Waiting for Superman

Without Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks will open their playoff run showing what they are made of. For better and for worse.

April, May, June. The three months that define this current era of Milwaukee Bucks basketball, depending on how far they go in the postseason.

There is always a fragility that exists this time of year when the stakes are raised, and one misstep, one break, or one shot brings you closer to the end of the season. To some, the regular season feels like an 82-game dress rehearsal. The playoffs are the great equalizer and fully show the full makeup of a team and the habits that are built up over time.

Those 82 games have led the Bucks to scaling the mountain without their superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, who continues to be sidelined with that pesky calf strain that he suffered in the last week of the season. Something that could very well prevent him from seeing the Pacers at all.

Now, the Bucks are more than just Antetokounmpo, and it’s certainly not the first time where they have been without the two-time MVP during the postseason. They have shown that in years past that they can prevail without him, most notably during the final pair of games in the 2021 Eastern Conference Finals against the Atlanta Hawks that helped cement their first trip to the Finals in 47 years.

Of course, the inverse is true, too. Antetokunmpo’s back injury during Game 1 of their apocalyptic first round series with the Miami Heat last season set off a chain of events that the Bucks have not fully recovered from. For all that has changed drastically for Milwaukee ever since, the fact that this team stands on the experienced side contrasts an Indiana Pacers team that will look to run them off the floor at a moment’s notice.

This current situation with Antetokounmpo is a perfect distillation of the Bucks’ choppy, inconsistent, and disheartening season. It’s a race against time, where they hope to have no. 34 back in action before it’s too late. Breaking out Antetokounmpo in an emergency basis, like, say, if the Bucks leave Milwaukee being down 0-2 going into Game 3 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse, will only exacerbate a situation where he may come back too soon and risk even greater injury if he isn’t quite right.

Ultimately, the Bucks have earned the benefit of the doubt in regards to navigating through potentially disastrous injuries with Antetokounmpo in the past. There is no reason to doubt that now, but it’s worth stating in its own right, too.

The tricky question the Bucks have to ask themselves as they ready for this playoff run is determining whether they have built a team that can sustain itself without their leading superstar on the floor. More will be asked of Damian Lillard, who has also been saddled by a litany of injuries himself, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis, and so on and so forth.

Milwaukee’s mettle has been tested all throughout the year. Through a massive trade on the eve of training camp, an historic midseason coaching change, and now, a veteran coach in Doc Rivers tasked with trying to put everything together and salvage a season that has gone anything but to plan, even after his arrival. Stability hasn’t been a word that we can associate with the Bucks for the last calendar year.

Someone of Antetokounmpo’s caliber and abilities both elevates and masks up a lot of things, as the Bucks have experienced for some time. It shouldn’t have taken him playing games down the stretch while being hampered physically as the Bucks were seeing the 2-seed fall out of their grasp that eventually overstretched his body before it gave out on him.

Now, when you take him out of the picture, what can we say of what the Bucks have built and the direction they are heading towards? At the end of the day, this is still a team that, with Antetokounmpo or without, is still on the descent of a contending cycle that they have been in for the last half-decade. The journey has been worth it when it means winning a championship, but Antetokounmpo himself has spoken at length that you can only coast on that feeling for so long.

The picture remains fuzzy as to how the Bucks will withstand Antetokounmpo’s absence and retaliate against an Indiana team that has had their number (and their game ball) all season long. Whether Antetokounmpo will have the chance to help the Bucks before it’s too late will be the biggest question of them all.