Milwaukee Bucks: Retooling the bench mob this offseason

Milwaukee Bucks: Retooling the bench mob this offseason – Bench mob flaws

Coach Bud’s philosophy since joining Milwaukee has been to acquire players who can dribble, pass, and shoot, and he runs an egalitarian offense that empowers each player to do all three in a sort of equal-opportunity style. It’s a very Spurs-ian approach that Budenholzer undoubtedly picked up as a Gregg Popovich disciple.

It sounds good in theory, and clearly was a style that found success in San Antonio, but the Bucks as constructed are a vastly different team than the championship era Spurs, with far less bench depth and a unique superstar in Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The offense-by-committee approach Budenholzer has employed is much less effective in a playoff environment when opposing defenses can focus on exploiting the weaknesses of less-talented bench players asked to initiate offense. With Bud’s insistence on playing the starters limited playoff minutes, this weakness is amplified even more.

Despite the “pass-dribble-shoot” mantra, saying the majority of Milwaukee’s reserves could do all three would be pretty disingenuous. Particularly, the Bucks’ lack of reliable ball handlers was a major flaw in the team’s roster construction, making it difficult to consistently initiate the offense in the half-court.

Throughout the playoffs, it felt like the Bucks could have used one or two more reliable ball handlers in their playoff rotation, something that at least partially contributed to the uncharacteristic amount of turnovers they gave up over the course of both series. That’s something they gave up when replacing Malcolm Brogdon with Wes Matthews in their starting unit and never really compensated for when filling out their bench.

Between Eric Bledsoe’s awful decision-making and Donte DiVincenzo’s bubble trouble, the Bucks had very few reliable options to handle the rock outside of Antetokounmpo, Middleton, and Hill. It got so bad that at times, even two-way point guard Frank Mason III looked like a better option than the wing trio of Connaughton, Korver, and DiVincenzo.

“But what about shooting?” you may ask.

Every team in the NBA could use more shooting, but the Bucks admittedly rank pretty middle-of-the-pack in three-point percentage for shooting as many as they do. Having Eric Bledsoe as the starting point guard alongside Giannis was never a perfect offensive fit, and Brook Lopez’s tough year shooting behind the arc didn’t help matters this season.

However, having a couple more players that could handle the ball and initiate offensive actions would go a long way to creating higher-quality looks for the Bucks’ current shooters. The shortage of that type of player coupled with the lack of off-ball actions the Bucks ran resulted in a lot of forced, partially-contested, or out-of-rhythm shots from the Bucks’ shooters.