The Milwaukee Bucks have been the No. 1 seed in the NBA Eastern Conference in each of the last two seasons, but they have not made the NBA Finals. They lost to the Toronto Raptors in the 2019 Eastern Conference Finals, and they lost to the Miami Heat in the 2020 East semifinals. The Bucks are a great regular-season team but not a great playoff team. What can give this group the winning edge it needs to change its playoff fortunes, in a huge season for this franchise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Offseason Changes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bucks knew they needed an upgrade at point guard if they were going to give themselves a better chance at winning the East and contending for the NBA title, so they pulled off a four-team trade with the Thunder, Pelicans, and Nuggets in which they landed New Orleans guard Jrue Holiday. The Bucks gave up Eric Bledsoe and George Hill so that they could get Holiday, who is widely regarded as a significant improvement at the position. The Bucks got Nik Stauskas as a bench scorer and shooter, and they picked up D.J. Augustin as a bargain-basement backup guard for Holiday. This is a win-now move for a team which definitely needs to win big in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bucks Will Succeed If\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n They get the shooting and offense from players other than Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton. A lot of people in the NBA think the Bucks needed to keep Malcolm Brogdon, and that they were either worried about spending money or keeping a player who had run into an injury. That move will continue to be debated as long as the Bucks fall short of the NBA Finals. Holiday gives Milwaukee\u2019s offense a chance to be better, but the bigger picture is that someone has to be able to provide reliable scoring and perimeter shooting other than Giannis (whose 3-point shot still needs a lot of work) and Middleton (who is great when he\u2019s on but is ordinary when struggling). Getting a strong third scoring option is the best way to take pressure off Giannis and Middleton, who haven\u2019t been able to carry this team in the playoffs as a two-man tandem. Milwaukee needs a third man, maybe even a fourth, to make this thing work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bucks Will Fail If\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Their coach can\u2019t finally solve the puzzle. Mike Budenholzer is a great regular-season coach. He has coached three teams \u2013 the Bucks twice, the Atlanta Hawks once \u2013 to a No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference. Yet, he has won a total of two games in the Eastern Conference Finals while losing eight. He completely flopped against the Miami Heat in the East semifinals this past season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Budenholzer wins in the regular season because he knows how to get 10 players to play well on a steady basis, giving lots of minutes to his bench and keeping his stars fresh over the course of a long regular season. However, in the playoffs, it\u2019s usually a lot more important to keep one\u2019s best players on the floor longer. Budenholzer doesn\u2019t agree with this. He played Giannis close to 35 minutes in a number of playoff games versus the Heat. Stars need to play low-40s minutes if the rest of the roster is unable to carry the weight when that star player is out. The Bucks were so dependent on Giannis that Budenholzer\u2019s minutes restriction was ridiculous. If Budenholzer doesn\u2019t learn to ride his stars longer in the playoffs, the team will fall short again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outlook<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bucks will win their division and likely dominate the regular season. We won\u2019t know anything about this team until the second round of the East playoffs. The talent is there to win a title. The coaching and the supporting cast for Giannis are the two huge question marks. If the Bucks don\u2019t make the Finals this year, Giannis might consider leaving. It is the most important season in Bucks history since the 1974 season, when the team lost in Game 7 of the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prediction: 1st in Central Division<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Milwaukee Bucks have been the No. 1 seed in the NBA Eastern Conference in each of the last two…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14917,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions\/14917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}