors, it has to be acknowledged how close the Bucks were to claiming a championship of their own.

This was a golden opportunity for Milwaukee, not only because they proved themselves to be good enough throughout the course of the year, but because they essentially had the eventual champions on the ropes in the Conference Finals too.

Before the Bucks lost four straight games and the Raptors advanced as undeniably deserving winners, Milwaukee not only held a 2-0 lead but found themselves one more overtime basket away from pushing that advantage to 3-0.

Without taking any credit away from the Raptors, it’s also essential to acknowledge the fact that the Bucks blew it. That applies to losing four straight games, but also to some of their in-game collapses during those games too. Even as late as the latter stages of the third quarter in Game 6, the Bucks seemed set up to take the series home for a decider, only to then freeze and watch Toronto blow by them.

This era of Bucks basketball may ultimately be defined by a sense of opportunity that had been absent for decades prior, and on that front, this season will ultimately be looked back on as an excellent season that ended in a colossal missed opportunity.

Fortunately for the Bucks, the era of opportunity should still just be beginning.

Of course, so much hinges on the Bucks successfully navigating free agency and retaining key players in the weeks ahead, but a look around the wider NBA makes it clear that this shouldn’t be Milwaukee’s only chance to put it all together in the years ahead.

The Anthony Davis trade has made LeBron James a relevant force in the other conference once again, but there’s no doubting that it’s a positive that Davis remained in the West. The knock-on effect that may well have in taking away from the Celtics, or even something such as stopping a team like the Knicks from putting together an intriguing pairing of stars, certainly plays into Milwaukee’s hands too.

Injuries to Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson dramatically reduce the threat the Warriors will pose next season. At present, the Philadelphia 76ers’ priority will, much like the Bucks, simply be to make sure they come back at least as good as they were this season. The same applies for the champions, but there remains a real possibility that Kawhi Leonard could opt to sign for the Clippers, particularly having achieved the ultimate goal in Toronto already.

All of this is to say, the NBA is more wide open than it has been in a long, long time, and the Bucks remain right at the forefront of the pack of contenders.

With the lessons learned from this season, and the weaknesses exposed in the playoffs that they’ll need to work to address, the Bucks may well have come back better next season in a scenario where the NBA landscape was similar to how it looked this year.

Instead, there’s now a chance that the outlook could yet end up even more favorable for the Bucks in 2020. If the Raptors can win it all, so can the Bucks.