Milwaukee Bucks: Retooling the bench mob this offseason

Milwaukee Bucks: Retooling the bench mob this offseason – The missing piece

That’s a nice segue into what was by far the biggest missing piece from the Bucks’ bench mob this season: the lack of a true offensive play maker or scorer.

George Hill is a fantastic veteran who garnered some honorable mentions in the Sixth Man of the Year discussion for his reliability and efficiency as a bench contributor this year, but his value as a steady presence could only offer so much when the Bucks’ offense grew stagnant in bench lineups.

In the brief instances where he’d flash more assertiveness throughout the season, he showed the ability to manufacture some much-needed buckets, but he couldn’t get to that level consistently enough to be a reliable source of offense when leading the bench.

In those situations, the Bucks sorely missed the type of player who could consistently create his own shot or get open looks for others.

Jordan Clarkson, for all his flaws, is an example of a player the Bucks could have desperately used in those situations. In 28 minutes off the bench in the Jazz-Nuggets series, he averaged 16.7 points across all seven games while shooting 46.4 percent from the field and 34.7 percent from deep.

No Bucks bench player averaged double-digit points off the bench in the playoffs, and only one (George Hill) averaged more than seven. That’s something that just can’t happen if Budenholzer insists on limiting his starters’ minutes to the extent he has in the playoffs.

The problem is, the Bucks may be hard-pressed to find a player like that for a price they can afford with such an underwhelming 2020 free agency class. Clarkson is an unrestricted free agent this offseason, but other teams with more cap room could certainly give him more lucrative offers even with a shrinking NBA salary cap.

There aren’t an abundance of NBA players that can consistently come off the bench and provide a positive offensive boost, and the ones that will be available at Milwaukee’s preferred price range may come with more warts than they’re worth.

That being said, the Bucks will have to get creative using the draft, trades, and free agency to improve their roster this offseason. Upgrading the point guard position would almost certainly mean even less cap flexibility to fill out the bench, since Bledsoe’s fairly reasonable contract would likely be exchanged for a much more lucrative deal for a veteran star.

That likely means Horst will have to find some diamonds in the rough on cheap deals to fill out the bench rotation while taking some fliers on unproven younger guys to replenish some of the young talent on an aging Bucks roster.

For better or worse, this summer will be franchise-altering for a Bucks team desperate to maintain its status as a championship contender while preparing its pitch to re-sign the soon-to-be two-time MVP and reigning DPOY.