Record predictions for every NBA team

Milwaukee Bucks (Projected Record: 47-35)

This is another record that looks like it will be too low, given how well Giannis Antetokounmpo has come out of the gate for Milwaukee this season. My RPM expectation for the Greek Freak was +2.2, but that had a lot to do with how much mean regression is involved in my system and its use of multiple years of prior data, years in which Antetokounmpo was nothing like the player he’s evolved into. Put simply, Giannis doesn’t seem to do mean regression.

Pairing Antetokounmpo with the still, somehow, underrated Khris Middleton, reigning Rookie of the Year, Malcolm Brogdon, the serviceable Tony Snell, and promising young center Thon Maker, the Bucks should be an exciting team of long-armed, athletic terrors that suffocates opposing teams.

The fact that they are instead a team that consistently surrenders one of the analytically worst shot profiles against them is bizarre and seems to represent a failing of strategy. Hopefully the Bucks’ bad defensive system doesn’t cost them wins on what looks to be the first of many runs Giannis makes at the league’s Most Valuable Player award, because that would be a damn shame.

Milwaukee’s biggest upside beyond the obvious morphing of Giannis from basketball player into world-destroying Kraken is that maybe this is the year Jabari Parker both stays healthy and gets a whiff of a clue of how to play NBA defense.