Milwaukee Bucks: Next 3 weeks could define season

The Milwaukee Bucks are two games into a rough three-week stretch of tough opponents. How they perform will have a big impact on their season.

The Milwaukee Bucks are currently fourth in the Eastern Conference, with a 19-15 record and a -0.4 point differential. While the narrative has bounced up and down, in general the team is about where it was expected to be.

That doesn’t mean they are where fans and team personnel hoped they would be. The Bucks have had a bad tendency of losing to bad teams, of making peculiar rotation decisions, and overall the questions about head coach Jason Kidd’s competency have never been louder.

The proving ground for the Milwaukee Bucks began Thursday night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the first in a stretch of 12 games where all but one game will be played against a team currently on track to make the playoffs.

The stretch began with a win over the Minnesota Timberwolves, a game that featured a 20-point comeback led by Eric Bledsoe, Malcolm Brogdon and Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Bucks took advantage of a tired Timberwolves team that played an overtime game the night before to gut out the win.

Friday night things were dramatic in the other direction. After leaping out to a 22-point first-half lead, the Bucks slowly allowed Russell Westbrook and the Thunder back into the game. The reigning MVP hit a huge 3-pointer with four seconds left to tie the game, before a controversial Antetokounmpo dunk sealed the 97-95 victory and a 2-0 start to this difficult stretch.

Moving forward the road does not get any easier. Nine of their next 10 games are against Eastern Conference foes, the very teams that the Bucks are jostling with for playoff positioning. Just 1.5 games separate the fourth seed from the eighth seed in the East, adding extra importance to this stretch for Milwaukee.

Their upcoming opponents are additionally fresh, the first time Milwaukee will face any of them this season with the exception of the Washington Wizards (a 99-88 loss in November). This will be the first look most of these teams will have of the Antetokounmpo-Bledsoe-Middleton combination. Milwaukee will play four of its upcoming opponents twice each, in addition to games against the floundering Orlando Magic and the cruising Golden State Warriors.

Two of the Bucks’ next three games will be against the Toronto Raptors, consistently one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference. After fighting their way to the top of the standings on Christmas Day, a loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Boxing Day dropped them back a step. Regardless, this is a really good team, and one with recent history against the Bucks.

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The two teams faced off in last season’s playoffs, a series that swung violently between extremes from Game 1 through the closing Game 6. The Bucks roared into the playoffs as Giannis Antetokounmpo announced his dominance to the postseason world, and Milwaukee took a 2-1 lead. Three games later the experienced Raptors were advancing and the Bucks were heading home.

Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan are headlining a new-look offense for Toronto, turning isolation midrange shots into 3-pointers set up by whip-smart passing. While Milwaukee struggles to determine which young players to work in around their veterans, the Raptors are getting superb contributions from rookie OG Anunoby and second-year players Jakob Poetl, Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet.

The Indiana Pacers would have been one of the easier foes during this stretch if their season had stayed true to form, as preseason expectations had Indiana firmly in the lottery. Instead future All-Star guard Victor Oladipo has been incredible, raising his offensive game to new heights. The best player in the Paul George trade has been Oladipo, and it probably isn’t close.

The Bucks will face Indiana twice in six days, hosting them on Jan. 3 before heading down to Indianapolis on Jan. 8. In addition to locking down Oladipo, the Bucks will need to search out cracks in a defense anchored by the shot-blocking Myles Turner and bruising Domantas Sabonis. With Indiana firmly in the playoff picture, the results of these two games could come into play for tiebreakers down the road.

The Wizards are at the same time exceeding expectations and falling well short of them. On the one hand, they weathered a long stretch without All-Star point guard John Wall, in addition to missing Markieff Morris for much of the first few weeks. On the other, this was a team that could have pushed for the top seed in the Eastern Conference and instead is 20-16 and in sixth place.

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Everything starts in the backcourt for Washington, with Wall and Bradley Beal torching opponents to the tune of 41.1 points per game. But an improved bench could help the Wizards pull free of this morass of teams and establish itself as a tier above the likes of Indiana, Detroit and Milwaukee.

With just one more meeting scheduled with the Wizards, and the Bucks down 0-1 in the head-to-head column, this is another pair of games that could weigh heavily in the standings later on. Both meetings over this stretch are in Washington, making the Bucks’ task even taller. Split the meetings and Milwaukee should consider it a victory; go 0-2 and the Bucks are in a bind.

The last of their coupled opponents are the Miami Heat, right now the bottom rung of the Eastern Conference playoff ladder at 18-17. The Heat have struggled with nagging injuries to key players while just keeping its head above water, but could be poised for another second-half run — if not quite on the level of last season’s 31-10 stretch to close the year.

The Bucks’ Jan. 17 home game against the Heat could bring back unpleasant memories of last season. It was against the Heat in Milwaukee last February that Khris Middleton returned from injury — and that Jabari Parker went down with a knee injury that ended his season. Parker has yet to play in 2017-18 as he recovers from the injury.

The final opponent of note is Golden State, the league’s best team and defending champion. Stephen Curry will be back for this game, and the Warriors at full strength are a fearsome opponent for anyone. It will be a fascinating juxtaposition of rosters as the Bucks have built a team of long athletes, similarly to the Warriors.

The game will be nationally televised on ESPN, and will likewise evoke memories from the Bucks and their fans — but happy ones this time. Two seasons ago the Golden State Warriors rolled into Milwaukee with a 24-0 record, and the Bucks promptly dumped the Warriors into their first loss. That Milwaukee team would go on to miss the playoffs, while the Dubs would finish 73-9 but ultimately lose in the NBA Finals.

Golden State is currently 13-2 over their last 15 games, and will be heavy favorites in all but one of seven games leading into the Milwaukee matchup. With Curry expected to return from injury this weekend, it’s not unreasonable to think Golden State could have a 19-2 streak going when it lands in Milwaukee, giving the Bucks another shot at spoiler.

The Milwaukee Bucks are currently projected by FiveThirtyEight to finish with a 44-38 record, two wins better than last season. This would place them fifth in the Eastern Conference, one game behind Washington and one game ahead of Detroit. The tightness of the standings means a win or loss against Eastern foes could be the only difference needed to move them up or down the standings by season’s end.

With the hot seat warming up underneath Jason Kidd, this will be a crucial stretch as well. He has bought himself time with wins over the Timberwolves and Thunder, but overall the legacy of his coaching this season has been obtuse press conferences, questionable rotations and terrible late-game strategies.

Whatever positives can be attributed to Kidd have been superseded by the narrative of his incompetence. He needs something to point to as a resounding success, and a strong run through a difficult stretch could be just what he needs to keep his job through this season and beyond. Fall flat, and the seat becomes that much hotter.

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One silver lining of filling one three-week stretch with all playoff teams: a softer stretch awaits. After hosting the Miami Heat on Jan 17, the Bucks play five straight and 10 of 12 games against teams currently with a losing record. The schedule giveth, and the schedule taketh away.

This softer stretch would seem to be the perfect opportunity for Jabari Parker to ease back into the lineup. The young forward is expected back sometime over that stretch, and playing lower-leverage minutes against worse teams is a better introductory period as he shakes off the rust. Coming back before the All-Star Break allows time to rest and evaluate after a short period of games.

In the end, the Bucks need to win about 55-60 percent of their remaining games to make the playoffs, regardless of their opponents. They could fall flat on their face over the next few weeks, right the ship, and get hot to make the playoffs anyway — similar to how last season played out.

But this isn’t a team interested in losing streaks, or simply making the postseason. This team has raised expectations, ones raised by the organization itself — no matter what Kidd says. For the Bucks to rise above their peers and become serious contenders in the East, they need to find success over the next few weeks.

Winning less than four games over this stretch will put them in a bind, and winning 5-7 will hold serve. But if Milwaukee can get healthy and play consistent basketball over the next few weeks, winning eight or more of their games against these playoff teams will not only add to their win total, it will push down the teams they are fighting with in the standings and give confidence to the “young” Bucks.

Next: 2018 NBA Mock Draft: End of 2017 edition

At 19-15 thus far, the Bucks have plenty of work to do.