The Milwaukee Bucks Reset Their Watches to Dame Time
Now with a future Hall of Famer in Damian Lillard, the Milwaukee Bucks complete an offseason full of change.
“It won’t be an adjustment. It will be a pleasure.”
Those words said by Oscar Robertson in light of coming to Milwaukee back in April of 1970 echo more than 53 years later. It makes sense after the Milwaukee Bucks’ shocking blockbuster trade that brought in Damian Lillard and creates another chapter for a franchise with such a wonderful history.
It’s very easy to draw parallels between the two deals. Both Robertson and Lillard came to Milwaukee with their career destined for the Hall of Fame. Both came from their original teams that, despite their individual star power, fell short in contending for titles before changes in ownership and management poisoned a working relationship altogether.
The one distinction that can be made is that Robertson chose Milwaukee as his next destination, while Lillard had set his sights on Miami upon on wishing to be traded at the start of the summer. There are a number of reasons why Lillard didn’t land in South Beach and it’s why I suggest you read ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski’s breakdown of the Dame trade here (It’s behind the paywall, however).
Lillard comes to Milwaukee armed with the greatest player he will have played alongside before they have even practice together. Putting a greater supply of talent around Lillard has been at the center of why the Blazers have fallen out of contending, despite two trips to the Conference Finals that Lillard drove over his 11-year stint. He comes to Milwaukee ready to win now and compete at the highest level. Yes, he’s 33 years old, but he showed last season that he’s still near the peak of his powers by averaging 32.2 points per game, posting a career-high 64.5 true shooting percentage and 7.3 assists in just 58 games.
And no longer will Lillard be the one to have to do it all. He put up transcendent numbers last year under a career-high 33.8 usage percentage. He will still drive the Bucks’ offense, make no mistake. The threat of his shot making and ability to create offense in a mere dribble move or ball screen will redefine what is possible for this Bucks team. Only now will Lillard be doing so next to players that are well equipped to handle the ball and carry the load over the course of a long season and playoff run.
It’s a new chapter for Lillard, and he already felt the welcome of Bucks fans who are ready to see one of the greatest players of this generation play in Milwaukee. And eventually, may it be home for him too.
As much as this is about what the Bucks are gaining, it’s more about what’s being reimagined for what and who attracted Lillard to Milwaukee in the first place.
In the face of their greatest playoff defeat in franchise history, the Bucks didn’t rest on their laurels. They fired a championship-winning coach in Mike Budenholzer, and instead, tabbed a first-year head coach in Adrian Griffin in his place. But, as has been well stated by pundits throughout the summer, Griffin was backed by the blessing of superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Time and again, Bucks general manager Jon Horst has catered to doing what is possible to contend while Antetokounmpo is in Milwaukee. Horst has answered the call, however big or small, to make sure the Bucks stay on an upward trajectory towards title contention. And after Antetokounmpo publicly wondered in interviews this summer just how long the Bucks can continue down this path in contending, Horst reinforced the organization’s directive has not changed.
The potential between Lillard and Antetokounmpo is outrageous. Not since the days of Robertson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar have the Bucks had a tentpole for devastating pick-and-roll tandem like Lillard and Antetokounmpo have the potential of becoming, especially in a playoff setting. Even if Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton have offered up a mere facsimile of that. And that, if anything, is the biggest reason why the Bucks do this trade at the exact time they do. Even if it means seeing former Bucks guard Jrue Holiday get shipped up to Boston from Portland and potentially see him try and lock down the player he was traded for in a playoff series.
Not that it forced the Bucks to shake up their core around him and even fire Budenholzer, but we reached the finish line of a Bucks offense that was singularly driven by Antetokounmpo last year. With a league-leading 38.8 usage percentage, Giannis took on a gargantuan workload. All while the Bucks were without Middleton and other playmakers such as Joe Ingles for large stretches of last year. And they suffered for it after having logged an offensive rating that ranked 15th, per NBA.com/stats. The only time it had fallen outside of the top 10 in the Budenholzer era.
The walls that Giannis would repeatedly run up against kept getting built, and for the first time in his career, Antetokounmpo showed the toll of having to run through them over and over again. It showed in little knocks over the course of the season, and again in the playoffs where being without Antetokounmpo for 2-ish games had the Bucks reeling even further against Miami before they were dealt with for good. And let’s not forget that Giannis had surgery over the offseason to clean up his knee.
Antetokounmpo is as devastating as a north-south runner. It’s why those walls needed to be built early and often in transition, and even then, he could break through them more times than not. But designing an offense around that reached a breaking point. The collapses in the fourth quarters of Games 4 and 5 against Miami were a gravestone for the Bucks that were.
By making this trade and their actions from the offseason, the Bucks have realigned their natural order. What was true of the Bucks and how they operated no longer exists to the same degree. The same will exist for the greatest Bucks player and how Antetokounmpo adjusts to having someone as talented as Lillard is will be the key to making this whole thing work.
If anything, acquiring a talent like Lillard eases Antetokounmpo into the next progression of his career. He will remain a rim-running dominant force, but how does that look as someone who is rolling to the basket while the defense is glued in on Lillard or Khris Middleton at the top of the key? With Lillard there to ease workload offensively, what will that mean for Antetokounmpo’s roving defense, especially without a ball hawker like Holiday on the perimeter?
How that will be answered will go on to define this Bucks season moving forward. Some of those questions will be easier to answer than others, no doubt. But the biggest question, the one that had plagued the Bucks in past playoff runs, may have gotten answered with one fell swoop.
This Bucks season will be a spectacle, unlike few seasons before. It comes with great expectations, greater than before having won a title more than two years ago and after. A season with as much eyes on it as this year will have will be fodder for the greater NBA at large, beyond Milwaukee. It required a great humbling and a long process to reevaluate what they had that led the Bucks down this path where they sought a new coach and to bring in Lillard. If anything, they simply had no other choice.