Milwaukee Bucks: The time is now to make a move up the standings

The Milwaukee Bucks have broken through to the easy landing of their season. The time is now to make a move up the standings in the Eastern Conference.

A key part of any team’s season is the finish. For some teams, it’s a desperate struggle to extend the season beyond Game 82. For others, it’s an evaluation period where young prospects play ahead of proven veterans. For the Milwaukee Bucks, it will be a push to see whether this team can catch lightning before the playoffs hit.

Milwaukee has a greater than 99 percent chance of making the playoffs, so it’s no longer a question of “if” but “when” they play postseason basketball. While the simple act of qualifying for the playoffs for the second straight year — a feat they haven’t accomplished since the 2003-04 season — is meaningful, a quiet exit will feel like a disappointment.

The Bucks have a legitimate MVP candidate in Giannis Antetokounmpo, who has increased his scoring by 4.3 points per game a year after winning Most Improved Player. They have a two-way wing as his wingman, Khris Middleton, a near-All-Star talent at the league’s scarcest position. They traded for another talented player in point guard Eric Bledsoe. This team has talent.

Now they have to maximize that talent and make waves in the playoffs. Last season they pushed the Toronto Raptors to a Game 6 before falling; can they realistically do more than that this season? If they don’t, it will be a result that falls short of expectations.

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There are three primary steps the team can take over the next two weeks to set itself up for postseason success. The first is to get healthy, and with second-year guard Malcolm Brogdon returning soon, they will be as near to healthy as they can get. The second is to determine a playoff rotation, which we touched on earlier this week.

Finally, the Bucks need to take advantage of a soft closing schedule and move up at least one place in the standings. While earlier in the season the 8-seed may not have looked terrible, the dominance of the Toronto Raptors means a rematch could see the Bucks heading home even faster than last season.

The soft spot in the schedule is the 7-seed, where the Bucks could instead face the battered Boston Celtics. All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving just had knee surgery to remove a tension wire, and “minimally invasive” or not, he may not be fully healthy at all this season, and certainly not in the first round. Defensive bulldog Marcus Smart has possibly played his last game this year as well.

To climb higher to sixth means facing LeBron James — a death wish despite the Cleveland Cavaliers’ struggles, especially for a young team trying to find its own identity as Milwaukee is. The place to strike is against the Boston Celtics, but that spot will not come without a fight.

Milwaukee still sits a half-game behind the Miami Heat for seventh in the Eastern Conference, back one in the win column. The Heat’s schedule does the Bucks no favors either, as the remaining opponents for Dwyane Wade and company are: the Brooklyn Nets, Atlanta Hawks (twice), New York Knicks, Oklahoma City Thunder and Toronto Raptors for the final game of the season. Only one of those games projects to be against a tough opponent as the Raptors are likely to be sitting players the final night.

Therefore, Milwaukee will have to keep pace with its own schedule, winning as many games as possible down the stretch. Luckily for the Bucks things are lightening up, as each of their seven remaining opponents is either tanking or dealing with a great sense of team loss.

After beating the Golden State Warriors Thursday night, the Bucks are now 1-1 on the front half of their four-game Western Conference road trip. The Bucks next return to the Staples Center to close their season series with the Los Angeles Lakers. L.A. is no team to overlook, with Luke Walton coaching his heart out with a roster of willing youngsters and expectant veterans.

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Even so, the Bucks should win against the Lakers, and that would yield a trip to Denver to take on the Nuggets on Easter Sunday. It’s too early for Denver to call it quits on the playoff push, but the team fell off its perch on the backs of inconsistent defense and offensive carelessness. The Bucks can exploit those weakness well.

A 3-1 road trip would be a great late-season boost to team morale, as the schedule only lightens up from there. On Tuesday, the Bucks will host the aforementioned Celtics, and without many of their key players — Al Horford missed the Celtics’ last game due to injury himself — this could and potentially should be a game for the Bucks to win.

The final week of the season begins with three straight tanking teams, meaning that the Bucks can improve their stock and have a direct influence on the ultimate draft order. They host the Nets and Orlando Magic, sandwiched around a trip to Madison Square Garden to take on the Knicks.

Milwaukee has to be careful it does not trip up during this stretch. Not only have the Bucks had a bad habit of losing to inferior teams, especially in the East, but there is no more time to make up ground. Their chance at the 7-seed rests solely on these handful of remaining games.

On the final night of the season, the Bucks go to Philadelphia to take on the 76ers. Will Joel Embiid have returned to play that night? Will Philly have anything to play for, or will they be locked into their seed? If the answer to both is “no,” then the Bucks have to feel like they can take that game easily.

Ultimately, the Bucks will not change qualitatively based on their final standing in the conference. A half game ahead of Miami or behind Washington will not determine their ability to win basketball games on the court.

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But matchups do matter, and the Bucks have the opportunity to win their way into the best situation. To do so they will have to do something they have not done all season: sustain winning. Learning that skill would be the greatest success this season has to offer.

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