The Milwaukee Bucks have fought and clawed their way to a 5-3 record thus far this season. Managing to have a winning record despite the team’s struggles on defense is the optimistic way to look at their season; a title contender having a negative net rating through eight games is the pessimistic view.
Just as the Bucks as a team have had an up-and-down season, so have their individual players been all over the place. Some are having a strong start to the year, while others are struggling to play at a high level. Let’s look at which players fall into which category and what it might mean moving forward.
Jae Crowder’s stock is soaring
After the Bucks paid five second-round picks to add him at last year’s trade deadline, Jae Crowder struggled to shake off the rust of sitting out the first half of the season and found himself on the fringes of Milwaukee’s rotation. By the time the playoffs rolled around, even with Giannis Antetokounmpo missing time, Crowder only averaged 10 minutes per game and shot just 23.1 percent from the field.
This season, he looks like his old self, comfortably launching from 3-point range and knocking down 53.3 percent on his 3.8 attempts per game. He is up to 28 minutes as a regular rotation player and has closed multiple games for the Bucks thus far. He’s playing a small but valuable role in the Bucks’ offense, and defensively, he’s taking on a lot of responsibility due to the poor defenders now littering the Bucks’ backcourt rotation.
If Crowder continues to shoot this well, the Bucks should get him more shots on the perimeter, but just the fact that Crowder has rebounded from last season and gotten his career back on track is a sign of his soaring stock to start the season.
Giannis Antetekounmpo’s stock is soaring
The chemistry between Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard isn’t there yet. They are still figuring out how to use one another to gain advantages over the opposing defense. On the other end of the court, Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez are not comfortable in the more aggressive scheme new head coach Adrian Griffin has been trying to instill.
At the same time, it’s undeniable how well Antetokounmpo is playing as an individual superstar. He just dropped 54 points on the Indiana Pacers, going 16-for-18 from the free-throw line and scoring 19 2-point baskets, a dominant showing inside.
After an early exit from the playoffs last season, there were deserved questions about whether Antetokounmpo, a player who relied heavily on his athleticism, was losing a step as he approaches his 29th birthday. Thus far, he has silenced the doubters and has been physically dominant, with his highest block percentage in six seasons, and taking some of his midrange jumpers and moving them closer to the basket.
Antetokounmpo hasn’t been perfect, averaging the most turnovers since his rookie season and not elevating the defense to elite heights (more on that later), but physically he is whole. As he and Lillard grow more comfortable together, they should only help one another out all the more, and he and Lopez should settle into a better defensive rhythm as the season progresses.
MarJon Beauchamp’s stock is soaring
Last season, the Milwaukee Bucks deployed Jrue Holiday, Jevon Carter and Wesley Matthews in the backcourt, giving them one of the best collections of guard defenders and setting the tone for one of the league’s best defenses at the point of attack.
This season the Bucks are sending out Damian Lillard, Malik Beasley and Cameron Payne, a marked step down defensively. That has meant pressing MarJon Beauchamp into service in his second season. Beauchamp is still a raw player but he has stepped up and had a positive impact when on the court.
The 6’6″ wing has shot 47.4 percent on his 3-pointers thus far, shooting 5.8 3-pointers per 36 minutes and then hitting 66.7 percent of his 2-pointers. He’s been the Bucks’ best perimeter defender and the team has been 8.8 points per 100 possessions better with Beauchamp in the game (per Cleaning the Glass). He still has a lot of room to develop, but he’s always able to step onto the court and help the Bucks win.
Malik Beasley’s stock is fading fast
On the other side of the plus/minus ledger is Malik Beasley. The Bucks signed the sharpshooter this summer to a minimum contract, a chance for Beasley to recoup his value after a poor end to the season with the Los Angeles Lakers last year. It looked like one of the best bargains of the summer and a way for the Bucks to juice their shooting.
Unfortunately, thus far the Beasley signing has been something of a disaster. Beasley has the second-worst plus-minus on the team (-53 for the season), and while the Bucks have been worse on defense when he plays, the true disaster has been on offense. The Bucks are a staggeringly bad 18.1 points per 100 possessions worse when Beasley plays than when he’s off the court.
Beasley himself is shooting a strong 42.5 percent from 3-point range but isn’t being utilized very often, which means his gravity isn’t leveraging court space for his teammates and he is only hitting two 3-pointers per game; his usage rate of 13.8 percent is one of the lowest of his career and just 10th on the Bucks. If the Bucks are going to play Beasley they should probably feed him more shots; otherwise, he’s not worth the defensive sacrifice.
Khris Middleton’s stock is fading fast
Khris Middleton only played 33 games last season, but a strong showing in the playoffs communicated to the Bucks that he still had enough in the tank to be Giannis Antetokounmpo’s wingman. That’s what led them to re-sign Middleton this summer to a lucrative three-year deal.
After an entire offseason to continue healing, however, Middleton still looks like he is nursing an injury. He is on a strict minutes limit of around 20 minutes per game, has missed two games already, and is taking on a smaller role in the offense even when he is on the court.
The larger problem is on defense, where Middleton is being taken advantage of and is clearly not the positive on that end that he used to be; he has just four steals and zero blocks on the season. Middleton is shooting the ball well enough, which is helping, but in just 18.7 minutes per game the Bucks aren’t getting much benefit from that; his 8.7 field goal attempts per game are by far his fewest since his rookie season.
Perhaps Middleton continues to round into form, the knee holds up and his minutes limit increases into the low 30s by the time the playoffs roll around. At this point, though, the odds that he has degenerative damage that will prevent him from regaining an All-Star level are high and inching higher, which is a disastrous reality for the Bucks if it comes to pass.
Brook Lopez’s stock is fading fast
Heading into the season, the Bucks were surrounded by questions. How would Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo mesh? How would the Bucks replace Jrue Holiday’s defense? Had Giannis lost a step? Was Khris Middleton healthy? Would the Bucks regret investing so many roster spots in rookie and second-year players?
The question they weren’t supposed to have to ask was whether Brook Lopez was suddenly bad at defense. That’s an unfair question, of course, but after he finished as a Defensive Player of the Year finalist last season, Lopez is struggling to find his place defensively to start the 2023-24 season.
Looking out of sorts in the Bucks’ new aggressive scheme, Lopez was caught out in space too often and not able to rotate to the rim fast enough. At 35 years old, it’s without question that Lopez does his work in a drop coverage walling off the paint, but the pull of new head coach Adrian Griffin to play a pressure scheme pulled Lopez out of his comfort zone. They have shifted more back to drop coverage in recent games, and that is helping Lopez to stabilize his impact. Even so, he has a negative Defensive Box Plus-Minus for the season.
Where it gets even worse is on offense, however. Lopez is shooting just 39.4 percent from the field, making a measly 45.2 percent of his 2-pointers, and paired with decreased volume and decreased minutes has Lopez averaging just 9.5 points per game, by far a career-low. What’s more, the Bucks’ offense has ground to a halt when he is on the court. Per Cleaning the Glass, when Lopez takes the court the Bucks’ offense gets 26 points per 100 possessions worse; that’s the worst impact of any rotation player in the league.
Overall, then, Lopez is uncomfortable on defense and disastrous on offense, and he is a cumulative -67 on the season; not only is that the worst number on the Bucks, it’s the 11th-worst number in the league. Has Lopez lost a step, lost some touch, lost something that is irretrievable? Or has the combination of adding a new perimeter star two weeks before the season and a new coach clearly unsure of how to best deploy this team prevented Lopez (and others) from finding their place?
Bucks fans hope it’s the latter, and that time will allow things to settle in and this team to get back on track. If Middleton slowly increases his minutes, Lopez finds his touch and Griffin finds the way to fit the pieces together, this team could still be a top-tier title contender. The early signs, however, are not encouraging, and the play of Lopez in particular headlines what has been a painful start to the year.