Milwaukee Bucks in Ideal Rebuilding Position

The Milwaukee Bucks just blew past their win total from all of last year, and nobody's remotely upset by that, which says pretty much everything about how perfectly their rebuild is going.

Usually, a team this young, this early in the construction process, would win games with mixed emotions because bottoming out for better lottery odds would be more beneficial in the long term.

Not so for the Bucks, for whom win No. 16 (achieved on Dec. 29 against the Charlotte Hornets) was an unqualifiedly good thing—representative of the balance the organization has struck between long-term growth and short-term goals, between present and future concerns.

The Bucks, who started the year as the NBA's second-youngest team with an average age of 23.7, have all the youth they need. As such, they can focus on genuinely trying to win games. Sure, it's always nice to add young talent, but the mistake many teams make when rebuilding is failing to respect the necessary balance between youth and experience.

You need some old heads, some crafty vets who've been through NBA ups and downs. A squad composed entirely of early-20s talents is doomed to fail. This Milwaukee team, despite its overall youth, has the right mix in place already.

It has Giannis Antetokounmpo, the ceiling-less embodiment of raw basketball talent.

It has Jabari Parker, shelved sadly with a torn ACL. That's admittedly not ideal, but we know youngsters recover better from injuries like this, and the polish Parker flashed as a 19-year-old indicates he can be a star even with diminished athleticism.

It has the uber-resilient Brandon Knight, who despite being on the wrong end of far too many highlights to this point in his career, has defined himself by persistence and steady improvement. He forced overtime by sticking with this play against the Hornets:

It has John Henson and all 483 feet of his wingspan:

It has Larry Sanders, who is still just 26 and who, despite a rocky start to his career, totally gets how process works in the NBA:

It even has the necessary veteran reclamation projects who can lend perspective to this young group: Jared Dudley and O.J. Mayo have been success stories and washouts and success stories again. The wisdom they can impart to this bunch is worth a ton. And if rumors are to be believed, more old-timey help could be on its way to Milwaukee:

Perhaps most important of all, it has Jason Kidd—maligned for the nature of his summertime switch, but now unquestionably a capable coach with a knack for reaching young players.

Milwaukee has all that—the youth, the right mix of vets and the coach—and it can improve every one of those valuable rebuilding components with a postseason berth. Playoff experience could supercharge the growth process for this team. It would be huge for guys like Antetokounmpo and Parker in particular, even if the latter was only watching from the sidelines.

It takes incremental steps to eventually go deep in the postseason, which is something long-term rebuilding projects seem to always forget. Take the Philadelphia 76ers, for example: If they accumulate the talent they need in, say, two more years, it's still going to take another two or three seasons of playoff education for them to really break through.

All told, their rebuild could wind up taking more than half a decade.

The Bucks can get their first playoff trip out of the way while their talent is still developing, effectively combining multiple parts of the growth process into one phase. Even if they're quietly bounced from the first round this spring, they'll be way ahead of schedule, setting themselves up for a deeper run next time around, when the core will still be ridiculously young.

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All that could fast-track Milwaukee to the final stage of its evolution: signing a big name.

It's possible the Bucks already have their superstar in Antetokounmpo, and history says it won't be easy to lure a prime free agent to Milwaukee, but that process will be a whole lot easier if the team already has playoff success under its belt to complement a promising young core.

Quietly, the Bucks have created the most functional, pure-of-aim rebuild in the league. There are no whispers of tanking, no compromised goals, no working at cross purposes and, critically, no concern about impressionable talents picking up losing habits.

Milwaukee, still under construction, can try its best to win right now, inexperience be damned. You have to imagine that's going to pay off once the building is complete.