Milwaukee Bucks: Maintaining quality spacing without Khris Middleton

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 06: (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 06: (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Without Khris Middleton‘s three-point shooting threat, the Milwaukee Bucks must be careful to maintain quality spacing over the next few weeks.

As the Milwaukee Bucks came away with a victory against the Chicago Bulls on Thursday night in their first game since Khris Middleton was sidelined for three-to-four weeks with a left thigh contusion, there were certainly major kinks to be worked out in terms of how the offense functioned.

The Bucks may have scored 124 points, but they turned the ball over 22 times, and struggled mightily from three-point range.

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A relentless attack of the Bulls’ painted area covered over many of those cracks — as did the individual brilliance of both Giannis Antetokounmpo and Eric Bledsoe — helping the Bucks to not only score 70 points in the paint, but also to attempt an incredible 47 free throws over the course of the night.

The 6-of-33 shooting from behind the arc was certainly eye-popping, as were some of the individual struggles, such as Brook Lopez‘s 1-of-7 from deep, and Wesley Matthews and Giannis both going 1-of-5 from distance.

There were undoubtedly some shot selection issues along the way, but this performance can still be best characterized as a major outlier where the Bucks’ final line from distance isn’t deserving of becoming too great a topic of scrutiny in a bigger picture sense.

That’s not to say there weren’t glimpses of some offensive issues that could persist as Middleton remains sidelined, though.

Prime among those was the careful spacing balance that the Bucks will now have to manage without one of their most reliable shooters and scorers on the floor, and the reality that it may not be all that straightforward for coach Mike Budenholzer to get a handle on.

One particularly striking example of this came in the just one minute that a particular trio of Bucks’ players shared on the floor against the Bulls, where the spacing couldn’t have been much further away from what has become the standard in the modern NBA.

That aforementioned trio involved Antetokounmpo and Bledsoe, who are no strangers to playing major minutes totals together, along with the more recently signed Robin Lopez.

Having three highly inefficient jump-shooters sharing the court together would be problematic in any setting, but it gets even worse when Antetokounmpo and Bledsoe are the players absorbing all of the defense’s attention, and their first thought is to drive at all times.

If the Bucks want to avoid opponents setting up even more imposing defensive walls than usual against them in Middleton’s absence, avoiding lineups like these, even in passing, will be close to a must.

On Thursday, those players’ paths only ever so briefly crossed due to foul trouble for Robin’s brother Brook Lopez. Even in those scenarios, though, and perhaps illustrated by the approach that Budenholzer employed late in the game, Milwaukee may well be best served by going small with their lineups.

That could involve Giannis playing at the 5, as he did against the Bulls, but may also require additional looks with Ersan Ilyasova at that spot, along with a boost in minutes for D.J. Wilson.

The Bucks have no shortage of wings to replace Middleton, as has been clear from the discussion around those options in recent days, but the absence of the All-Star will also need to factor into how the Bucks manage the minutes among their big men and more widely achieve an offensive balance.

The question for Milwaukee isn’t just how can they replace Middleton’s production, but also how can they ensure his absence doesn’t hurt Antetokounmpo and Bledsoe’s shot quality on any given night.