Milwaukee Bucks made several big gambles and might pay high price

Before the season when the Milwaukee Bucks traded for Damian Lillard and paired the long-time Portland Trail Blazers star with Giannis Antetokounmpo, they were heralded as an Eastern Conference contender reborn after a disappointing playoff run.

A few months later, however, those takes are starting to get freezer burn. The Bucks entered the All-Star break with a number of cracks showing in their armor, including an embarrassing two-game losing streak—the first a 123-97 loss to the Miami Heat without Jimmy Butler, the second a 113-110 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies who were led in scoring by Ziaire Williams and two-way player G.G. Jackson.

“We had some guys here,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers quipped postgame. “We had some guys in Cabo.”

Rivers himself, of course, is a product of the Bucks’ difficult season. Rivers replaced Adrian Griffin at the helm after Milwaukee fired the first-time head coach 43 games into his tenure. That came on the heels of Mike Budenholzer’s firing last year after the Bucks became the rare 1-seed to lose to an 8-seed when they fell to the eventual Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat. Budenholzer’s 2021 run to the franchise’s first championship in nearly 50 years wasn’t enough to save his job.

The returns are still very early, but Rivers hasn’t fared much better to date. The team is 3-7 since his tenure began on January 29, with a negative net rating (points generated per 100 possessions minus points allowed per 100 possessions) at -1.7. The offense has cratered to 24th overall at 111.9, which has negatively countered the fact that the defense has actually been two points per 100 possessions better compared to their season average.

But the Bucks’ problems pre-date Rivers. Lillard is shooting 34.1 percent from 3-point range on 8.5 attempts per game, and he shot just 27.8 percent in January, to go with 32.6 percent in February.

Meanwhile, the Bucks can’t survive lineups with Antetokounmpo off the floor at all. They outscore opponents by 7.2 points per 100 possessions when he plays, per the website Cleaning the Glass, which is solid—the Los Angeles Clippers have the fourth-best net rating in the National Basketball Association (NBA) at 7.2 as well. But when Antetokounmpo leaves the floor, the Bucks are outscored by nine points per 100 possessions. With Lillard and former All-Star Khris Middleton on the floor and Antetokounmpo off, that total falls even further to -14.1 (albeit in a small sample size).

Those are disastrous numbers, and they are indicative of the kind of problems the Bucks will face in the postseason. Antetokounmpo is shouldering an MVP-level load and doing it admirably—30.8 points, 11.2 rebounds and 6.4 assists per game.

But blue-blood contenders like the Boston Celtics and Denver Nuggets have surrounded their MVP/MVP-adjacent stars with talent that complements and enhances them, which is a symbiotic relationship. If a role player can make Nikola Jokić or Jayson Tatum’s life easier, they will in turn make life easier for the role player. The Bucks don’t seem to enjoy that luxury with Antetokounmpo.

If Lillard heats up from 3-point range, and if the defensive improvements are real, the Bucks have plenty of time to turn things around once they get back from All-Star break, even if some players mentally left for Cabo a little early. The Celtics appear to have a stranglehold on the Eastern Conference’s top seed, but the Cavaliers are just 1.5 games ahead for the 2-seed, and they won 18 of their last 20 games before the break to reach that point.

If the Bucks don’t get it together, however, they are staring at a very uncomfortable situation. To acquire Jrue Holiday from the Pelicans in 2020, the Bucks dealt the right to swap their 2024 first-round picks, their unprotected 2025 pick, the right to swap their 2026 first-round picks, and their unprotected 2027 first-round pick. To acquire Lillard this summer, the Bucks traded the right to swap their 2028 first-round pick to the Trail Blazers, their 2029 first-round pick unprotected, the right to swap their 2030 first-round pick…and Holiday.

In other words, the Bucks won’t control their own draft pick again until 2031. If things go wrong and the Pelicans and Blazers start swapping picks with the Bucks immediately (unlikely but possible), the Bucks may have traded every pick from 2024 to 2030 just to acquire a 33-year-old point guard sharpshooter who is hitting just 34 percent of his threes.

Other possibilities exist. The Bucks could rediscover their best form in the postseason, Lillard could catch fire, Antetokounmpo could overwhelm opponents, and the Bucks could storm to a championship. If that happens, Milwaukee fans in 2029 staring at what might be a chilly roster can warm themselves with memories of two titles in 2021 and 2024.

But with the (justifiable) goal of maximizing Antetokounmpo’s tenure with the team, the Bucks took some enormous gambles over the last four years, and they pushed all of their chips into the middle of the table this summer. With every loss to a Heat team sans Butler, or a Grizzlies team fielding G-Leaguers and 10-day-contract players, the Bucks see a few more of those chips go into the dealer’s pocket.

The Bucks return to action Friday against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who currently hold the top seed in the Western Conference, at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN.