For the third season in a row, the Bucks were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. With Damian Lillard, the team stopped being an elite team on defense in order to improve on offense. That tradeoff was expected when you trade Jrue Holiday for Damian Lillard. However, during the decisive moments of the past season, both Lillard and Giannis were either injured or limited, forcing them to miss games. This caused the Bucks to get eliminated by the Pacers in the playoffs for the second time in two seasons.
From the team that won the title in 2020-21, only Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis remain in Milwaukee. Damian Lillard was waived after his terrible injury and the Bucks will try to replace him with Kevin Porter Jr. and Cole Anthony. This doesn’t seem to be a good enough solution for them to improve their backcourt play from last season.
Brook Lopez is also gone and so, the Bucks signed Myles Turner from the Pacers to replace him. Turner’s perimeter shooting ability will mesh well with Giannis and he is coming from having the best 3pts% mark of his career (39.6%) last season. The Bucks also decided to trade a hobbled Kris Middleton for Kyle Kuzma mid last season but Kuzma’s immediate impact wasn’t the one Milwaukee hoped for. Kuzma will really need to have a career season in order for the Bucks to be competitive this year as the level of talent the team will have around Giannis really isn’t as high as it was in previous seasons.
Antetokounmpo has consistently been one of the best players in the league and he managed to reach the 60% FG mark in the last two seasons. But with the level of talent around him going down in the last few seasons, their opponents’ focus is all on him.
There are already rumors that Giannis wants to be traded and this might indeed happen if the Bucks struggle. The only good news is that both Boston and Indiana have injury problems that will weaken them this season, but even with that, Doc Rivers will need to find a magic formula for the Bucks to get a high seed in the East given his current roster.