Milwaukee Bucks: Mike Budenholzer is already making the team better
The 2018-19 NBA season has not begun, but the Milwaukee Bucks are already feeling the positive effects of their new head coach Mike Budenholzer.
The Milwaukee Bucks have had a consistent policy when making team-building decisions over the past half-decade: Prioritize length and athleticism, and the rest will fall into place around it. While that strategy yielded Giannis Antetokounmpo and a roster of intriguing pieces, the wrong leadership failed to steer it towards greatness.
Enter Mike Budenholzer, former Gregg Popovich disciple and Atlanta Hawks head coach. Replacing Jason Kidd and Joe Prunty should lead to an upgrade all on its own, but Budenholzer brings a diverse skill-set to the table. Not only can he make the current roster play up to its potential, but his vision for adding new players is more nuanced.
Players available in the draft or free agency are often skilled or long and athletic; the players who are both tend to be stars not coming to Milwaukee. By focusing wholly on the frame of players, the Bucks have tended to neglect adding players with skills perfect for winning basketball.
Budenholzer breaded his butter in Atlanta by taking skilled players and developing them into the best versions of themselves, then providing the system for them to thrive in. Players such as Al Horford, Paul Millsap and Jeff Teague are not hyper-athletes or physically dominant or bursting with natural talent, but each were All-Stars on successful Hawks teams.
Part of their success under Bundeholzer was how he managed the current talent, and we will see in the coming months how positively he affects the Bucks’ holdover talent. But what we can see already is that Bud is having a positive impact on how the team adds talent as well.
Milwaukee has signed two players in free agency, adding Ersan Ilyasova and Brook Lopez. Both are players who have forged long, successful careers based on their skills more than having peak length and athleticism. Both are the type of player the Bucks did not have contributing last season.
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A key component of the successful Atlanta Hawks teams under Budenholzer was floor-spacing from every position. Millsap and Horford both developed 3-point shots while in Atlanta, and the role players in the frontcourt were shooters as well. Players such as Mike Scott, Mike Muscala and Pero Antic — not to mention Ilyasova himself more recently — allowed the Hawks to be consistent no matter the players on the court.
Spacing in the frontcourt is something the Bucks simply do not have. Last season, Milwaukee centers hit a combined 32 3-pointers, with sophomore Thon Maker hitting 31 of those and John Henson, Greg Monroe, Tyler Zeller and Marshall Plumlee combining for just a single deep shot. It took Maker 104 attempts to hit those 31 3-pointers, an abysmal 29.8 percent.
The power forwards on the roster did not fare much better. In the modern NBA, it’s almost a necessity to get shooting from the 4, and the Bucks barely accomplished that. Antetokounmpo shot 43-for-140 from 3-point range, a 30.7 percent success rate. Jabari Parker chipped in another 31 after he returned from injury.
In total, the Bucks received just 17.9 percent of their 718 3-point makes from the 4 or the 5, a number that stands in stark contrast with a modern NBA that demands spacing from everywhere on the roster. By comparison, the NBA’s final four teams last season — the Houston Rockets, Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers and Boston Celtics — averaged 23.1 percent of their 3-pointers from the frontcourt (and if Kevin Durant is counted as a power forward, that number goes up to 27.8 percent).
In addition to spacing across the roster, shooting from the big man positions also helps the sheer volume of 3-pointers, a must in today’s NBA. The aforementioned final four teams averaged 1,025 made 3-pointers last season, roughly 300 more than Milwaukee. Each finished among the top eight such teams in the league. Milwaukee, with its 718 made 3-pointers, finished 27th.
Enter Brook Lopez and Ersan Ilyasova, players designed to give the Bucks an immediate shot in the arm. Lopez has reinvented himself as a pick-and-pop player, hitting 246 3-pointers over the past two seasons at a steady 34.5 percent clip. Ilyasova is no stranger to stretching the floor as a career 36.6 percent 3-point shooter, hitting at least one 3-pointer per game in each of the past four seasons.
Both can step in and immediately space the court around Antetokounmpo, giving him the space to devastate opponents. With Jabari Parker leaving in free agency, Ilyasova can step in as the backup power forward and, depending on Maker’s development, a backup 5 at times as well. Lopez should be the starter from day one, immediately increasing the long range threat of the starting lineup.
Milwaukee’s focus on long athletes was not wrong, but it was also too black-and-white. A team needs a variety of players with a variety of skills, and neglecting certain archetypes has hurt this team’s ability to compete. While there is a lot of time until basketball even begins — and even longer until the games truly matter — already we can see the effects of competence and vision on the bench.
Next: 2018 NBA free agency tracker: Grades for every deal so far
Whether Mike Budenholzer can bring playoff success and more to Milwaukee is yet to be seen. But the first ripple effects of his hiring look to be winning moves as Lopez, Ilyasova and modern basketball have come to the Bucks.