Can Bucks extend Giannis' prime and develop young players? Bucks mailbag, Part II

New York Times

14 hours ago

Last night, the 2025 NBA Finals got underway with the Indiana Pacers shocking the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1, winning 111-110.
When the Pacers eliminated the Milwaukee Bucks from the postseason more than a month ago, it was tough to imagine Indiana would make a run to the finals. However, their journey provides an interesting backdrop for the larger questions our readers have sent, which ask me to contemplate the future of the Milwaukee franchise. Next week, we will address shorter responses to more questions, but in this mailbag, we have decided to focus on two big ideas that will have a significant impact on the Bucks moving forward.
Note: Questions have been lightly edited for clarity.
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With Giannis Antetokounmpo's downhill style of play, how many more years can he go before his knees become a problem? — Rd U.
I think that is an impossible question to answer. I am not a doctor. I have no idea what Antetokounmpo's medical information looks like. Even if I did, I'd have no way of interpreting what that might mean for the potential for future injuries or when he might break down.
But I think a larger, adjacent idea is interesting, so I wanted to explore that a bit.
Over the weekend, my former colleague at The Athletic (and former director of basketball research for the Bucks), Seth Partnow, spent some time on Bluesky talking with people about where exactly Antetokounmpo belongs in the various tiers of NBA superstars and whether or not Antetokounmpo is still a 1A superstar alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Nikola Jokić. While our guy, Law Murray, put him in the 1A category with SGA and Jokić, Partnow wondered if Antetokounmpo had started to hit the downslope of his absolute prime and should be dropped to 1B.
Before getting into this, I would remind folks that whether Antetokounmpo is 1A or 1B, we're talking about the best players in the world, so Partnow isn't suggesting Antetokounmpo is 'washed' or anything of that nature. He is trying to articulate the small differences that separate the most elite players.
In this discussion, though, I would side with Murray in my belief that Antetokounmpo is still unequivocally a 1A player, and I don't see that changing over the next few seasons. The transformation that Antetokounmpo underwent this season offensively was impressive and felt like the first step in a larger transformation that will help keep Antetokounmpo at the same level as the league's top-level superstar players for years to come.
That transformation started with Antetokounmpo's shot distribution.
Per Cleaning the Glass, the Bucks superstar took 35 percent of his shots from the mid-range, with 17 percent of those attempts coming on mid-range shots longer than 14 feet. The last time he came close to numbers such as those was the 2017-18 season, which was Jason Kidd's final season as coach.
As Antetokounmpo continued to whittle away at how many 3-point shots he tries each season, he ended up taking only four percent of his shots from behind the 3-point line, a career low. Antetokounmpo was able to use the mid-range more often to put less stress on his body, while still taking more shots from less than five feet (12 per game) than any other player in the NBA.
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On top of changing his shot distribution, Antetokounmpo also put together the best mid-range shooting season of his career. (We detailed the work behind that progress, as well as the team of coaches that Antetokounmpo put together to help him evolve his game, before the Bucks beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2024 NBA Cup Final.)
With career-high shooting percentages on both short and long mid-range shots, the two-time MVP hit a career-high 43.7 percent on shots taken outside of five feet and inside the 3-point line, per Cleaning the Glass. His previous career-high was only 40.9 percent from mid-range in the 2021-22 season.
Along with the changes in his shot distribution and accuracy, coach Doc Rivers placed Antetokounmpo in different spots, which helped show how last season may be the first step in extending the peak of Antetokounmpo's MVP prime. At the end of the season, when Damian Lillard was out with a deep vein thrombosis blood clot in his right leg, the Bucks were forced to build the team solely around Antetokounmpo's strengths. That revealed how a more heliocentric approach could help Antetokounmpo elongate his prime, even if he is not the same world-destroying freak of nature he was when he won his first MVP in 2019.
As Bucks general manager Jon Horst approaches next season, he can foster an environment that allows Antetokounmpo to thrive by building a roster where Antetokounmpo can operate in the mid-range and the post as a playmaker on offense while also not forcing him to save the day with a superhero effort on defense. Surrounding Antetokounmpo with players who can knock down shots and defend multiple positions would allow him to thrive on both ends of the floor.
One of the frequent critiques I hear of Antetokounmpo's game is that he is not quite the defender that he used to be. That is fair considering he took home the 2020 NBA Defensive Player of the Year when he entered his athletic peak, but it may not be as fair when considering his 1A contemporaries.
Gilgeous-Alexander put together an excellent defensive season this year, and he did it while sharing the floor with four players — Lu Dort, Jalen Williams, Alex Caruso and Chet Holmgren — that either earned All-Defensive Team honors this season or deserve consideration for those honors annually. He's on a team that has more defensive talent than any other team in the league. Jokić has long been in a system that hides his defensive weaknesses and accentuates his ball skills and intelligence.
