While excitement is (understandably) very high for the return of regular season Milwaukee Bucks basketball, you should also be excited for the return of their G League affiliate, the Wisconsin Herd. Sure, they aren’t the defending champions of their league, but there’s a big reason why fans should be keeping an eye on the Herd this season and beyond.
Bucks fans haven’t seen their affiliate since the league shut down due to the pandemic in 2019 as the organization opted to not bring the team to the G League bubble last year. It was a questionable decision as it forced young players like Jordan Nwora to play for another organization’s affiliate, which didn’t guarantee any minutes for development.
The Herd is back for this season and, after some offseason changes to the coaching staff and front office, appear ready to reclaim their position as one of the best teams in the G League. However, that’s not why fans should be most intrigued by having the organization’s affiliate back and nearby.
Getting the Herd back is very important for the long-term success of the Bucks and helping keep their championship window open. That may sound dramatic and I’m not trying to say that without the Herd, the Bucks would be screwed in the long run, but having them back is helpful on multiple fronts.
The importance of having the Wisconsin Herd back for the Milwaukee Bucks
As I’ve written in the past, the Bucks helped keep their championship window open a little longer these last two offseasons (primarily this past one) by adding players who are in their prime ages to be rotation players as opposed to adding older veterans who might be cheaper but have less left in the tank.
It’s a similar idea for the Herd, except this is a much longer plan and one that we won’t necessarily see the fruits of until a few years down the road. Due to the Bucks trading most of their significant draft capital away the last couple of seasons, they’ve been forced to draft mostly in the second round since taking Donte DiVincenzo a few years ago before they became contenders.
It’s already especially hard for a young player to get minutes on a contending team, as DiVincenzo found out in his rookie season, but even harder when you’re a mid-to-late second-round pick like Nwora, Sandro Mamukelashvili, and Georgios Kalaitzakis.
Although we all want to see these guys get minutes in NBA games, the fact of the matter is that for at least the two rookies, there won’t be much time available. For Kalaitzakis, he faces an uphill battle in a crowded wing room that Nwora will also have to deal with, although the second-year Nwora is much further ahead. We looked at what to expect from Kalaitzakis in year one and long story short: not much in the NBA right away.
Bucks general manager Jon Horst recently spoke about Mamukelashvili and how it’ll be hard for him to balance the line between development while also playing NBA minutes. It’s clear they want him to play right away in some capacity, but most of his development will be done with the Herd. That is where the G League affiliate will see its importance, being able to give guys like the three young players on the Bucks real minutes to develop their skills and get familiar with what the Bucks want to do in the NBA.
Milwaukee also owns its first-round pick for the 2022 draft, a pick that I am hoping the Bucks end up using to select a player with as opposed to trading back. While it’s great that they’re adding younger rotation players instead of going for veterans, one of the best ways for a championship team to continue to compete at that level with limited resources (both financially and in terms of assets) is to get production from guys on rookie contracts.
I don’t want to look too much at other teams, but what the Brooklyn Nets did in this past draft to get young players like Cam Thomas and Day’ron Sharpe are things that Bucks should be looking to do going forward. It’s one thing to have multiple bites at the apple with late second-round picks, but we’ve seen that the success rate on those picks is very low.
While having the Herd is one way to try to develop them and mitigate the low percentage hit rate on late second-rounders, being able to get a non-lottery first-round pick is a better option for long-term success.
I’m not expecting the Bucks to add a superstar with a late first-round pick or that the Herd will magically turn their late second-round fliers into solid NBA players, but having that developmental system is very important in seeing if you can turn any of these players into cheap rotation guys who can help in the not-so-distant future.
The Herd has yet to announce their roster, but you can be sure that the aforementioned young players will see time with them this year, in addition to whoever wins the other two-way contract spot.