When the NBA season went on hiatus, the Milwaukee Bucks led the league with a 53-12 mark. In other words, they were, and are, the favorites headed into the homestretch.
Records continue to be set. Depending on the state, the number could be in cases, hospitalizations, deaths. Admittedly, those two sentences back-to-back sound rather insincere or superficial. Then again, the NBA is planning to hold its season’s conclusion at a theme park slash resort in a state that as recently as June 20 announced 4,049 new cases of COVID-19 and followed that record high with 3,494 new cases.
The NBA season is tentatively set to resume on July 31. If these numbers are a great deal lower and under control — if hospitals are not overwhelmed — then maybe this plan can be pulled off in a low-risk manner with very few consequences. But, even under a best-case scenario, the season would be resuming in a theme park slash resort. It all sounds rather ridiculous and at the season’s start would have read as unbelievable satire or horrendous fan fiction. Satire as a lived experience is never all that funny and is usually so perplexing and draining that the moral is difficult to stomach.
A season that has yet to begin is possibly easier to dismiss. Love not had remains a fantasy. Part of the drive to relocate within the worlds of Disney is the finish what you start ethos. The other part of that drive has a great deal to do with money. Thus, while many of us quit playing a sport or hobby as we age, we tend to hold our professional athletes to living out those dreams — to collect those checks for making good on childish play.
What postseason advantages do the Milwaukee Bucks have?
The Bucks can still be considered a young team in large part because Giannis Antetokounmpo is only 25, but the clock feels like it’s ticking. With only one year left on his contract, his window in Milwaukee is uncertain. That is not to say he is any more likely to leave than to stay, but simply to acknowledge the rumors and speculation have already begun. As it was with LeBron James and Tim Duncan, so it is with Giannis — either path is possible. But then there is also the fact that Milwaukee entered last season’s playoffs with the best record in the league only to have Toronto lap them in the playoffs. The young, goofy Bucks from a few years ago have all been traded or let go in order to build the current roster, and the current roster is built to win if not now, then very soon.
Playing out this season’s string in Florida is not about development or learning curves. Playing in Florida is about amassing records — one way or another. What follows from here is five reasons as to why the Bucks will win the 2020 NBA title.
5. 60 wins followed by 60 wins
In 1994, Major League Baseball began a season never to be finished. When play stopped, the Montreal Expos led not only the NL East but the entire league. The team featured Hall of Famers Pedro Martinez and Larry Walker, as well as All-Star caliber players such as Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom, John Wetteland, Cliff Floyd, Wil Cordero, Darrin Fletcher, and Rondell White. The conclusion to the 1994 season was the lack of a conclusion. In 1995, when play resumed, the Montreal Expos finished fifth in their division. The team that won the NL East that year was the Atlanta Braves. On a technicality, the Braves won fourteen division titles, but 1995 still stands as the only year in which the team brought home a World Series. The lessons here are somewhat trite — prosaic even — but talent does not promise sustainability and sustainability does not promise championships. The sport is different, as is the context for the stoppage, but the Milwaukee Bucks stand on a precipice, but on the precipice of what is impossible to determine.
While they have currently notched only 53 wins, this season’s Bucks are essentially a 60-win team for the second consecutive season. In the history of the league, eighteen instances exist where a franchise amassed at least 60 wins or held a 0.731-win percentage by season’s end in at least two consecutive seasons. More often than not those franchises also claimed NBA titles in those years. The times when winning a title did not occur were in 1949 and 1950 with the Rochester Royals, 2006 and 2007 with the Dallas Mavericks, 2009 and 2010 with the Cleveland Cavaliers, 2011 and 2012 with the San Antonio Spurs, 2016 and 2017 with the San Antonio Spurs, and in the late 1990s when the Utah Jazz amassed three consecutive seasons with at least 60 wins or a 0.731 winning percentage.
But the Royals won a title in 1951, and the Spurs won four titles prior to 2011 and a fifth in 2014. The Cleveland Cavaliers also ended up grabbing a title some years after those great 2009 and 2010 regular seasons (although it took an Odyssey like effort from LeBron to get there), and the Dirk Nowitzki-led Mavs eventually erased the memory of their 2006 and 2007 failures by shocking the world in 2011.
If the Bucks do not win a title this season (or in the near future), then the franchise would be joining the ranks alongside Karl Malone and John Stockton’s Utah Jazz as one of the only franchises to accomplish such great regular season feats without making good on that boastful promise in the playoffs.
In other words, the narrative and the numbers are, for the most part, on Milwaukee’s side.
