Milwaukee Bucks: Speculation and scrutiny awaits going into restart

As the Milwaukee Bucks get ready to restart their 2019-20 season, they’re set to face a level of external pressure they have yet to face as a franchise during their existence.

After a long, dizzying four-and-a-half months, Milwaukee Bucks basketball is officially back.

This Friday evening, the Bucks are set to resume their run when they take on the Boston Celtics down in Orlando and excitement is sure to swell for Bucks fans, if it hasn’t already, after being without basketball for all this time.

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But while the NBA’s return couldn’t have come a moment too soon, Bucks fans are set to experience a ride that will be unlike any they have taken on throughout the franchise’s 52-year existence.

It should come as no surprise that the Bucks have placed all of their chips toward the middle of the table in regard to their title hopes this season, especially after coming up short last year following the collapse in the Eastern Conference Finals.

It’s through that lens that the Bucks were officially put on the clock, all of which was spurred on by a report from ESPN’s Malika Andrews that reiterated that the outcome of the Bucks’ 2019-20 season would impact the future of superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, and his decision on whether to commit to a supermax extension.

No matter the feats and the levels of success that the Bucks have achieved this season and have surpassed the high bar they set for themselves last year, Antetokunmpo’s future in Milwaukee has brought on all sorts of speculation, with plenty of it being erroneous and largely baseless. It turns out having, at minimum, a top-3 player and the reigning MVP brings out the many vultures that want to pry away top-level talents just for the sake of having such a player.

Then again, that’s life in the NBA and following an NBA team that has the good fortune of landing and developing a superstar talent like Antetokounmpo. A small market team like the Bucks will always be seen at a disadvantage, especially as the frequency in which star players chase bigger markets, either via trade or free agency, increases with each passing summer or offseason.

But as much as Antetokounmpo has kept his cards close to his vest and stated that he wouldn’t talk about his looming free agency out of respect for his teammates during last year’s Media Day, the Bucks organization knows as much as anyone that how this season ends could shape this decade for them moving forward.

To that point, the Bucks’ front office has put themselves in the best position to carve out a clear path for Antetokounmpo and the team to enjoy loads of success, dating all the way back to the hiring of head coach Mike Budenholzer more than two years ago.

It should be noted that Budenholzer alone hasn’t turned the Bucks into a 60-win club or the league’s best squad for the last two years running. But as the reigning NBA Coach of the Year, the system that Bud and his staff have built has unleashed Antetokounmpo to become the MVP-caliber player that he is today.

And just as the Bucks have continued to reach their ceiling as a squad, the additions and subtractions over the last year-plus have further established the clear lines of success for the core stars surrounding Antetokounmpo to raise their game as well as fortify the team’s foundation.

Again, whatever happens in the coming weeks and months for the Bucks shouldn’t serve as a repudiation on the overall blueprint the front office has laid out in turning the team into a title contender seemingly overnight.

Yet, this Bucks team is dealing with a standard of expectations that anything short of the team’s first trip to the NBA Finals since 1974 would be deemed an utter disappointment, and rightfully so, I might add. But the results of one team’s season shouldn’t always triumph over the process and journey one took.

From an external sense, success in the modern NBA is judged by a part of the last team standing. Anything short of that and you’re searching for consolation prizes, even as only one team can win it all every year. Arguably more so than any other year in franchise history, this Bucks team has had to live with that view and have embraced their aspirations of reaching the Finals all season long.

Now, even as they’re confined in Walt Disney World and set to finish a surreal, winding season in Orlando, the Bucks will have re-familiarize themselves with all of the talk and general noise that will follow them over the next coming weeks and months.

And with each passing game and potential loss they experience, the level of overanalyzing that will be made for the team’s performance, and Antetokounmpo, in particular, will set off a firestorm of hot takes and rumor mongering, the kind of which that Bucks fans have only dabbled with so far.

With the Bucks set to reach this fork in the road, whatever the future holds will very likely be determined by what they do in Orlando over the next few months.

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They may never be in a greater position to add another NBA title to their organization and doing so will only secure the long-term services of their once-in-a-lifetime superstar. The pressure is on and the Bucks will soon hear it once again.

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