Is the title window closed? What about Giannis’ free throws? Answering readers’ Bucks questions

On November 1, 2024By Littum

MEMPHIS – The Milwaukee Bucks have had a bumpy start to the season, and we asked for your questions and feelings about what you’ve seen. Dozens of questions came in, and below we selected some of the most urgent to address.

Thanks for reading and posting your posts!

Let’s get straight to it:

Can the Bucks make a trade?

Q: Can the Bucks trade for another all-star or are they leveraged due to salary and draft? – Steve A.

Jim Owczarski: Technically, the Bucks can trade any player on the roster. However, due to the limitations of being in the “second tier” of the payroll, they can only trade one player at a time and cannot bring in more salary than goes out. Considering the team already has three all-stars in Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Damian Lillard, it would require them to move on from one of those three to acquire another. It feels unlikely as the team has already gone through a season of roster upheaval and is still trying to find continuity.

Questions about Giannis’ free throw shooting

Q: What is your take on his continued inability to shoot free throws and why does Giannis take so long to shoot free throws? – Marshall and Paul K.

Jim Owczarski: Antetokounmpo shot 66.7% from the free throw line in the Olympics, but in his first four NBA games he shot just 55% (27-for-49), far from a career low. He is a career 70.1% career free throw shooter, but has only made 66.7% since 2020.

Antetokounmpo has maintained his form for a while now, but still flirts with 10-second fouls on a regular basis. He’s talked about this over the years and I don’t think it’s something he’s doing on purpose. He consistently takes free throws — which are always under 10 seconds — and has stretches where he finds a groove and makes a bunch. But the in-game process will naturally slow down for whatever reason. This is the sixth season in which this earnings is under 70%, and that might just be what it is at this point in his career.

Is The Damian Lillard Experiment Working?

Q: Why don’t the Bucks run the pick-and-roll with Dame and Giannis more? – Zach
Does Giannis work as the point forward and can it work with Lillard? – Time
In hindsight, are the Bucks still trading for Lillard? – Pauly

Jim Owczarski: Offensively, the duo hasn’t been a problem for the Bucks early on, as Antetokounmpo has averaged 28 points on 60% shooting, while Lillard has averaged 28 points on 47% shooting (though he hasn’t found his three-point shot yet) . In addition to the raw numbers, there are still blocks in the offense so far, but their two-man game looks better than it did a year ago.

It’s fair to wonder if taking the ball out of Antetokounmpo’s hands as the team’s primary ball handler is a positive, but I think it can be effective as long as the team uses both players in offensive actions.

To that end, I didn’t initially think it was a huge deal that the pair didn’t get together over the summer to train for a few days, but it would have been a good idea. That said, the absence of Khris Middleton to date has forced head coach Doc Rivers to stagger the two stars, so they may have spent too much time apart. When Middleton returns, it would be good to see Antetokounmpo and Lillard run more action together more often.

Truth be told, I don’t think the trade can be judged until Lillard’s time in Milwaukee ends. But yeah, I think they’re making that trade again because the ability to acquire a Top 75 player of all time to pair with someone else is too rare an opportunity to pass up.

Is the Bucks championship window closed?

Q: Are the Bucks too old to compete for a championship? – Jim S.
Did we already witness the closing of the championship window? – John
Are their best days with Giannis behind them? – Ken
Why wouldn’t the Bucks just blow it up now instead of waiting? – Super G

Jim Owczarski: In fact, the Bucks got younger during the offseason. They are 7^th oldest team in the league with an average age of 27.87 years. Last year they were the oldest with 28.21 years.

Now, the players that helped bring that average down were teenage draft picks AJ Johnson and Tyler Smith, and they won’t help this team win a title this year. So the core is older, yes. But it’s important to note that the youngest team to win a title in the last seven years was Denver in 2023, with an average age of 27.5 years.

Older aka experienced teams are honestly the ones that usually win.

So no, the championship window is not closed. However, I will say that the NBA made it more difficult for a team to win a championship because of the new rosters.

The last time the top three players for the Bucks played in the playoffs was also in 2020 – and we know how that ended. We don’t know what this team could do in a postseason if they are together.

As for “blowing it up”, the NBA is not the NFL. There are no quick turnarounds or rebuilds. What would they blow it up for? An interim team for the next 5-10 years or longer? Once teams have generational talent, league history says an organization must ride it out until contracts expire.

Do the Bucks have a good enough roster?

Q: Mark and Don G. wonder where bench scoring will come from, and after Antetokounmpo and Lillard, if there are high-level players on the team.

Jim Owczarski: This is invariably the problem with top-heavy, star-studded rosters – these players fill the most money, so there’s less to spread around the line. It also affects “bench scoring” when bench players have to fill in for injured starters.

The simple answer is that Bobby Portis Jr. is the team’s primary scorer off the bench and remains one of the league’s best sixth men, and Taurean Prince can provide solid three-point shooting. But Prince starts and plays 30 minutes per match currently without Middleton. As far as “high-level” players go, Brook Lopez is still one of the league’s premier rim protectors, and when Middleton plays, he’s still clearly a high-level offensive player.

Bucks strategy questions

Q: Fans were curious about the Bucks’ perimeter defense (Tosafish and Deann), Giannis shooting three-pointers and defending them (Chuck and Malcolm), Brook Lopez’s three-pointers and Giannis and Khris’ turnovers (CRod).

Jim Owczarski: First, let’s start with Lopez as a three-point shooter. The big man helped revolutionize what centers can do from deep, but he hasn’t been accurate to start this season. His spacing still matters when paired with Antetokounmpo, but less so when paired with Lillard. So maybe he’ll have to be more of a “traditional” big when Antetokounmpo is off the court, but almost every team is looking for a big who can block shots and shoot threes. Teams still respect Lopez’s shot and fear his presence inside.

As for Antetokounmpo and Middleton’s turnover, that’s just a function of being primary ball handlers. Players who touch the ball as often as they do (same with Lillard) there will be turnovers. But asking Antetokounmpo not to be aggressive downhill — leading to some trips and charges — or for Middleton to initiate offense from the elbows is just a recipe for poor offense and taking away from their strengths.

Mike Budenholzer has only been gone for two seasons, so it’s hard to believe that Bucks fans have already forgotten how the team built a top-5 defense when Lopez played for him — and that’s protecting the paint for anyone price and live, to a degree, with three-point variance.

No, the Bucks don’t have the fastest guards—and the team can be more disciplined in fighting over screens and in its rotations—but they’re leaning back into their size and playing inside out again. That means they will try to limit easy twos, and there will be nights when a team makes 20 threes against them.