Milwaukee Bucks: Analyzing the importance of Eric Bledsoe

Now that the ink on his four-year, $70 million contract extension has dried, it’s obvious the Milwaukee Bucks value Eric Bledsoe a ton moving forward. How important of a role does he truly play on the team?

Although the 2019 NBA Draft is now a thing of the past and the league’s free agency period has not yet arrived, things certainly aren’t slowing down for the Milwaukee Bucks. The front office is tasked with retaining the core that helped Milwaukee reach the Eastern Conference Finals while also building off that success for the 2019-20 season.

The former is a task in and of itself, even for general manager and newly-crowned NBA Executive of the Year Jon Horst. Fortunately for the Bucks, Horst got a head start on things in March by signing point guard Eric Bledsoe to a multi-year contract extension.

The deal keeps Bledsoe in Milwaukee through the 2022-23 campaign, his age-32 season, and likely the remainder of his prime. Because he was set to hit the free agent market this summer without an extension, getting a deal done during the regular season made complete sense for the Bucks.

A playmaker on the offensive end, Bledsoe was still able to average 5.5 assists per game despite superstar teammate Giannis Antetokounmpo posting a usage percentage of 31.4 percent. The ninth-year point guard also finished in the top 10 in rebounds among point guards, hauling in 4.6 per game. Bledsoe excelled at keeping the ball moving, even while playing a secondary/tertiary role on offense.

Don’t be fooled: Bledsoe wasn’t just a quality facilitator and rebounder. Contributing 15.9 points per game on 48.4 percent shooting from the field, Bledsoe was a perfect supporting piece to Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton from a scoring standpoint. It was his lowest scoring average since becoming a full-time starter, but nonetheless, a career-best field goal percentage more than made up for it. Who knows, maybe he even doubles as a good luck charm for the USWNT?

That brings us to our next point… defense. Like a goalie in soccer preventing the other team from running up the score, Bledsoe is a highly-respected defender throughout the league. This culminated in the form of his first NBA All-Defensive Team selection for his work in 2018-19. A First Team pick, Bledsoe’s 1.5 steals per game put him in a multi-player tie for 13th in the league.

Posting the best defensive rating of his career (105.1), it appears Bledsoe benefitted tremendously from head coach Mike Budenholzer’s new system. While many players see their defensive performance drop off as they inch closer to the age of 30, Bledsoe appears to be as strong as ever on that end. That’s a great sign for Milwaukee moving forward.

With all of that being said, one thing remains extremely critical to Bledsoe’s success with the Bucks and how far the team can go: how he performs in the postseason. Scoring 16.0 points per game on a very efficient 47.9 percent from the field through Milwaukee’s first nine playoff games last season, this was not a problem. What came after it, though, was.

Bledsoe struggled immensely against the eventual NBA champion Toronto Raptors. Seeing his scoring average drop all the way down to 10.2 points per game, this regression in performance was startling. Even more startling was the efficiency through which Bledsoe scored those points. Shooting 29.4 percent from the field and connecting on just 17.2 percent of his shots from deep, these shooting percentages made Bledsoe borderline unwatchable during the series.

Whether the Milwaukee Bucks will get to the NBA Finals this upcoming season will be the result of a multitude of things. Eric Bledsoe will play a huge role in that outcome. As a fantastic defender and reliable facilitator, those traits are important once it’s playoff time. Additionally, though, the scoring has to be there. The efficiency has to be there. If either or both of those are missing, Milwaukee is in trouble. We all saw the result of it against Toronto.

The Bucks will go as far as Bledsoe can help them go. Does that mean an NBA Finals appearance is in the cards for Milwaukee this season? With how fast the offseason has been flying by, that question will be answered before we know it.