NBA Season Preview 2017-18: What offensive style will the Bucks play?

Obviously, the biggest change for the Milwaukee Bucks this season is at the end of the bench, with Mike Budenholzer taking over for Joe Prunty, the interim head coach who finished last season after Jason Kidd was fired.

Budenholzer is widely regarded as an excellent tactician and one who made fantastic use of the pieces available to him with the Atlanta Hawks over the past few years. There has been plenty of excitement about what he can do with Giannis Antetokoiunmpo and this Bucks roster and a broader look at offensive style traits he may implement is a good place to start.

Below you’ll find an offensive style chart comparing last season’s Bucks to last season’s Hawks, with Budenholzer at the helm. These charts are not meant to evaluate whether an offense is good or bad. They are designed to help illustrate how teams go about the goal of trying to put the ball in the basket. Each team’s offense is evaluated on four stylistic spectrums.

Ball movement is measured with the average touch time for each team, from the NBA’s player tracking statistics. A lower average touch time means the ball is moving from player to player more quickly.

Player movement is measured with a combination of different NBA.com tracking statistics and works out to average distance traveled per 24 seconds of offensive possession.

Pace is measured with the average length of an offensive possession from Inpredictable, a more accurate representation for how quickly a team is working than traditional pace.

Shot selection is measured with MoreyBall percentage — in this case the percentage of a team’s true shooting opportunities that came at the rim, from the free throw line, or on a 3-pointer. It’s a generalized measure but captures something about how much each team hews to the shots that are, on average, the most efficient.

On the graph, you’ll see a line for each team’s offense. As the line moves away from the center of the graph on each axis you’re seeing more of that stylistic trait. For example, shot selection shows a (hypothetically) more efficient shot selection the further you are from the center. Here’s how the two teams played last year.

The most obvious potential changes are the ones that have been most associated with Budenholzer’s previous offenses — movement and 3-pointers. Milwaukee ranked below the 50th percentile in both ball and player movement last season, with plenty of possessions working out to be static pick-and-rolls with Giannis in the middle of the floor surrounded by shooters. With talented and versatile offensive players like Khris Middleton, Eric Bledsoe, Malcolm Brogdon and Brook Lopez in the mix, there are plenty of tools for Budenholzer to create misdirection and productive actions off the ball, without having to take it out of Giannis’ hands.

It will also be interesting to see what sort of pace the Bucks play at next season. Last year, they played slightly faster than the Hawks and Giannis’ ability to grab a rebound and push the fastbreak himself is a legitimate weapon. As the regular season unfolds we’ll get more details about how the Bucks will look to attack a defense but it seems safe to assume there’s going to be a lot more complexity in their offensive attack.