Why the Bucks, the NBA’s most confusing team, are still struggling

The Milwaukee Bucks are a confusing team. On paper, they look like a squad poised to get out of the first round of the playoffs for the first time since 2001. They have Giannis Antetokounmpo, arguably one of the five best basketball players on the planet. They have promising young big men and solid wings with an athletic point guard. They have shooters, versatile defenders, and playmakers. That’s usually a recipe for success in this league.

But the Bucks haven’t been as successful as many anticipated.

Antetokounmpo has. He is averaging career-bests in both points (27.2) and rebounds (10) per game with 4.8 assists, 1.5 steals, and 1.5 blocks to show as well. He could easily finish behind James Harden, Anthony Davis, DeMar DeRozan, and either Damian Lillard or LeBron James in MVP voting.

Yet despite his play, Milwaukee is barely above .500 and sitting eighth in the Eastern Conference playoff picture. They’ve lost 10 of 17 games since the all-star break and look destined for yet another first-round exit.

Things often change in the playoffs. The Bucks almost ran the Raptors out of Toronto last year, and they’ve added Eric Bledsoe and a healthy Jabari Parker to the mix. You would think they’d be better than the No. 8 seed they are right now.

But Milwaukee isn’t, and even though they’re only a half-game behind Miami for the No. 7 and two games behind Washington for No. 6, it doesn’t seem they’re headed up the playoff ladder anytime soon.

Here’s why.

More teams are taking and making threes than ever before, so it’s a really bad time in basketball history for any teams that can’t defend the perimeter. Enter the Bucks, who allow opponents to shoot 37.4 percent from three, according to data from NBA.com. Only Sacramento, Brooklyn, Denver, and Atlanta allow a better three-point shooting percentage, making the Bucks (and the Cavaliers) the only playoff team in the bottom 10 of the league.

Where does that start? Well, there’s not much communication on defense to begin with.

I consider Antetokounmpo to be in the same vein as James: an incredibly gifted playmaker with size most players can’t handle. When you have a player as talented as that, you’re supposed to complement him with role players who he can make better.

In Antetokounmpo’s case, teams have and will continue to load up on him on the drive, so the Bucks should be spreading the floor with dead-eye shooters he can hit when the help comes. That’s one of the reasons Houston is so damn good: they space out the floor and let either Harden or Chris Paul attack. If the help comes, there are always shooters to find or a roll-man to hit.

The Bucks, though, rank in the bottom-third of the league in three-point percentage.

Milwaukee’s second unit only averages 31.3 points per game, the fifth-worst mark in the league. The thing is, that same second unit shoots 46 percent from the field and 36 percent from three, ranking in the top 10 among bench units across the league in both categories.

The Bucks also only play their bench an average of 17.7 minutes per game, another area where they fall in the bottom-third of the league.

Brandon Jennings is the backup point guard now with Malcom Brogdon and Matthew Dellavedova injured, and Jennings numbers of six points and four assists per game since signing midseason seem modest on the surface. But the Bucks are 22.5 points worse per 100 possessions with Jennings on the floor, mostly attributed to an offensive rating that is only 100.5 points per 100 possessions with him on the floor versus 118.2 with him off of it.

Maybe Joe Prunty needs to trust the bench more.