Bucks can salvage rough season
Almost no one would dispute the assertion that the Milwaukee Bucks have underachieved through 70% of the season. Yes, it’s a young team that has been hit hard by injury, but that doesn’t excuse inconsistent effort.
No NBA team gets max effort from every player in all 82 regular-season games. The schedule simply won’t allow it. The really good teams limit those off nights to a few. By that standard, the Bucks have not been a particularly good team.
Too many nights, they haven’t moved the ball. Too many nights, they’ve displayed defensive indifference to the corner three or the pick-and-roll. Too many nights, they’ve failed to close out games.
We can debate the reasons the Bucks are 26-32 until Marv Albert correctly pronounces Giannis Antetokounmpo’s name. It’s where they go from here, though, that will shed light on who they are as a team and as individual players.
With 24 games left, starting with Denver at the BMO Harris Bradley Center on Wednesday night, the Bucks have a chance to make a statement about their commitment to each other, to coach Jason Kidd and to their “Own the Future” marketing campaign.
Making the playoffs was the goal before the season started and it’s still there, in front of them. The race for the final spots in the Eastern Conference is likely to go down to the final week, maybe down to
the final night.
“I think that’s probably right,” said general manager John Hammond. “Hopefully, we can play well as the season progresses and be right in the hunt.”
Hammond is committed to the long-term goal of putting a team on the court that will contend annually for the NBA title, not for the eighth seed in the East.
But right now, for a team that played the first half of the season without Khris Middleton, lost Jabari Parker to a second ACL tear the night Middleton returned and watched Michael Beasley go down for at least three games with a hyperextended knee Monday, the eighth seed in the East would be a big step in the right direction.
The Bucks have played better lately, winning four of their last six, with the losses coming to Utah and Cleveland, two of the best teams in the league.
Before that, though, they’d lost 12 of 14, including 11 of 13 with Parker in the starting lineup. With an all-star in Antetokounmpo and an all-star caliber player in Parker, the Bucks had
no business playing as poorly as they were playing.
“You can’t explain it,” Hammond said. “There’s no answer to that, how teams can go on streaks like that. I remember Mike Fratello telling me years ago that when teams go on losing streaks, people know what’s wrong with the team. The problem is there are so many games in a condensed time period that you don’t have the practice time to fix it. If you could, you would.
“I think there’s a lot of truth to that. It happens. We’re not the only team this happens to.”
In the Bucks’ defense, they still haven’t gotten Antetokounmpo, Parker and Middleton — their three best players — on the floor at the same time for a significant stretch. It could be another year before that happens.
“We have to do that to find out who we are,”
Hammond said. “We think those three are going to play well together but we have to get there and see it and do it.”
As for Parker, Hammond said he expected the forward, who was averaging 20.1 points when he went down Feb. 8, to make a complete recovery from a second reconstructive knee surgery.
“I think he can come back and be the player he was and more,” Hammond said. “We have a first-class medical team. They are very, very confident that Jabari will come back as good or better.”
In the meantime, the Bucks have a chance to show how much they care, to show how much pride they have in playing the right way, to prove something to themselves and to their exasperated fans.
The season could go either way. It’s up to them.