It goes without saying that landing star guard Damian Lillard raises the stakes for the Bucks, who, with a pair of 30-point-per-game scorers, arguably boast the NBA’s most potent 1-2 punch.
But acknowledging that is different from saying the trade alone guarantees a smooth ride, particularly early on. This new-look Milwaukee club, which features a new coach in Adrian Griffin and two new starters, may take time to figure out how to implement a handful of things.
Of course, the biggest shift—Lillard supercharging the offense alongside Giannis Antetokounmpo—may not take all that long. Sunday night, after the duo’s first exhibition game together, both men said there was an immediate comfort in playing next to each other. “First couple plays, they blitz me, they trap me, and the guy that I’m releasing the ball to is Giannis,” Lillard said of the Lakers’ defensive scheme. “So I’m like, ‘Uh, we can do this all night.’ You know what I mean?”
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Said Antetokounmpo of playing with Lillard: “I’ll be very honest: I’ve never been this open.”
The Bucks are going to enjoy new levels of gravity on the offensive end as a result of Lillard’s otherworldly range. Isolation looks figure to be far more successful with Lillard than with Jrue Holiday. Khris Middleton should see less defensive attention than he has in the past. Teams won’t be able to defend Antetokounmpo at the free throw line the way they have Draymond Green when he takes trap-busting feeds from Stephen Curry. Giannis is simply too tall, athletic and powerful, and would be able to score too easily. (And even when Antetokounmpo doesn’t take matters into his own hands, he’s a fantastic passer and will more often than not make the right reads to find an open teammate in the corner or behind the arc.)
Even if figuring out the offense comes somewhat easily at first for Lillard and Antetokounmpo, it’s not the only consideration. Over the past five seasons, Milwaukee has finished with a top-10 defense efficiency-wise four times. Last year, with Holiday serving as the team’s stopper at the point of attack, the club finished fourth on defense. Yes, there are still two other Defensive Player of the Year candidates, in Antetokounmpo and center Brook Lopez, on the roster. But there is an undeniable difference in ballhawking ability between Holiday and Lillard, and it remains to be seen how that will change the club on that end of the floor.
Another key difference: The team lacks some of the veteran depth it enjoyed in recent seasons. Wes Matthews and Joe Ingles are elsewhere, as is wing Grayson Allen, who landed with Phoenix as part of the Lillard deal. Malik Beasley and backup point guard Cameron Payne are among the newcomers. (Depth could end up being hugely important, depending on the health of someone like Middleton, who is yet to play this preseason but is expected to get some run before the actual season begins, according to Bucks general manager Jon Horst.)
Still, for all the changes and the temporary question marks they figure to bring about, that isn’t to say that the reboot won’t be worth it. Back in 2020, Milwaukee went through considerable change in an effort to rebuild itself better. Beyond bringing in Holiday in exchange for Eric Bledsoe, who struggled as a jump shooter in the postseason, then coach Mike Budenholzer tinkered with the team’s offense in an effort to make regular use of the dunker’s spot and to have the club play more aggressively on the offensive glass than it had before.
The results were highly clunky at first. After back-to-back campaigns in which the Bucks logged the most victories in the league, they hit a rough patch in mid-February 2021, dropping five straight games—their longest drought in four calendar years—and sat at just 16–13 through 29 contests.
“We knew it wasn’t always going to be pretty,” recalled Middleton of that season. “And we knew we were going to have to win with different styles of games. That’s the type of team you want: to be able to throw different guys and lineups out there. Because you can’t win playing the same way [all the time] at this level.”
Milwaukee ended that campaign with a championship—its first in 50 years.
This coming season could be similar in terms of having to learn certain things on the fly with a new star and a coach in Griffin who figures to implement new ideas. But we don’t know much about what those new ideas will be. Aside from expressing a desire to be more efficient in transition, Griffin—evasive at times—hasn’t tipped his hand about what differences to look for—a fundamental shift from Budenholzer, whose three-point attack and drop defense were key points of emphasis and quickly came to define the club’s style of play around Antetokounmpo.
Regardless of how well Lillard and Antetokounmpo look out of the gate, though, don’t be surprised if there are rough patches along the way. A handful of key aspects around this team are new, and as the Bucks’ magical run in 2021 suggested, the fruits of those stylistic changes may not be apparent right off the bat.
