There are few reasons to fear the deer these days, and Milwaukee comes up a lot in discussions about which teams should relocate. The franchise has seen better days, but there is some hope. The Bucks picked up an intriguing Greek prospect who turned out to be an exciting, unique NBA talent, able to hold his own at age 19, and now have the high-scoring college star Jabari Parker. Some of the pieces are there, and now Milwaukee just needs some patience in watching things germinate.
2014 in review
With a much anticipated draft coming up, teams were not afraid to admit they were “retooling” in 2014. The Bucks, however, insisted they were not tanking and wanted to shoot for the playoffs. Oops. After making the playoffs in 2013 with 38 wins, they fell to a meager 15 and had a worse record than a team with a 26 game losing streak. But there a few factors at play here. The first one is that their expected win total (calculated from their point differential) was 5 wins higher — they were unlucky, and actually were worse than the 76ers, which makes sense. The 2013 and 2014 squads were also vastly differently, as there were only five holdovers. Finally, Larry Sanders had a nightmare of a season, marred by off-court problems and injuries. His Defensive Player of the Year-caliber presence was muted and he missed most of the season. They accidentally backed themselves into the top spot for the draft lottery, a position many rebuilding teams envied, and they landed the second overall pick.
Changes
Exit: Ramon Sessions, Caron Butler, Ekpe Udoh, Luke Ridnour, Jeff Adrien, Gary Neal, Miroslav Raduljica, D.J. Stephens, Tony Mitchell.
Enter: Jabari Parker, Jared Dudley, Kendall Marshall, Jerryd Bayless.
The Bucks rid themselves of most of their veterans, fully committing to the rebuilding process that they weren’t comfortable with last year. Sessions, Butler, and Ridnour were fine bench pieces, but their services weren’t applicable. Gary Neal turned out to be a dud — Milwaukee was bold enough to trade with the Spurs and predictably lost that battle.
Dudley’s an odd fit, but he was brought in for a protected first round pick and as a future trade piece if he returns to form. He’s still in his 20’s. And with a young team, he’s a professional veteran who may help set the right example (a common refrain in the front office.) Marshall’s a high-assist, pass-first point guard who provides a nice counter to Knight, while Bayless can be useful as a bench spark plug.
Player spotlight
Brandon Knight has been starting point guard out of college for three straight years on two different teams, but his future and potential are still in doubt. His progress has mainly stalled, but one change was a large jump in taking shots and a more modest increase in assists. He shared a larger portion of the offense, but unfortunately his efficiency is still far below average. As can be seen below, his shot efficiency was near the 25th percentile compared to a 90th percentile rating in shot volume. When people complain about his fixture as a starting point guard, this is mainly why.
Another criticism has concerned his ability to distribute. His career average in assist rate is 23, and he’s not a standout in percentile either — since the percentile rating includes every position, the 80th percentile is not impressive. Milwaukee’s offense is not entirely to blame either because assist rate is measuring the proportion of assists to the field goals they actually made. Compare his assist rate to Kendall Marshall’s, for example, who was also on a poor offense.
The feature only included with point guards is the stat teammate points via (his own) drives per 100 possessions. As he’s only compared with point guards with only this measure, the 46th percentile is mediocre. Most other starters who generate so few points on their drives are either combo guards like George Hill who are plus defenders or guys who are top-notch scorers like Lillard. Additionally, Knight drives to the basket at an above average rate for a point guard — he should be generating more plays for his teammates. Marshall drove less but generated the same amount of points.
Overall, his stats suggest a ball dominant guard who shoots at a high volume with low accuracy from all over the court. Part of his high number of touches was due to Milwaukee’s lack of offensive help, but a better player would have done more with less. His eFG% defense was pretty strong for a point guard, and defense might have to be his calling-card in the future. He’s 6′ 3″ with long arms and quick feet, so the potential is there, and his defensive stats were actually better the previous season.
Defense should be his future because his shooting has remained poor, and unfortunately, like with Rubio, he has trouble finishing at the rim too. A poor shooter to most people typically means a poor jump shooter, but he’s not safe anywhere. Since he’s not a great distributor or finisher when he drives, his role as a ball-dominant pure point guard is in question.
Some people think he’s more of a natural shooting guard and that with Marshall coming in, he’ll play more at the 2. The green light was on last season, and he shot quickly coming off picks, spotting up, or drive to the basket. He doesn’t have the habits or intuition of a point. He did a bit of his work off the ball, which you can see in some of the videos below (link is also here) — this might be a harbinger of his future role.
He doesn’t pick up a lot of steals, but he’s a pretty good defender sometimes and he can be disruptive.
In the golden era of point guards, Brandon Knight sticks out as a young point guard without elite passing or scoring skills. The good news is that he’s young enough to drastically change, and if he wants a big payday he’ll need it.