4. Length and pace
The length and depth Milwaukee can roll out on defense can make the other team’s primary scorer feel as if he is lost inside a Laura Ingalls Wilder tome.
Brook Lopez, Robin Lopez, D.J. Wilson, and Giannis are all within a whisper of 7-feet. Ersan Ilyasova and Marvin Williams are all arms and reach. And, while the roster, like most NBA rosters, is heavy with 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-7 wings and forwards, the Bucks regularly feature lineups where such heights are the valleys on the floor. Meanwhile, one of their shortest players, Eric Bledsoe, boasts a wingspan that reads like something off a pterodactyl trading card.
And this all sounds great and miraculous, but it’s also effective. Milwaukee posted the season’s best defensive rating and held opponents to the lowest total shooting percentage. A critic or fan can cherry-pick a stat or nitpick a scheme, but it’s difficult to cherry-pick when every player on the floor can close out by simply lifting a hand. No wonder this team leads the league in rebounding.
The Milwaukee Bucks are also one of the most versatile offensive teams in the NBA. For all their defensive strengths, they rank only 13th in points off turnovers. They are, however, third overall in scoring points from the paint (behind the Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans). But they are also a solid shooting team.
Only the Houston Rockets shoot more 3-pointers per game and, yes, Houston also shoots 3-pointers at a 35.6 clip as opposed to Milwaukee’s 35.3 (good enough for 14th in a category led by San Antonio). However, Milwaukee holds a higher total shooting percentage and a higher effective field goal percentage (second in both categories to the Golden State Warriors), and both Houston and Milwaukee average 1.3 points per shot (behind the Los Angeles Clippers, Golden State Warriors, and Philadelphia 76ers). The Bucks also rank third in field goals made per game. The team is tied for seventh in assists per game (well ahead of Houston). And, while other individuals could explain what all of these numbers mean better than I could ever explain them, the one number that really stands out is the 118.1 points per game that position Milwaukee as the most devastating offense in the league in large part because they play a faster game than any other team in the league.
For all their size and stature, the Bucks lead the league in pace. Thus, they migrate across the basketball court as a spectacle of 21st-century engineering — like a fleet of jetskiing ents.
In large part, this is all due to Giannis Antetokounmpo. He reduces the court to the length of a single-bound while simultaneously creating space for all his teammates. Going to the rim, he has always been unstoppable, which is why, in the past, much as it was with LeBron, the best strategy to deploy against him has been to build a wall.
With Giannis surrounded by shooters like Middleton and Korver and Hill, such strategies are more likely to crumble, not to mention Ilyasova and Wesley Matthews or even Marvin Williams are equally capable of setting the woods on fire.
3. Something to prove
Let’s be honest for a second (as if I’ve somehow been lying up to this point).
Giannis, in his seventh NBA season, is shooting only 30.6 from behind the arc. His percentages from his first and fifth years are better, but they are better mostly due to a lack of volume. He is shooting from a distance with a higher frequency than he ever has. But, considering the alternative, this is still the shot the defense would prefer him to take. The alternative, after all, is a movie-sized Jaws taking a bite out of the backboard and closing down the beaches. Teams know this, and in the playoffs, a time will come where a defense packs it in and watches him from a distance, circling with not much to do.
At this point, Giannis will have to prove he can shoot or someone else will have to make a play for Milwaukee. Such a predicament is also nothing new for Milwaukee or their opponents. This predicament equals the dimensions of a basketball court. The likeliest options to resolve it (aside from Giannis himself) are Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe.
So far in his career, Bledsoe does not appear to be as good in the playoffs as he has been in regular-season games. His scoring and efficiency have all dipped when the games have meant more. The sample size is not exactly minuscule either; he has played in seven playoff series to date. The Bucks don’t need Bledsoe to lead the way, but he can’t vanish in key stretches. Malcolm Brogdon is in Indiana. George Hill is the appearance of a knife, but he is, at this point in time, somewhat dulled around the edges. The other commodities are somewhat unknown and that includes Khris Middleton.
Middleton is an All-Star, but to a degree, he still feels like a player largely drafting off the player in front of him. This is not his fault. This is often how it goes with the second- or third-best player on a contending team. Middleton has played in six playoff series thus far in his career. His averages in each playoff run (or first-round loss) when compared with his regular-season numbers largely suggest that he found the going tougher in the postseason. The one exception to this rule was the team’s 2018 playoff series against the Boston Celtics. In that series, with Giannis averaging 25.7 points per game, Middleton averaged 24.7. Compare that with the 13.7 he averaged against the Toronto Raptors in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals (despite a 30-point effort in Game 4), and a certain question does arise about Middleton in the playoffs.
