Serge Ibaka is showing why the Milwaukee Bucks acquired him

I’ll be honest, I was a little skeptical when Serge Ibaka was announced as the return in the Donte DiVincenzo trade for the Milwaukee Bucks at the trade deadline.

Ibaka hadn’t looked great with the Los Angeles Clippers this season after coming back from offseason back surgery and that was to be expected. After some of the potential names that were being thrown around as a potential return for DiVincenzo, I was a little underwhelmed.

But I understood why they wanted to bring Ibaka in with the uncertainty around Brook Lopez’s return from his own back surgery. They needed another big after cycling through names such as DeMarcus Cousins and Greg Monroe, who were fine in their own right, but didn’t bring what the Bucks needed.

Ibaka has proven that he is a very worthwhile return for DiVincenzo after a string of solid performances.

How Serge Ibaka has found his fit with the Milwaukee Bucks

It wasn’t the greatest start offensively to Ibaka’s Milwaukee Bucks tenure, though. In his first seven games with the team, the veteran big man averaged 4.9 points on 50.4 percent true shooting that included shooting 23 percent on 13 3-point attempts.

While I thought he was fine defensively, he committed 19 fouls in his first five games. Ibaka was also a combined minus-39 in those seven games. He didn’t look entirely comfortable at either end of the floor, but especially offensively as he looked tentative to shoot the 3 after his rocky start.

But it was too early to give up on the Bucks’ deadline acquisition!

After that rough start, Ibaka is beginning to find a rhythm and a role with the Bucks at both ends as he figured out how the Bucks wanted to use him and got used to his new teammates.

In his last four games, Ibaka has scored in double figures three times, including an efficient 16 points in a blowout loss to the Golden State Warriors (he was a plus-2 in 17 minutes of a 13-point loss).

There have been a couple of big keys for Ibaka’s turnaround. The first is that he has shaken off that tentativeness from deep, taking eight 3s and shooting 62.5 percent in that limited sample. He won’t shoot that well the rest of the way, but it goes a long way to making him comfortable letting it fly.

The other is that Ibaka has been fantastic on the offensive glass. In his first seven games, Ibaka grabbed four total offensive boards. In his last four, he has 11. Sure, nine of them came in two games, but it’s a good sign that he’s growing into his role and adapting to what the Bucks what to do in terms of crashing the offensive glass.

At the other end, it looks like Ibaka is also getting more comfortable, even though he looked solid right away. As I mentioned, he got into foul trouble in his first few games with the team but that has pretty much gone away since then.

After those 19 fouls in his first five games, Ibaka has only committed six in the following six games (three of them came against the Warriors). Although the block numbers aren’t flashy, Ibaka has just been a solid defender and has been contesting shots. He leads the Bucks in contested 2-point shots with 40 since the beginning of March. That would be on pace for around 200 fewer than what Lopez did last season.

He has admirably filled a lesser version of the Lopez role for a big that can protect the rim, let a few 3s fly, and also have an impact around the basket offensively.

There’s some optimism that Lopez will return soon and that leads to some questions regarding Ibaka’s role. How will the Bucks balance his and Lopez’s minutes early on? How much will Ibaka play once Lopez is up to speed? Will Ibaka play mostly alongside Bobby Portis or Giannis Antetokounmpo?

If we were asking these questions after his first seven games, I’d question whether Ibaka should have a role at all. Now, though, he’s proven that he can be a valuable member of the playoff rotation against the right opponent.

He’s not what he was a couple of years ago (and no one should have expected that), but Ibaka still has some juice left for the Milwaukee Bucks’ title defense.