Milwaukee Bucks Roundtable: Ready for the 2019-20 season to begin
By Adam McGee
4. Do you think the Bucks can top their exploits from the regular season last year?
BS: No, and I don’t think they should try either. Last season came out of nowhere for most and I think they learned a lot from the experience. Getting 60 wins, I think, was important for the squad to justify the dominance they exhibited all season but it mattered naught once the playoffs came around.
I can see us topping out at around 55 wins next season and, as long as a top-2 seed is sewn up, coasting to the playoffs is likely our best bet. Being fresh for a playoff matchup against Philly is our biggest concern and Bud and the rest of the coaching staff will know this. Toronto put Kawhi in cotton wool last year and it paid off. Watch Milwaukee do the same with their MVP.
DL: It’s possible the Bucks could improve on their 60 win margin. In fact, the Eastern Conference has arguably gotten weaker since last season, making their path to 60-plus wins a bit easier. However, I still think the team will have a hard time exceeding the 60 wins they had last season.
There’s a lot of talent across the league, especially out west. Those match-ups are going to be difficult for everyone, including the Bucks.
There’s also the possibility that it will take a bit less than 60 to get home court in the East, and across the playoffs. Both of those circumstances would make it unlikely that Milwaukee will repeat or exceed their win total from last season.
Unless Giannis and the roster take another jump up, or they need that many wins to be a top seed, they’re probably a high 50s-win team.
RD: I think that the Bucks do have the ability to get past 60 wins this season, as well as the Eastern Conference Finals. At the same time, I don’t think this is something the Bucks need to focus on. I think that the Bucks just need to play their game and play the way that Budenholzer is coaching them and it will all fall into place. I think the NBA as a whole is in a great place with the talent level and I think competition is only going to get better. I am very excited to see how the Bucks stack up in comparison to the teams that the media love to glorify. I hope that the Bucks can prove the doubters wrong and bring a title back to MKE.
LB: The Vegas consensus has the Bucks O/U set at 57 wins as of today, and If I was a total degenerate gambler, I would hammer the under. They’ve proved last season what this roster is capable of. The focus this season should be minute management and preservation. This team should have the long term expectation that they’ll be playing over 100 games this season.
BO: I think the Bucks will scale it back just a bit this year and win somewhere between 55 and 60 games. Their depth is going to be great for the regular season, and propel them to lots of wins, but I think the players are going to be resting a lot down the stretch. That rest will be crucial for guys like Giannis, Khris, and Brook after the busy summer they all just had.
JC: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! I don’t think the Bucks should try and do anything drastically different in terms of schemes. They hit 60 wins last year in the regular season, so why change anything? In my opinion, the biggest flaw was on the defensive side. We dared mediocre shooters to shoot wide open threes which can work or kill us. The Bucks seem to thrive on the idea to take away the best player and make the supporting cast beat us. I like that philosophy, and it worked last year all the way up until the ECF. Hopefully Fred VanVleet doesn’t have another kid, and we should be fine!
JT: As others have pointed out, 60 wins is mighty hard to top, even within an incredibly top-heavy Eastern Conference that’s projected to be propped up by the Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers. Achieving such a mark would likely secure homecourt and potentially the first-seed for what would be the second season and that could obviously be crucial come late May and/or early June, if all goes according to the Bucks’ plan.
Even with the skepticism I have in the Bucks crafting a 60-win campaign for the second straight year and some of the questions they’ll have to answer as a result of their offseason dealings, I certainly don’t see them falling far from that benchmark when it’s all said and done.
AM: I’ve turned around on this somewhat over the past couple of months. Particularly with the changes in the East, and the precipitous drop-off once you look past the Bucks and Sixers, Milwaukee will have major advantages in top-end talent, depth, and coaching over the clear majority of teams they play. Injuries are the great unknowable in this, but if the Bucks can largely stay healthy again, I think they can go better than 60 without necessarily placing additional stress on themselves to do so. Remember all of those blow out wins from last year? There’s reason to believe they could be even more frequent this time around.