Milwaukee Bucks: FanSided expansion draft strategy explained
After the results of FanSided’s expansion draft, we go behind the curtain to explain our draft strategy and protecting the three players from the Milwaukee Bucks.
Expansion doesn’t look to be coming to the NBA any time soon, but that won’t prevent us from having fun in envisioning the possibility of it coming down the pipeline.
If you haven’t already seen it, The Step Back released the results of their expansion draft project Thursday for two teams, the Kansas City Burnt Ends and Seattle Sea Lions, helmed by Duncan Smith and Gerald Bourguet, respectively.
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Between Adam McGee and I, the old heads here at Behind the Buck Pass, we had the task of protecting a maximum of three players for the Milwaukee Bucks that are under contract beyond this season. That process involved some tough decisions.
For starters, must we explain the decision to protect Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the most dominant players in the NBA and soon-to-be back-to-back Most Valuable Player?
Clearly, players like Antetokounmpo don’t come around all that often and that alone is worth protecting at all costs as we did in this expansion draft.
Beyond Antetokounmpo, we felt it was only natural to jump at the chance to protect two-time All-Star swingman and Antetokounmpo’ long-time running mate, Khris Middleton.
Middleton’s all-around game, as well as being the perfect complement to Antetokounmpo, has been in place for some time now. Add in the facts that Middleton is both in his prime and had been enjoying a career year this currently suspended 2019-20 season and it was a no-brainer to protect the eight-year veteran along with Antetokounmpo.
With our first two selections decided in short order, picking that third and final player to protect is where we got down to the nitty gritty. For both Adam and I, there will only three players we considered protecting to go along with Antetokounmpo and Middleton, with those being Eric Bledsoe, Donte DiVincenzo and Brook Lopez.
Whether it was the stink of his public playoff struggles or the questions over his longevity as he’s now on the other side of 30 years old, Bledsoe fell out of consideration pretty quickly, leaving us with both DiVincenzo and Lopez to consider.
Deciding between the Bucks’ prospect of the future by a wide margin in DiVincenzo versus the two-way stretch 5 that’s tailor made for the Bucks’ system in Lopez was far from an easy decision. And given that both players will be in Milwaukee for the foreseeable future didn’t make that decision any easier, though the Villanova product’s cost-controlled contract was an advantage in his favor.
In the end, Adam and I leaned toward protecting Lopez, given the positional scarcity of finding an adept shooter at the 5 who can equally protect the rim with great success. Of course, all we had to do was cross our collective fingers that DiVincenzo’s progress as a sophomore had gone under the radar outside of Milwaukee.
As it turned out, our gambit didn’t pay off as DiVincenzo ended up getting plucked for Smith’s Burnt Ends squad, leaving the Bucks without their do-it-all combo guard for the future under this scenario. But that’s the price you pay when you can only protect up to three players on the league’s best squad for two years running now.
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Hindsight is easily 20/20, but I’m curious to hear if Bucks fans would have done anything differently than what Adam and I did in protecting these three Bucks players. Let us know on social media, whether it be through Facebook or Twitter. (in Tobias Funke voice) Let the great expansion draft experiment begin!