2015 projected
Last season was nearly the worst-case scenario for the Bucks with several players playing worse than usual. Chances are, they should mostly recover. Larry Sanders seems pretty committed and it’s hard to repeat the disaster that was 2014. The difference between his defense at center and Henson’s is enormous, even when he’s not at his best. Even before his breakout season he was blocking over 4 shots per 36 minutes. If he’s ever focused and can play heavy minutes, he would absolutely deserve Defensive Player of the Year.
Another long-armed phenom, Giannis Antetokounmpo, looks like another truly central piece and one you could see with a big role on a title team. In rebuilding, you don’t want to pick up a bunch okay starters and scorers you can steal in salary dumps. He already looks like a multi-tool player with point forward skills with healthy rebounding and a usable 3PT shot. Though I wonder if his best path is a Scottie Pippen-like role using his Condor-esque wingspan bottle up opponents, hanging back to cut off drives where his length can still contest shots. However, his shooting may still be a concern. He shot only 68% at the line and couldn’t even clear a ghastly 20% on two-point shots outside of the restricted area. Few players his age are great shooters, but it’s something to track. Looking for similar players in his age range, based on his usage, rebounding, assist rate, steals, and three-point attempts, you get a list that consists of versatile all-star players and two of the best non all-stars in history (Odom, Josh Smith.)
| Player | Age | DRB% | AST% | USG% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 19 | 16.3 | 12.1 | 15.0 |
| Lamar Odom | 20 | 18.2 | 20.2 | 23.5 |
| Kevin Durant | 20 | 16.4 | 13.5 | 28.3 |
| LeBron James | 20 | 17.0 | 32.9 | 29.7 |
| Chris Webber | 21 | 18.4 | 21.5 | 25.5 |
| Josh Smith | 21 | 21.0 | 16.3 | 24.1 |
| Antoine Walker | 21 | 22.3 | 15.4 | 29.2 |
| Paul George | 21 | 17.9 | 13.6 | 19.3 |
| Kevin Durant | 21 | 17.9 | 13.5 | 32.0 |
| LeBron James | 21 | 17.1 | 32.8 | 33.6 |
*Players =10 AST%, >= DRB%, 1 STL per 36 MP, 2 3PA per 36 MP
Giannis’ usage rate is far from most of those all-star players, but relaxing the thresholds doesn’t net any more similar players. Versatility is a sign (albeit not perfect, of course) of a star. Lamar Odom is probably the best analogue here.
Jabari Parker is the other big piece to watch. He’s reminiscent of other big combo scoring forwards like Carmelo and Glen Robinson. In fact, Carmelo comes up on a list of statistically similar players, and the key marks are there: Jabari took 18.9 FGA’s per 40 minutes (pace adjusted) to Carmelo’s 18.2; 8.1 free throws attempts to Carmelo’s 7.1; a TS% of 56 to 54; and 11.4 rebounds to 10.4. However, Parker was stingy on assists, and even Carmelo embarrassed him with an assist to turnover ratio twice as high. Even if he doesn’t reach all-star status, he could still be a quality player — ironically, one similar player who comes up is Tobias Harris, whose progress after being traded from Milwaukee to Orlando inspired small-scale meltdowns among fans.
Part of the promise of the Bucks involved their superior length, but one guy, John Henson, has been disappointing. He has the length of a center, but gets pushed around easily and has been saddled with awful plus/minus scores. That might be a bit of noise due to a weird season. He’ll fight for minutes against Ilyasova, who was yet another Buck mired in a slump. A Doppelganger for James Franco, his 3PT% fell from the mid-40’s to 28% and consequently his shooting efficiency landed in the bottom 5th percentile. He made waves during his breakout as a stretch 4 who could pull down gaudy rebounding games. Given his age and the variability of shooting stats, it’s reasonable to expect him to find his shot again.
Another player looking to recover is OJ Mayo. Earlier in his career he was flipped for Kevin Love — yeah, Love has been traded for a well-regarded shooting guard prospect before — and he was later dumped by Memphis, who’s been stuck in a perpetual search for a scoring wing, and then got replaced by Ellis in a trade with Dallas. He’s apparently the grass on the other side of the fence because teams have been optimistic about his potential for years. However, too many years have passed and even if he recovers, his base level isn’t even great to begin with. Bayless could take his spot in the rotation.
With so many players following an off-year and some potentially good defensive pieces — Sanders with Dudley, Wolters, and others — clearing 30 or 35 wins is a possibility. But the franchise recognizes where they are and how they need to focus on player development and collecting assets, even if that includes another high draft pick.
Summary
If the Phoenix Suns could have won the Most Improved Player award collectively as a team, the Bucks could have won the Biggest-Dropoff trophy — Sanders, Ilyasova, Mayo, Henson, Knight’s defense, even new guy Dudley. But they’ve got some important parts for a foundation, and the Giannis-Jabari forward duo should be exciting to watch. A large part of their improvement will simply come from improving on their bad luck last season where they lost 6 out of 7 overtime games and all three decided by 2 points or less. Fear the deer … eventually.
Wins: 25
Losses: 57
Conference rank: 14th
League offense rank: 25th
League defense rank: 25th
Edited 10/27/14
