Fansided

The Whiteboard: The Milwaukee Bucks haven’t reached their final form yet

By Ti Windisch

MILWAUKEE, WI - NOVEMBER 19: Eric Bledsoe #6 and Khris Middleton #22 of the Milwaukee Bucks exchange handshakes during the game against the Denver Nuggets on November 19, 2018 at the BMO Harris Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2018 NBAE (Photo by Gary Dineen/NBAE via Getty Images)
MILWAUKEE, WI - NOVEMBER 19: Eric Bledsoe #6 and Khris Middleton #22 of the Milwaukee Bucks exchange handshakes during the game against the Denver Nuggets on November 19, 2018 at the BMO Harris Bradley Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2018 NBAE (Photo by Gary Dineen/NBAE via Getty Images) /
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The Milwaukee Bucks are already very good, but this team seems like it could improve internally. That’s bad news for the rest of the East.

The Milwaukee Bucks have won a very nice 69 percent of their games thus far in the 2018-19 season. A team winning nearly 70 percent of its games is very good, and very rare for Milwaukee — the last Bucks squad to win 69 percent or more of their games was way back in 1985-86.

The oldest rotation player on the Bucks, George Hill, was 14 days old when the ’85-86 Bucks ended their season with a loss to the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals. All of this to say that it’s been a while since the Bucks have been this good. That’s the good news for Milwaukee.

The even better news is that it doesn’t feel like this group has hit its ceiling quite yet. The Bucks three best players, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and Eric Bledsoe, haven’t yet had any sustained run where all of them seemed to be playing well.

Through his first nine games of the season, Bledsoe averaged just over 12 points per game and failed to hit 10 points three times. Since then, Bledsoe is scoring 18.1 points per game on blistering shooting percentages of 53.2 percent from the field and 38.3 percent from 3-point range.

Middleton has essentially flipped in the opposite direction. He started the year off well and more recently has struggled. Middleton missed two of Milwaukee’s last eight games, and scored exactly 10 points in four of the six games he did play. A 22-point outburst against Detroit in the Bucks’ last game should have Milwaukee hopeful about him going forward.

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As hard as it may be to believe, Giannis hasn’t really been as good as he could be this season either.  His averages of 26.8 points, 13.1 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 1.3 steals and 1.3 blocks per game may make that statement sound ludicrous, but there are places Antetokounmpo could improve.

The most obvious is his shooting. A common Giannis talking point involves imaging a world in which he’s a knockdown 3-point shooter, which may never happen. That’s fine. All Antetokounmpo needs is a serviceable jump shot, and he hasn’t had that all season. Giannis is hitting a paltry 33 percent of his mid-range jumpers and a horrid 11 percent of his 3’s this season, according to Cleaning the Glass.

Giannis was never Steph Curry with the shot, but he was much better from both of those areas in the past. His mid-range percentage is usually a few points higher and hasn’t been as low as it is now since his rookie season, and this year’s performance from deep is a full 20 points lower than what Giannis shot from beyond the arc last season.

If he were managing to hit 31 percent of his 3-pointers this year, as he did last season, Giannis would be scoring more than a point more per game, assuming he took as many threes as he is now. In actuality, he would probably add more than that, given that defenses would be forced to honor his jumper like they currently aren’t.

The Milwaukee Bucks have a tough path through the East, but Milwaukee feels like a team that has yet to have its three best players all really click at once. If that happens and it carries to the postseason, the Bucks might make it even farther this year than that great ’85-86 team did when it reached the Conference Finals.

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