Looking through Milwaukee Bucks’ potential situational lineup combinations
The Milwaukee Bucks are experiencing one of the best stretches in franchise history as February comes to a close and March begins.
Once March is over and April comes around, the focus of the Bucks and the rest of the NBA becomes playoff seeding. A focus on the playoffs comes with playoff rotations and situational lineups. There are numerous situations where the script of the game dictates different lineups in the game, the Milwaukee Bucks have some new faces, and one in particular that will be heavily involved: Jae Crowder.
It is not a hot take to say the Milwaukee Bucks are the deepest team in the league, and it showed during the Bucks’ win streak. The team dealt with Giannis Antetokounmpo missing a couple of games and leaving two early, Khris Middleton slowly returning from his injury, and Bobby Portis getting hurt in what was the first victory that kicked off the Bucks’ win streak back on January 23.
During the win streak, the Bucks added Jae Crowder and Meyers Leonard and waived Sandro Mamukelashvili. Those new additions present new faces to use in potential lineups. Let’s take a look at six different lineups the Milwaukee Bucks could use.
Milwaukee Bucks situational lineups: Length
The Milwaukee Bucks have tons of length and players that are big for their positions.
Simply put, the Bucks just have a lot of big players. Looking at what five players would give the team great length whether the Bucks are looking to take away passing lanes or make the court seem smaller starts with Jrue Holiday at point guard. Jrue Holiday will be part of just about every lineup combination that anyone could come up with because of his ability to do it all. Alongside Holiday, the Bucks could line up Khris Middleton at shooting guard, Giannis Antetokounmpo at small forward, Bobby Portis at power forward, and Brook Lopez at center.
Now, this unit would make it nearly impossible for Bucks’ opponents to grab any rebounds. Giannis is third in the NBA in rebounding, according to NBA.com. Antetokounmpo and Portis both remain in the top 10 in the NBA in double-doubles despite missing chunks of games, according to ESPN. Even Khris Middleton recorded double-digit rebounds twice in February.
If the Bucks wanted to get super nuts with length, they could move Giannis to point guard and put someone like Joe Ingles at small forward and not have a single player under 6-foot-8.