Milwaukee Bucks: Readying for restart with bigger picture in mind

The Milwaukee Bucks will soon resume their pursuit of an NBA championship in Orlando and will have to face the great expectations that come along with such a chase.

When the Milwaukee Bucks resume their 2019-20 season in Orlando in a couple of weeks time, the expectations they’ve been held to all year long will soon resurface.

All season long and especially in light of the disappointment from their collapse in the Eastern Conference Finals last season, the Bucks haven’t shied away from their goal of not just reaching the NBA Finals, but winning an NBA title this season.

Even with all this time off and scrimmages and seeding games to play between now and the start of the playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks certainly haven’t lost the mindset that they’re playing with bigger things in mind.

When meeting with media Friday evening, veteran Bucks forward Ersan Ilyasova talked about how the Bucks haven’t wavered from that mindset as they go through various workouts, practices and upcoming scrimmages as EuroHoops relayed:

"“We are practicing and we are playing a bit. There are a lot of individual workouts. The way we look at it, it’s a journey, not a sprint,” Ilyasova said. “All the preseason games and the season games are going to be important but our main goal is still to be ready for the playoffs.”“We are in a good spot. Before the whole thing with the virus when the season was postponed, we were in a good place,” Ilyasova added when asked about being the top-placed team before the season was suspended. “Now we want to secure our lead in the Eastern Conference. We will see where we are as a team and our physical condition. We’re going to play hard but at the same time, we have to look at the bigger picture: Winning the championship.”"

Even as the Bucks’ seeding schedule has potential playoff previews against the likes of the Boston Celtics, Miami Heat and Toronto Raptors, Ilyasova’s point of the Bucks looking to secure their comfortable lead in the standings will only be made by easier by the teams that come into Orlando not at full strength due to player absences.

And Ilyasova’s words only echo what some of the Bucks’ core stars such as superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and head coach Mike Budenholzer have discussed before and after arriving in Orlando.

In fact, for as much as he’s noted that the team is getting back into their collective rhythm, Budenholzer is realistic that it will take more than the three weeks before the season restart for the Bucks to reach their peak again after such a long layoff as he recently told the following to Bleacher Report’s Yaron Weitzman:

"“I think we’re as much as possible going to pick things up from where we left off,” Budenholzer says, “but at the same time know that we haven’t played basketball for two-and-a-half, three months.”He adds, “We know we’ve got a long ways to go and a lot of work ahead of us.”"

From that standpoint, that lack of extended runway to get back into game shape and the start of the playoffs just around the corner doesn’t exactly provide the proper time for Budenholzer and his staff to evaluate where his team stands.

Combine that with the COVID-19-related absence of Eric Bledsoe and the fact that the Bucks’ first round playoff opponent will be subpar, at best, and that only clouds that evaluation period before the real tests come in their run. By that point, though, we’ll be in late August early September and one would assume the Bucks would be on the level of where they were earlier in their season.

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The Bucks have talked about the many lessons they all learned following the end to last season. For as much as they have vowed not to repeat those same mistakes, an unprecedented set of circumstances have thrown quite a wrench into the Bucks’ grand plans and they’ll have to start from nearly square one to return to where they were before all this time off.

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