For the Bucks to win a championship, either Bledsoe or Middleton has to play at another level than last year’s playoffs. Perhaps both do. To believe the team will win is to believe at least one of them will play as well or better than he did during the regular season. Otherwise, Giannis in Milwaukee will start to approximate LeBron’s first stint in Cleveland a bit too closely. The rumors will swirl, and the departures will be sudden.
Here’s to betting Middleton (or Bledsoe) will figure it out. Here’s to betting on continuity in and out of quarantine. These Bucks have stuck together for a while now.
2. I can see clearly now Kawhi is gone
Not often in life do obstacles remove themselves. If they do, most of us probably do not realize they have removed themselves. While the regular season records suggest the Toronto Raptors are still very much a contender, they are a roster diminished by Kawhi Leonard’s departure. His absence matters because the postseason is never exactly predicated by a regular season’s happenings. His absence matters because he simply wrecked Milwaukee in last year’s playoffs.
Here is Kawhi’s stat line for the series: 29.8 points per game, 9.5 rebounds, 4.3 assists, 2.2 steals, and one block.
Here is Giannis’ stat line for the series: 22.7 points per game, 13.5 rebounds, 5.5 assists, 1.2 assists, and 2.7 blocks.
The two are fairly comparable in all categories other than points. One could even give Giannis the edge in the series if not for the points, and that point differential over the course of six games made a difference.
Mainly, though, at the end of games, Kawhi just played the part better as he led all players in scoring for five out of the series’ six games, including four games in which he went for over thirty points. In the one game where he did not lead all players in scoring, he sat for fourteen minutes in a blowout win.
But the Bucks did win Games 1 and 2 of that series, which means a trip to the Finals was largely within their grasp. Toronto is still a threat, but as improved as he is, Pascal Siakam might not be ready to carry a team, even one as good as Toronto, through three or four rounds of playoff basketball. History tends to suggest that’s something players learn to do.
Who has learned more from history — Giannis or Pascal? Or rephrased: Which player has more history in his current role?
When their teams met on November 2, Milwaukee won 105-115. When they played again on February 25, Milwaukee won 97-108.
Here is Giannis’ stat line in the first game: 36 points, 15 rebounds, 8 assists, 4 blocks.
Here is Giannis’ stat line in the second game: 19 points, 19 rebounds, 8 assists, 3 blocks.
Here is Pascal’s stat line in the first game: 16 points, 5 rebounds, 1 assist, zero blocks.
Here is Pascal’s stat line in the second game: 22 points, 6 rebounds, 3 assists, zero blocks.
The best player in a potential series would be Giannis. The best player in a potential series against any Eastern Conference opponent would be Giannis. The answer would be Giannis.
1. Giannis Antetokounmpo
The ride no longer exists at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, but at one time it was there in the bottom of that murky Fantasy Land lagoon. They took it out piece by piece, I think, and set up a photoshoot with Ariel. Then again, I have not been to Disney World in quite some time and they are likely to have changed the park’s terrain again. That park is always changing.
The ride was a submarine ride based on the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which was a 1954 film starring Kirk Douglass. The film was based on the 1870 novel by Jules Verne. At the end of the film, the Nautilus and its crew are attacked by a Kraken-sized squid in the ocean’s deep and watery depths. The tentacles are huge and rubbery and horrifically splendid in a drive-in movie theater sort of way. That is the end of the movie. That great climactic battle between science and biology, between history and the unknown.
The first scene, though, is what sucks audiences into Jules Verne’s imagination wrought larger than life on the silver screen. In that scene, after the camera frames the boring text of Verne’s novel, a steamship sails gently over the ocean blue as sweeping romantic music plays. Then the music switches over to mad villainy and something emerges from the deep with glowing eyes and gathering momentum. The swell speeds toward the freighter. Shadowy and luminescent in its destructive charge this is an explosive beginning — like blowing up Alderon after the opening credits scroll. Cut to a belligerent, loudmouthed know-it-all declaring loudly: “I say there ain’t no monster, but we need men!” He offers to pay these men. He pays them to line up for a death-defying mission.
Giannis’ acumen for the game of basketball — and yes, his athletic gifts too — capture the imagination in such a way. Try and stop him at your own peril. Hunt the thing you don’t understand. Hunt the thing that is actually hunting you. And yet something else out there lurks in the deep. You mistake the submarine for being the monster — for being the only freak in town — and yet something else out there lurks with longer tentacles, no clear motive, and a total disregard for humanity, much less basketball.
The Bucks can win it all, but how likely that is may just depend on how likely any basketball gets played at all.