Your biweekly (Buck)date — looking like the champs again
So, this is more like what we were all expecting, huh?
In the two weeks since my last update in this series the Milwaukee Bucks have played seven games…and won seven games.
That sub-.500 record and eleventh place Eastern Conference standing they were saddled with the week before Thanksgiving? As of today, those marks have been replaced by a spot in fourth and just a 1.5 game gap to the top of the East.
The welcomed surge can be attributed to a number of factors, which I’ll get into below. But the bottom line is that the Bucks are back on a winning track once again. This, after the first month-and-change of the season showed us that such a thing isn’t always guaranteed in this league — even for the defending champs.
Bobby be good
One of the persistent topics I’ve touched on in previous editions of this piece has centered around the Bucks’ interior play in the absence of Brook Lopez.
Lopez has still yet to return to the lineup, and yesterday’s news that Milwaukee has signed DeMarcus Cousins to a non-guaranteed deal goes to show that the team is still looking to shore things up in the paint. But for the past two weeks a more than capable solution has emerged in the form of the people’s champ, Bobby Portis.
Himself recovering from injury to start the season, Portis’ effectiveness has done nothing but increase since getting back into a groove — and ultimately the starting lineup as Milwaukee’s center.
During the Bucks’ current win streak Portis has tallied just under 18 points and 10 rebounds per game, including four consecutive double-doubles at one point — and never once tallying fewer than 11 of the former and five of the latter on any given night.
That sort of production — especially on the glass — would’ve been more than enough to alleviate a number of the interior ills this team was dealing with prior. However, the magnitude of Portis’ contributions in those areas only magnify with additional surrounding context, namely his 54.1/54.1/86.7 shooting percentage splits from the field, three point and foul line respectively.
With Lopez out, he’s either Milwaukee’s fourth or fifth offensive option at the moment — yet Portis is flirting with a 20/10 points and rebounds average of late to go along with Kevin Durant-esque all-around shooting numbers.
That’s kind of absurd when you think about it. But it’s exactly the type of yeoman’s work the Bucks are getting from Portis right now — and at the perfect time no less.
Defense and rebounding? Yes please.
Defensive rebounding was another key element of my last update, and an area in which the Bucks have made a habit of dominating in regular seasons past — as well as riding it to a 2020–21 NBA title.
Two weeks ago, that was very much not the case for this current team.
But since the start of the current winning streak Milwaukee has vaulted up from 23rd to 14th in defensive rebound percentage, in no small part thanks to what head coach Mike Budenholzer recently attributed to a renewed and improved overall defensive effort.
In essence, the better the Bucks defend individually — minimizing over-helping/rotation — the better positioned all five guys on the court will be to secure a potential rebound.
So it’s probably no coincidence that over the exact same span in question Milwaukee has also led the NBA in defensive efficiency, per Jamal Collier of ESPN.
Both of these components have been core elements to the sustained run of elite-level success this organization has seen over the past four years. In saying that, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that their recent return to form is once again building upon a familiar foundation.
Start fast, win lots
Many a person has said, “It’s not how you start, but how you finish.”
While that may be true in theory, I would counter with the notion that it’s much easier to do the latter successfully when one first excels at the former.
Seven consecutive victories by an average margin of nearly 15 points per game certainly tells us that the Bucks have been finishing in grand fashion as of late. But what they’ve also done over the same span is get out of the blocks in a hurry.
Only twice during the current streak has Milwaukee trailed or been tied after the opening quarter of play, four times they’ve led by at least ten, and the other contest saw them take a six-point lead after 12 minutes of action.
Meanwhile, they’ve led at the half of all seven — six of which by double-digits — the closest margin being five against the Pacers on Sunday, a gap that was promptly extended up to 17 by the end of the third quarter.
To paint an even clearer picture of the effect these strong starts have had for Milwaukee, the average halftime margin during the streak has been 14.7 points — the average end of game margin has been 14.9 points.
The Bucks are getting their work done early and putting opposing teams away.
And speaking of those teams…
The schedule is the schedule
Look, no one is trying to fool anybody else into believing that this stretch of success for Milwaukee has come against a murderers’ row of opponents.
An average winning percentage of less than 33 percent across six different teams is hardly inspiring, nor is the fact that just two of them touch .500 as of my typing this — and that pair just so happened to be a LeBron-less Lakers and a Nuggets squad down reigning MVP Nikola Jokić when they faced the Bucks.
Five of the seven contests also came at home during what will be the Bucks’ second longest homestand of the season.
And guess what?
I don’t think any of it particularly matters.
Good teams win, period. Really good/great teams win handily against lesser opposition. As I just finished detailing, that is precisely what Milwaukee has been doing— still without two starting caliber pieces in Lopez and Donte DiVincenzo, mind you.
Just as the slow start amidst countless trying circumstances/adversities was hardly a cause for me to believe this was a below-average team, a winning streak such as the one the Bucks are presently in the midst of wouldn’t alone be enough for me to believe this was a championship-caliber team.
But add in the surrounding context of what we’ve already seen this group accomplish— not to mention the added potential of its new pieces — and that same win streak starts to feel much more like a realistic harbinger of things to come.
We’ll see where things stand in another two weeks upon my next entry. My gut tells me that Milwaukee is just now rounding into form, in which case the rest of the Eastern Conference had better watch out.
‘Till next time.