The Good, Bad and Ugly from the Milwaukee Bucks' Early Season
Though there are plenty of areas to critique during the early stretch of the season, one thing is certain: The Milwaukee Bucks already look much better than they did one season ago, when they finished with the league's worst record.
Several encouraging performances from O.J. Mayo, Jabari Parker's respectable start as a professional and a reinvigorated Larry Sanders are just a few of the positives for the Bucks in the early going.
However, there are notable areas of concern such as turnovers, lackadaisical defense and an offense that still needs to come together.
With that said, the overall start to the season has been positive for the Bucks.
Now, let's take a closer look at why that is and what areas the team still needs to improve in.
The Good
Aside from the fact that the Bucks have been competitive in almost every game to start the 2014-15 season, there have been individual performances that have stood out as well.
First and foremost is the play of Brandon Knight, who seems to be picking up right where he left off a season ago.
The 22-year-old point guard had his best season as a pro in 2013-14, and though the team acquired point guards Kendall Marshall and Jerryd Bayless in the offseason, he seems to be silencing any notions that he is not the team's point guard of the future.
Through the early slate of games, Knight is averaging 18.4 points, 7.2 rebounds and 7.2 assists on 40.8 percent shooting from the field, while turning the ball over 3.0 times per game.
Despite not connecting on a high percentage of his shots and still turning it over a bit too much, Knight has shown that he has become a better distributor and more capable of running an offense.
He has an assist percentage of 39.0, which is up from 26.6 percent a season ago and currently the best of his career.
While Knight has been impressive on his own, his numbers have been boosted by the successes of those around him as well.
After a hot start, Mayo has cooled off a bit over the past three games, but the veteran shooting guard is still averaging a respectable 12.6 points while hitting 44.7 percent of his field-goal attempts, including a very good 41.7 percent of his threes.
Mayo has seemed to embrace his role of coming off the bench and adds a great spark to the second unit.
Much of how he will fare going forward rests on the consistency of his jump shot, but as long as he is making plays in other ways—and he is, as evidenced by his 3.4 assists per game—Mayo should remain a valuable asset regardless of his scoring numbers.
Meanwhile, the rookie (Parker) is getting his feet underneath himself in the NBA, and while he hasn't been great, he has shown signs of being the player he was in college:
Sanders, who missed most of last season due to injuries, has managed to get right back on track in terms of rebounding and defending the rim.
The big man is averaging just 6.4 points on 37.8 percent shooting but is hauling in 9.2 rebounds per game and averaging 2.0 blocks.
While he still needs to develop his low-post game and learn how to defend without picking up so many fouls—he's averaging 4.0 a game—he's off to a good start after missing most of 2013-14.
Best of all for the Bucks is the fact that they're playing competitive basketball and haven't looked overmatched in any of their first five games.
Their defensive rating of 99.27 ranks third in the league, and they're only allowing 94.9 points per game.
If they can keep that level of play up defensively, things will be looking very good when their offense finally does come around.
The Bad
At the end of August, the Bucks acquired Jared Dudley from the Los Angeles Clippers and likely hoped he would at least provide some meaningful contributions.
So far, that hasn't been the case.
Dudley, known primarily as a spot-up shooter, is hitting just 33.3 percent of his field-goal attempts and a horrific 16.7 percent of his threes. For a player who adds little value elsewhere, that's troublesome.
What's more troublesome is the fact that Dudley has started all five games to this point and is averaging 20.0 minutes a night.
If the Bucks didn't have other talent on the roster, that might be alright. However, that's not the case.
While Marshall, Nate Wolters, John Henson and Ersan Ilyasova get shorted minutes, Dudley remains on the floor.
This leads to another question: How deep into the bench should head coach Jason Kidd go?
A season ago, Larry Drew tinkered with the lineup far too much, and while it is very early, it is a bit concerning that Kidd seemingly has not developed much of a subbing pattern or consistent rotation.
For example, Henson has appeared in all five games, but his minutes range from 21 against the Philadelphia 76ers to just under nine minutes against the Indiana Pacers earlier this week.
A head coach needs to experiment with a young team—especially early in the season—to see what he has to work with, so this issue isn't a major concern yet. However, if Kidd doesn't develop a more solidified rotation, he risks going down Drew's path.
Based on Mayo's opinion from last year (per Charles F. Gardner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), that's one of the reasons why the team wasn't able to develop and become more cohesive:
"It's hard to get a rhythm when you don't know what's going to happen for you night in and night out. You may get 6 minutes, 30 minutes. There's no staple to what we're doing. You can hang in there, compete and keep it close.
If you don't have a backbone to what you do, whether it's going to be a defensive thing, an up-tempo thing, a pound-it-in-the-paint thing, a drive-and-kick thing. We've got to find a staple as a team.
"
Like last year, the Bucks must find their staple. They still have plenty of time and it is obviously early, but at some point, it needs to happen.
Part of it happening will be because of a consistent, tight rotation.
The Ugly
Turnovers.
That's the one and only thing that can be dubbed ugly for the Bucks through the early going.
Holding on to the ball has been a major issue as the team has made its way through the first week of the season. Averaging 18.4 turnovers, they rank 27th in the league in that category and recently had a terrifying 27-turnover game against the Washington Wizards.
For a team that has struggled scoring as much as the Bucks have so far this season, giving away possessions is the worst possible scenario.
The team is hitting just 42.6 percent of its field-goal attempts and averages just 93.8 points—which ranks 22nd—and does not yet have a consistent, go-to scorer who can do so efficiently.
Given these facts, it's important that they value every possession and not get careless.
The team's biggest culprit from a turnover standpoint is Knight, which doesn't come as a huge surprise since he handles the ball so frequently.
However, the young point guard does have the tendency to dribble himself into poor situations and just play out of control in general.
If he can slow things down and play under control, he'll likely limit the amount of turnovers he commits.
Surprisingly, Zaza Pachulia is also a big culprit.
The veteran big man plays just 16.8 minutes per game yet turns it over 2.3 times on average. For someone who doesn't spend a lot of time with the ball in his hands, that is unacceptable.
Forcing passes, dribbling into traffic and hesitating on making decisions have been the major contributing factors to the turnover issue.
If the team cannot cut down on the mistakes, it won't matter how well it plays on defense because, at some point, giving away empty possessions comes back to haunt you.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com.
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