The Milwaukee Bucks are the least appreciated great team in NBA history
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Sunday 1 March 2020 13:13, UK
To say that the Milwaukee Bucks are clearly the best team in the NBA right now is an understatement. The Bucks are not just good compared to all the other NBA teams this season, they statistically rank in the top threshold of all NBA teams in history.
How did Milwaukee - an NBA backwater, seemingly since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar departed in 1975 - get so good?
Put simply, they are dominating because they play complete games on both ends of the court. Their team chemistry built around an unassuming Greek-born star buffered by unsung veterans like Khris Middleton has also been a blessing.
With a 51-8 record, they sit nine games ahead of the Toronto Raptors in the Eastern Conference, and six wins ahead of the L.A. Lakers in the race for home court advantage throughout the playoffs.
The Bucks are almost as good on the road (24-5) as they are at home (26-3), and have a 19-4 record against the superior Western Conference.
Any statistic normally cited to try and denigrate a team's excellence, does not work with Bucks. They have posted the best overall record since Thanksgiving (36-5), and earlier this week beat the second-placed team in that category, the streaking Oklahoma City Thunder (31-12) by a whopping 47 points.
We know about the game-changing impact of having a floor-stretching threat like Brook Lopez at the centre position. Combine that with the sheer excellence of Giannis Antetokounmpo's ability to get to his favourite spots on the floor, and you have two vital cogs in a truly potent offensive line-up.
They are even better defensively, too. The pairing of Brook with his twin brother Robin Lopez means that for all 48 minutes, the Bucks offer an excellent rim protector at the five spot.
With Giannis's excellent length and ability to guard any player in any area, alongside useful contributions from Eric Bledsoe and Wes Matthews, the Bucks always have a stifling combination of length and defensive IQ.
They are, in fact, playing some historic defence. The Bucks rank first in the NBA this season in team defensive rating at 101.6 (the Raptors are second at 104.7, which in this statistic is a country mile - the next largest gap between any two teams is the 1.4 separating the Houston Rockets and Sacramento Kings for 15th and 16th). They also have the top six players in the league in individual defensive rating.
Moreover, when measured by how much better than the league average their defence is, the quality truly stands out. The Bucks' -8.6 relative defensive rating (i.e. how much below the average defensive rating of all 30 teams this season they are) ranks second in the statistic's history, only to the San Antonio Spurs in 2017 (-8.8). These guys are really good.
Now onto the Bucks' second-best player.
Middleton has been an All-Star for two consecutive seasons, and over the summer resigned with the team to a five-year, $177.5 million contract that will pay him nearly $40.4 million in the 2023/24 season.
When both of those things are true, it is hard to be truly underappreciated or unacknowledged, yet Middleton is somehow hugely underrated.
This season, he is averaging 21.1 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.2 assists per game, doing so on startling efficiency. He is shooting 50.8 per cent from the field, 43.8 per cent from three-point range, and 90.7 per cent from the free throw line.
Middleton is on course to be one of the few players in history to surpass the fabled 50 / 40 / 90 per cent shooting benchmark - an achievement so rare that only former MVPs Larry Bird and Steve Nash have recorded it more than once.
Middleton is on course for an historic season. And yet considering the relative lack of hype around him, you wouldn't know it.
A large part of this is due to the way that he plays. Bereft of flare and not particularly athletic by NBA standards, he does not immediately draw the eye.
Granted, he is no Kawhi Leonard, but Middleton is the ultimate spot-picker, the man who plays within the flow of the offence, the guy who finds spots within it from all over. And that this, he has become deadly efficient.
Middleton will not jump over you, but he will always shoot over you. Big for a wing player, he has a high release on his jump shot and thus can always get it away, very rarely blocked and rarely meaningfully contested.
Having come up in his basketball education on a steady diet of mid-range shots, bankers, leaners and some post touches, often with a herky-jerky style that gets defenders slightly out of rhythm. Middleton also takes a greater volume of threes with good efficiency, in accordance with the Bucks' overall mantra.
Overall, Middleton has become a vitally important weapon to have alongside the vastly different talents of Antetokounmpo.
Take for example how he leads is the team when Giannis is out. The Greek Freak has missed six games this season, and in them, the Bucks are 5-1.
Although those five wins came over lottery-bound opposition, they were also all double-digit victories without league MVP. It was Middleton and his 29.4 points per game average in those five games that kept the system ticking over.
Middleton can play defence too. Despite his lack of mobility, he uses good reads, footwork and a size advantage compensate. To call him a star role player sounds like an insult, but it's accurate. Middleton does not do everything out there, but he is an example of maximising his limited talents to benefit his team.
Later in his career, the back end of his huge contract will be very sizeable for a player who still needs quality defenders at four positions around him, as well as ball-handling and shot creation help.
The fact that he uses a high level of skill, IQ and touch to get his shots off rather than physical domination should age him very gracefully, as he continues to develop his game.
In a way, Middleton is a microcosm of his team. The Bucks are having a historically great season, but are somehow not taken seriously as NBA title favourites.
Despite how good they are, Milwaukee does not get enough traction in the media, and reportedly does not illicit fear among its NBA rivals.
Perhaps they have been taken for granted quite how good they are. Perhaps it has also been taken for granted quite good Middleton is as an individual, too. So be it.
