Deer in Headlights: The Milwaukee Bucks at 1-4

The Milwaukee Bucks' slow start to the 2024-25 season has set off alarm bells on and off the court.

So, the Milwaukee Bucks might suck?

At 1-4, it’s hard to imagine seeing the Bucks any other way than that. The Bucks have lost four straight games since taking their regular season opener over a depleted Philadelphia 76ers team that can’t win basketball games or deliver solid injury reports, even when their coach is named Nick Nurse. 

Milwaukee’s four losses have come against the Chicago Bulls, the Brooklyn Nets, the Boston Celtics and now, the Memphis Grizzlies. The 23-point beatdown the Bucks suffered in Memphis Thursday night came with Milwaukee having two days rest while the Grizzlies lost 119-106 to the Brooklyn Nets on Wednesday night. The Bucks’ rest advantage still didn’t matter. The Grizzlies ran the Bucks so fast out of the gym that the Bucks are only now getting back on defense. 

In the Bucks’ first week and a half of action, Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo has lamented that the team doesn’t have an identity. Damian Lillard preached that he and Antetokounmpo have to hold each other accountable. Their losses and the manner in which the Bucks continue to lose have only ramped up the pressure to find a solution to the team’s worst start in 14 years. Is there a doctor in the house?

One could only wonder where the answers are going to come from.

The Bucks have the fourth-highest payroll in the NBA at the start of the season. Their rotation features two stars that keep dancing around the big issues and veterans that keep searching for how to best play off of the two stars that have yet to be in sync with one another. The few young prospects that have gotten rare rotation minutes (Andre Jackson Jr., AJ Green) get pulled faster than the Bucks declined MarJon Beauchamp’s fourth-year option. 

Of course, Khris Middleton has not even stepped foot on the floor for an NBA game this season and best of luck trying to determine when we see Middleton in action after reading the latest from The Athletic’s Eric Nehm. The problem with pinning the hopes on Middleton being able to connect the disparate parts that make up the Bucks always came in the scenario where the Bucks were anything other than what they are now. This spiral to start the season has only increased the need for Middleton to rise to the occasion, even if his body is still not ready to do so.

Milwaukee’s horrendous start has the proverbial sharks smelling blood in the water and it should be no surprise.

The latest example comes courtesy of CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter, who wrote a worthwhile examination of everything that is currently ailing the Bucks Thursday morning before the Bucks’ latest loss. Reiter did not hold back in sharing the rumors surrounding Antetokounmpo’s future and more importantly, Rivers’ growing influence within the organization. The Bucks’ current woes invite these kinds of reports and the longer the Bucks continue to slide, you can expect it to continue throughout the season.

In many ways, the biggest problem facing the Bucks is that this franchise is that it is still paralyzed by their infamous 2023 playoff run in which — as a one-seed — they fell to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the first round.

A franchise that had risen to stability and to championship heights has seen it all come undone ever since. The Bucks are a big-budget movie that has added big names like Lillard and Rivers into the fold, only for it to see it crumble under great expectations. Is this a long winded way of comparing the Bucks to Joker: Folie a Deux? Why yes, yes it is.

There is nothing that will fuel the fire more than big bets failing to pay off like the Bucks have done over the last 18 months. The Bucks haven’t established any steps towards success in the face of their ongoing failures. The collateral damage is only starting and it’s about time that all Bucks fans brace for what may come.