The Bucks

[Crow]

The current Bucks under Horst are a product of inheriting Giannis A. and Middleton and 8 major good decisions:

Firing Kidd
Hiring Budenholzer
Trading for Bledsoe (and re-signing)
Trading for Hill
Re-signing Middletown
Signing Brook Lopez
Drafting DiVincenzo

Other stuff matters some (and the next half dozen or so was generally good too) but not that much net compared to the bigger decisions.

What is also important is perhaps the absence of major screw-ups. What are the worst things he did? Signed and traded Brogdon (for draft consideration)? They haven't missed him much, yet. Not keeping C Wood? Probably too young for them.

5 of the decisions seem like pretty obvious moves imo if given the chance. Most were aided by having Giannis and Middleton. 3 were more complicated / less obvious. No major mistakes is pretty impressive but the more you have right, the pressure to take sketchier risks might be less (sketchier than trading for / acquiring former All-Stars).

Taking DiVincenzo has perhaps the least obvious choice but at their pick number it came down mainly to him, Huerter, L Walker, Okogie and maybe M Robinson. I dunno how difficult to grade that choice.

Hopefully we'll see playoffs.

Next season and beyond will have challenges. Aging, Giannis free agency, paying DiVincenzo, luxury tax. Probably won't be as error free forever but let's watch.

[Crow]

Big game for Bucks tomorrow. Been in a down period for a pretty long stretch of games.

Bud, Giannis, Kris, B Lo, Eric all under pressure to be better NOW.

[Crow]

I recently noted on twitter how awful Bucks / Budenholzer did this playoffs with lineup management. Not enough big minute / good lineup time, way way too much horrible dink lineup disaster. Different reasons for it but totally unacceptable imo.

[Crow]

Bucks under-utilize a successful Giannis lineup in playoffs then lose him.

What to do? Let's see... one non-Giannis lineup tested over 30 seconds per game in regular season and that one not even 2 minutes per game.

Had to wing it. Lost.

Could real testing of non-Giannis lineups have helped? Probably to some degree. But nah, didnt do it. I mean why test to prepare for worst possible event? $100 plus million operations don't need to test what to do for anything going wrong. Coach will figure it out, right? Not this time, last time or time before that. But next time things will work out... right?

[Crow]

Things Bucks could do besides get different players in the 3 markets:

Play Bledsoe and Matthews less and Divencenzo and Hill more.

Reverse Middleton and Giannis A. roles / positions for half the season to get Middleton to work more on drives and passes and Giannis to work more on outside shots and off the ball movement. Then go back to previous, hopefully enhanced.

Go to an 8 man rotation after 1st round of playoffs.

Play Connaugton more.

Try for more offensive rebounds in playoffs.

Have a couple guys try for more steals at what analytics and / or they think are the best times.