2016-17 NBA Preview: Milwaukee Bucks

The Milwaukee Bucks likely won’t participate in the great Eastern Conference playoff race due to an injury to Khris Middleton, but they did make perhaps the greatest gain of the off-season this side of the Bay Area: Nylon Calculus father Seth Partnow as Director of Basketball Research. We here at Nylon Calculus think hiring the Nylon Calculus editor is a great idea. Oh, and they also had some draft picks and free agents or something.

“Matthew Dellavedova was impressive enough that I’m quite sure he’s a backup NBA point guard. While this may sound like faint praise, I assure you, that’s about the highest compliment I can give an non-lottery talent at Summer League.” – Seth Partnow (July 2014)

2015-16 in review

The Bucks had a disappointing season, winning 33 games and finishing far from the playoffs with a poor defense. They had their core group together too, as high lottery pick Jabari Parker spent most of 2015 on the sidelines. Jason Kidd’s defensive shenanigans were ineffective, and their new toys, like Greg Monroe and Michael Carter-Williams, felt out of place. They had more progress from Giannis Antetokounmpo, but not enough to swing them into playoff contention.

Rotation players in: Matthew Dellavedova, Mirza Teletovic, Tony Snell, Jason Terry.

Rotation players out: Michael Carter-Williams, Jerryd Bayless, OJ Mayo.

The Bucks clearly identified three-point shooting as a need and addressed it: all four key players coming in are proficient outside shooters. Dellavedova is the special 3-and-D point guard who’s ideal next to a wing player who acts as the primary ballhandler (i.e. Giannis Antetokounmpo will have that role.) Teletovic shot three-pointers more often than everyone but Stephen Curry last season. Jason Terry is only still in the league because of his shooting. And Tony Snell was traded in exchange for Michael Carter-Williams because he’s a 3-and-D shooting guard. The team also lost gunning combo guards in Bayless and Mayo; they have other priorities.

2016-17 Projected

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There are a few factors that are limiting Milwaukee’s projected win total, and one should be pretty obvious: Khris Middleton’s hamstring injury is devastating. He may not even play this season, depending on his recovery. He’s clearly a plus on offense and defense and he nearly had the highest usage rate on the team, which is quite a surprise. The team has no alternatives, at least not at that level of productivity. The organization reacted though, and Tony Snell, who showed some promise on the Bulls, will soak up a lot of Middleton’s minutes.

Middleton’s absence alone washes out the positive effects from bringing in Matthew Dellavedova, who provides a few of the same skills. Delly is a perfect fit next to theoretical peak Giannis, but he might be overtaxed this season starting and playing without any real backup ball-handlers. His alley-oop skills will be appreciated by Miles Plumlee, at the very least. One could understand the long-term and short-term benefits of the Tony Snell trade, but the downside is that they lack playmaking off the bench and if Delly got injured, things could get ugly.

While the optimists are pointing to the successful 2015 campaign, I have to point out that they’re missing most of that core group of defenders, like Jared Dudley, Brandon Knight, and Zaza Pachulia. A frontcourt of Greg Monroe and Jabari Parker, for instance, is not one built for a top five defense. Many people have also argued that Jason Kidd’s defense in 2015 had a fluky good year and can’t be repeated because the league knows what to expect and how to respond. The Bucks are slowly reloading the roster with more defenders and they could dump Monroe in the next few months, with the right buyer, so perhaps they could recapture some of the magic. But they were actually worse last season than their wins indicated: their point differential suggested a 29 win team, not a 33 win one. They have a long way to climb.

Thankfully, there’s a lot of young talent on the roster, and a year spent in rebuilding, again, won’t be as painful because the future of the team isn’t foggy. Thon Maker is a throw-back to the high school draft pick days when we knew very little about prospects, and there’s so little information ESPN draft numbers guru Kevin Pelton couldn’t even create a projection. Jabari Parker was picked second overall, and he’s constantly compared to big scorers like Carmelo Anthony — he could take a leap this season. But the future is with Giannis Antetokounmpo, a truly unique player who has improved his usage rate, true shooting percentage, assist rate, turnover percentage, and rebound percentage every season so far. Since he’s improved so dramatically so far I actually have him improving only by a modest amount, but he’s so young he should be better anyhow. It’s enough to help offset the loss of Khris Middleton, but the team is not deep enough to sustain the injury — unless the Greek Freak transforms into a star quickly.

Quick graph

The most enticing player on the Bucks is Giannis Antetokounmpo, obviously, a perimeter player with the height and length of a center, and the strides of a giant. Many people are predicting a breakout season for him based on his breadth of skills and uniqueness, even though he has not yet demonstrated elite ability. Using a basic similarity measure as seen below — it incorporates some non box-score stats so it only goes back to 1997 — the most similar player is Tracy McGrady, who actually shows up several times on the list.

McGrady was the best match because of size at his position and versatile stat-lines. Age, usage rate, and position were weighed twice as heavily as everything else; McGrady hits Giannis’ marks there quite well. Lamar Odom is also a good analogue, but there are a few cautious tales as well, like Terrence Williams and Tyreke Evans. Regardless, no one knows what to make of the Greek Freak yet, but overall he has a few promising signs. McGrady was an all-star, 26.8 PPG scorer by 2001, by the way.

2017-preview-mil-giannis /

Summary

Due to internal improvements and an incoming set of three-point shooters, headlined by the doggedly valuable and annoying Matthew Dellavedova, the Bucks could be significantly better this season. But Khris Middleton’s injury erases much of that gain. Multi-year projections include their successful 2015 season too in the stats, so that’s not being ignored; but it’s not enough. If the Bucks want to make the playoffs, they’ll have to rely on the rapid development of one of their youngsters. Otherwise, it’s another year in the lottery, but it’s not grim; they at least have a direction.

Win predictions:

Mine: 30.8. A blend of several metrics, including Dredge, with a few other factors considered, like coaching.

Andrew Johnson’s: 34. A combination of PT-PM (a SportVU player tracking metric) blended with RAPM. Two-time reigning champion of the APBRmetrics board predictions contest.

Nick Restifo’s: 30. A simulation using BPM and RPM for player value, which includes game effects like altitude and rest.

Kevin Ferrigan’s: 33. A player projection system with inputs from RAPM, BPM, height, and age.

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