Bucks are clear championship favorites after wild trade for Damian Lillard

Hopefully, you were sitting on your couch or in front of a computer or television when the news broke that the Milwaukee Bucks had won the Damian Lillard sweepstakes. Our condolences if you were in a movie theater or sitting in an important business meeting. If you were driving, well, we know who caused that accident backing up I-94.

After trading for Portland Trail Blazers All-NBA point guard Damian Lillard, the Milwaukee Bucks are now the clear championship favorite in the NBA.

The Bucks pulled off an unexpected trade

It was a surprise deal; the volume had ramped up significantly that Lillard was close to being traded after a summer of rumors and feints, but it was never supposed to be the Milwaukee Bucks bringing in the superstar point guard. He wanted to go to Miami, and teams such as the Toronto Raptors were getting into the mix late in the game.

The Bucks? It was never supposed to be the Bucks. They were a small-market team with a veteran core already in place, including an All-Star point guard. It was the big markets bidding for Lillard; the Raptors reportedly bowed out because they knew Lillard didn’t want to play there.

Whether the Bucks ignored the script or had the ultimate trump card in a superstar teammate for Damian Lillard, they came away Wednesday with an all-time offensive force on their roster. Yes, it cost them Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen and some draft capital, but the upside of such a move is tremendous. Here is how the trade broke down for the Bucks specifically:

Incoming: Damian Lillard

Outgoing: Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen, 2029 unprotected first, pick swaps in 2028, 2030

It’s a bold and admittedly risky move to trade away a perennial All-Defensive player in Jrue Holiday, one who was essential to the Bucks’ title in 2021. If Holiday is not on that team, they don’t win the championship that year; he was the second-best player on the Bucks in the playoffs. Losing him hurts.

Yet the pressure put on the team publicly by Giannis Antetokounmpo to continually push for contention put the spotlight on what separated the Bucks from the other contenders in the league, and the injury-related decline of Khris Middleton highlighted the fact that the Bucks didn’t have a top-flight second option for when teams took away Antetokounmpo. They solved that problem and then some.

How Lillard and Antetokounmpo fit together

Winning titles is about superstars, and the Bucks now have two of them. Antetokounmpo is still a top-5 player in the league if not top-2 behind only Nikola Jokic. Damian Lillard had the best individual season of his career last year, averaging 32.2 points per game on an insane 64.5 percent true shooting, the highest of his career. Six players averaged at least 30 points per game last season, and the Bucks now have two of them.

Often when two stars land on the same team, there is stylistic overlap that diminishes the impact that the two players can have together. That’s absolutely not the case with Lillard and Antetokounmpo, who fit together like peanut butter and jelly or bratwursts and beer.

Defending Lillard, one of the league’s preeminent deep threats, involves putting “two on the ball” in the pick-and-roll; if you don’t both chase him over the screen and have the screener’s defender “show” by stepping into Lillard’s face coming off the screen, he will pull up and shoot, whether the play is at 24 feet or 28.

The way to defend Giannis, the league’s most unstoppable interior scorer, is to pack the paint and “build a wall” in front of him so that he cannot spin or Euro step his way to the rim. That’s how teams like the Toronto Raptors and Miami Heat have taken down the Bucks in the playoffs in the past.

You need six defenders to both stop Lillard on the pick-and-roll and build a wall in front of Antetokounmpo. The two-man game between them could be the most dangerous the league has seen since Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant were on the same team. It’s Steve Nash and Amar’e Stoudemire if Nash was a conscienceless shooter and Stoudemire was also an excellent passer and had Mr. Fantastic’s reach. It’s unstoppable.

The Bucks are clear championship favorites

There are real defensive question marks, but there may not be an opponent in front of them capable of taking true advantage of it. The other top teams in the Eastern Conference are built to win differently than high pick-and-roll, allowing the Bucks to wall off the paint with drop coverage and let Brook Lopez and Antetokounmpo snuff things out.

It’s possible the Bucks would face a team like the Phoenix Suns or Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, but that’s a rich man’s problem. If they are good enough to get there, they’re going to have figured out many of their defensive and rotation questions. And who in those backcourts is going to defend Lillard?

The Denver Nuggets have some real rotational question marks to answer after losing Bruce Brown and Jeff Green. The Boston Celtics and Phoenix Suns significantly reworked their teams this season and are built on injury-prone stars. The Miami Heat missed out on Lillard; the Philadelphia 76ers are in chaotic turmoil. The Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors may have aged out of the fight. The Bucks are the favorite.

There is still time to add to this team as well and fill in the remaining holes. There are still veterans available on the open market to sign, and they have a few avenues to adding someone inexpensive via trade. Their core four to start with of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez is one heck of a starting place, and they will fill out the final starter and the rest of the rotation from there.

The Bucks are all-in; they’ve traded every possible first-round pick that they can, and the cupboard of second-round picks is fairly bare too. Yet they have done so to get to the very top of the mountain. That doesn’t mean they’re a lock to win it all, but they are in the inner circle and should be considered the favorite to win the NBA Finals next season.

This is the kind of trade you make only if you’re sure it puts you at the top, and that’s what this deal has done. It’s bittersweet to say goodbye to Holiday, but Lillard and Antetokounmpo together can do something special.

The journey won’t be easy, but more so than any other team in the league, the Milwaukee Bucks have the players to make it happen. As Training Camp begins next season and the NBA Finals inch ever closer, the Bucks are the clear favorites to hoist the trophy at the end of the road.