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Neither of those situations would describe a Bucks team that had just one defender, Brook Lopez, who has been worthy of All-Defensive consideration over the last five years and forced multiple defenders to play out of position.
I like your concept of a gap year for the Bucks. If Horst can maneuver to get a couple of younger wings who can run the floor with Giannis, this could be the year for them to develop.
Do you think Horst is thinking about younger and more versatile players? And do you think Doc can develop them? If I'm being honest, I have my doubts about both. — Jim W.
This question speaks, at least a little bit, to my previous answer's ending, as well as several questions from this mailbag regarding the Bucks' ability as an organization to develop young talent. I think Jim's doubts are warranted.
In recent years, the Bucks have not managed to get much out of the NBA Draft. Under Horst's leadership, here are the NBA Draft selections that the Bucks have made (or acquired in a trade) that ended up on the roster on opening night of the next season:
Out of those selections, Donte DiVincenzo is the only player who has turned into a proven NBA contributor. To be fair, Sandro Mamukelashvili just completed his fourth NBA season, and Andre Jackson Jr. and AJ Johnson have both shown flashes on their rookie contracts. But DiVincenzo is the only player on the list who is an undeniable NBA success.
Before making too harsh a judgment, it is worth noting that there are only four first-round picks on that list, and each of those selections occurred in the back half of the first round, which means the historical odds of those picks turning into a rotation player are somewhere around 25 percent. So, hitting on one of those four picks is actually in line with historical expectations. The Bucks, however, didn't get to see that investment through as DiVincenzo ended up finding his greatest success outside of Milwaukee.
As you go deeper in the draft, the odds for success drop dramatically, so it isn't necessarily surprising that the Bucks haven't managed to hit in the NBA Draft with no lottery picks and a majority of their selections coming outside of the top 20. That will need to change moving forward, as the new collective bargaining agreement has made it important for teams to find players who can contribute on cheap contracts. One of the easiest ways for teams to do that will be the NBA Draft.
If the Bucks are going to find more value in their draft selections, they will need to have far better organizational alignment on the goals that they want to accomplish with those players. Last season's usage of the Bucks' two most prominent young players provides decent guidelines for what the organization must consider moving forward.
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The organization's greatest recent player-development success story is AJ Green, who was signed as an undrafted free agent on a two-way contract following the 2022 NBA Draft. With a few injuries during the 2022-23 season, Green ended up playing rotation minutes at times during his rookie season. Then, his two-way deal was converted to a standard NBA contract in July 2023. After failing to secure a spot in Adrian Griffin's rotation, Green became a more regular rotation player under Rivers in the 2023-24 season, and then a true regular last season.
By the time the Bucks got to a do-or-die Game 5 against the Pacers, Green played 46 minutes as Rivers and the Bucks tried to stave off elimination. Now, Green is in a position to sign a real extension on his second NBA contract and solidify his place in the league next season.
Green was only able to get to this position because of the opportunity he received from Rivers over the last two seasons. It wasn't just that Rivers played Green, but Rivers made sure to create a role that made sense for Green. Some plays involved Green as a screener for Antetokounmpo in inverted pick-and-rolls and after-timeout plays that freed Green for catch-and-shoot 3-point opportunities.
Now, look at the rest of the young players on the roster last season.
While Andre Jackson Jr. started 43 games and played 980 minutes, the Bucks never carved out an offensive role that made sense for him. He was a huge part of what they did defensively and the pressure that they applied against the league's top point guards, but unlike Green, he was not given special rules or opportunities offensively.
Despite not being an aggressive 3-point shooter, Jackson sat in the corner for catch-and-shoot 3s before getting moved to the dunker to wait for drop-offs from Antetokounmpo or Lillard. At his best in college, Jackson was allowed to be a playmaker as a short roller, and he exhibited those same strengths in games Antetokounmpo missed, where Jackson played heavy minutes with Lillard. But the Bucks rarely used him in that role this season when all three shared the floor.
It may be unreasonable to expect the Bucks to create a different package of plays for a role player, but they showed that willingness with Green when he played with Antetokounmpo on the floor and Lillard off. If the Bucks are going to develop young players successfully, these things are needed. Green is undeniably talented, but his NBA success has not been an accident.
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If the Bucks want to have more of those success stories, they need to be aligned from the front office to the coaching staff and figure out how they plan to develop young players next season. They need to find pockets of playing time for those young players and also opportunities that allow them to play to their strengths while also helping the team play winning basketball.
It is a lot to balance, but it must be a part of Milwaukee's path forward if it wants to maintain long-term success.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Justin Casterline / Getty Images)