MILWAUKEE — It’s easy now, 82 games in, for the Milwaukee Bucks and their fans to preach the “In Bud we trust” gospel. It was edgier to do so last summer, before newly hired Mike Budenholzer had run his first practice or won his first game as the 16th full-time coach in team history.
Yet that’s what a couple of Bucks bloggers did, anticipating with uncanny accuracy the sort of impact Budenholzer and his staff would have as replacements for the intriguing-but-unsatisfying Jason Kidd crew that preceded them.
First, as news broke of Budenholzer’s arrival in Milwaukee, Jordan Treske of the Behind The Buck Pass Web site peered into a pebble-grained crystal ball.
… Now the prospects of a Budenholzer-led Bucks team could very well satisfy the hopes and dreams every fan has had after following along the last four years of the team’s former coaching regime.
Whether it’s based off of his days as an assistant coach with the San Antonio Spurs or his five-year reign with the [Atlanta] Hawks, Budenholzer has both been witness to and led the charge in building and establishing an identity and culture along his stops on the NBA level.
Two months later, after the Bucks’ stint in Las Vegas for summer league action, it was Mitchell Maurer living in the prescient for BrewHoop.com.
Fans are confident that the Bucks will be better this season, but it cannot be overstated how much better they will be under Budenholzer. They are going to actually shoot more threes, play faster on offense, and play smarter on defense. The talent on the roster – which is considerable, don’t let anyone convince you otherwise – is finally in a position where their collective talents won’t be ignored, but leveraged. We might even see a scheme that fits the players, rather than players being shoved into a scheme.
Last season, the goal was to win 50 games, and the Bucks fell short. This season, the goal might remain the same, but the league might be shocked at how well the Milwaukee Bucks meet…and possibly exceed that goal
The season played out pretty much as the scribes imagined it, quite likely beyond Budenholzer’s or his bosses’ wildest dreams. Milwaukee (60-22) finished with the NBA’s best record, locking down homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs.
The Bucks led the league in points per game (118.1), were first in defensive rating (104.9) and net rating (8.6), and were fourth in offensive rating (113.5). Their improvement on both ends also showed in their No. 1 spot in defensive field goal percentage (.433) and in the franchise-record 1,105 3-point field goals they made — more than any team in history other than the Houston Rockets the past three seasons.
Antetokounmpo did more than give the Bucks coach his first superstar — he blossomed fully into a co-favorite with Houston Rockets guard James Harden for the Kia MVP award. The timing of it all was impeccable, with Milwaukee selling out their new arena, Fiserv Forum, 36 times in 41 dates. They’ll do it again Sunday when they face the Detroit Pistons in Game 1 (7 ET, TNT), in what team and fans alike hope will be a postseason run that extends into June.
Antetokounmpo, with his gaudy stats and effervescent personality, is in all fairness the person most responsible for this Bucks season, a throwback in achievement all the way to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Milwaukee era. Take him off this squad — one of the hypothetical measures of MVP worthiness — and we’re looking at a borderline No. 8 seed-slash-lottery team.
Still, one player’s progression — even in a massive Gyro Step, courtesy of “The Greek Freak” — isn’t enough to explain all the ways in which the Bucks have changed. Budenholzer impacted the Bucks’ other players, too. Take them away and Antetokounmpo might as well be Bradley Beal, Devin Booker or Karl-Anthony Towns, toiling in lottery land.
Considering Milwaukee’s modest summer additions (Brook Lopez, Ersan Ilyasova, Pat Connaughton, rookie Donte DiVincenzo), hiring Budenholzer might be the move that has Bucks GM Jon Horst on the short list for NBA Executive of the Year.
The coach’s embrace and deployment of newcomers (such as George Hill and Nikola Mirotic) and development of deep-rotation players (like Sterling Brown and D.J. Wilson) are further evidence of his value.
There’s no denying the contributions of Antetokounmpo’s teammates, notably:
* Khris Middleton joined Giannis as a 2019 All-Star, with the recognition coming not just late (his seventh season) but in a year when Middleton actually has been doing less. He’s scoring fewer points, taking fewer shots and logging fewer minutes than last season, but shifting a couple steps back for more 3-point attempts and fewer mid-range shots has helped Antetokounmpo and opened up the offense. Also, Middleton has bumped up his scoring, accuracy, rebounds and assists since All-Star weekend.
* Point guard Eric Bledsoe, inconsistent in his first Bucks season and a disappointment in the 2018 playoffs, has been the point of their defensive spear. Abandoning Kidd’s trapping, scrambling defensive scheme has helped Bledsoe lock in on rival guards, and he’s been reliable enough to merit the four-year, $70 million extension he recently signed, sparking himself and the team one more free agent in this summer’s market.
* The 7-foot, 270-pound Lopez has fully unleashed the 3-point prowess he began demonstrating just two seasons ago in Brooklyn. This season he became the first player to amass at least 150 3-point field goals and 150 blocked shots, and he set an NBA record for 3-pointers (187) by a 7-footer. He has earned the nickname “Splash Mountain,” while defending the rim and pre-empting more shots as a threat than he actually blocks.
* Malcolm Brogdon, 2017’s Kia Rookie of the Year, was overachieving again before he went out in March with plantar fasciitis in his right foot. Brogdon routinely showed the confidence and creativity to hit from the arc or drive to the rim, particularly at times when the offense otherwise bogged down. He also became just the eighth player in NBA history to average at least 50 percent from the field, 40 percent from 3-point range and 90 percent from the foul line.
Then again, the way the Bucks’ reserves have stepped up, the injuries or occasional slumps have been papered over well off the bench. Mirotic had made only 31 3-pointers in 14 games before going out with a fractured left thumb, but Ilyasova and others filled the void. Ditto Hill for Brogdon, Brown and Connaughton for Tony Snell and so on.
Budenholzer has facilitated the patchwork by coaching to his players’ strengths, minimizing their weaknesses and getting them — through individual work, relationship skills and more — to take ownership of what they’re building in Milwaukee.
Budenholzer’s credentials all stem from his ability to help players thrive, from his 17 years at Gregg Popovich’s side in San Antonio to the success he had (2015 Coach of the Year) in all but the last of his five seasons in Atlanta.
He has transformed Milwaukee’s offense into a 3-point nightmare for opponents. The big circles around the perimeter he had emblazoned on the practice court in training camp was a visual aid and early indicator of how the Bucks would play; before long, players could pass the ball blindly to those spots, confident a teammate would be there.
Last season, the Bucks ranked 25th in 3-point attempt rate, taking only 29.7 percent of their shots from outside the arc. This season, they’re third at 41.9 percent.
Meanwhile, the Bucks have cleaned up their defense and their rebounding. They averaged 21.4 fouls and sent opponents to the line for 23.5 free throws per game in 2017-18. This season, both went down to 19.6 and 20.7, respectively. Their defensive rebounding percentage soared from No. 29 last year (75.9) to No. 1 (80.3).
Other numbers demonstrate how differently Milwaukee is playing and how much they’re enjoying it. They were 27-12 against teams above .500. They didn’t lose two games in a row until March. The Bucks were 45-5 in games decided by 10 points or more. Of the seven other teams in NBA history to win at least 45 games by double-digit margins, each one capped that season by snagging the NBA title.
Now, with LeBron James out of the East, a schedule of demonstrated excellence behind them and a trust — players to coaches, coaches to players — that appears to be unshakeable, the Bucks have narrowed their targeted numbers down essentially to one:
Sixteen, as in four times four, as in the total victories needed to capture the Larry O’Brien trophy. Budenholzer, Antetokounmpo and the rest would love to keep it all that simple.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.
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