Where Bucks stand one year into Doc Rivers era: Title hopes remain, questions loom about deadline, second half

MILWAUKEE — Come Sunday it will be exactly one year since the Milwaukee Bucks hired Doc Rivers to be the organization’s 18th head coach. The past 12 months, split over two seasons, have generally been underwhelming, and at times chaotic, but the mere presence of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard keeps hope of a serious playoff run alive.

Strong performances in recent weeks have certainly helped on the positivity front. The Bucks have won five games in a row and seven of their last eight, including what Rivers called a “really professional” victory over the Miami Heat on Thursday after a travel debacle in New Orleans that left them rushing to the arena just hours before tipoff. 

The matchup with the Heat, their old postseason nemesis, was Game 42, tipping them over the halfway point of the season, and pushing their record to 25-17.

“We [asses the team] in stretches, not necessarily mid-point,” Rivers said. “There’s times where you need — I don’t know, it’s like your closet, man, there are times it’s getting messy and you need to clean things up. There’s times where you’re playing well and you need to shore things up. It’s not like 40 games. For me, it’s always been more feel. You know when it’s time to assess your team.”

The Bucks have been hot lately, but are about to embark on a West Coast road trip that will see them play four games in seven days. They’ll then return home to host the red-hot Memphis Grizzlies before heading back out on the road for another trip that includes a showdown with the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

Ahead of what figures to be a telling stretch, this feels like a perfect time to assess the Bucks with a midseason report.   

Much better since slow start…

Rivers and the Bucks generally got a pass on how last season ended due to an array of injuries, including a calf strain that kept Antetokounmpo out of the playoffs. There was an expectation, however, that after a full offseason for Rivers to take control of the team and Antetokounmpo and Lillard to get more familiar with each other, that the Bucks would hit the ground running. 

Not so. They started the season 2-8 and had the third-worst record in the league through the first 10 games. Things were looking so bleak that there was discussion, including here at CBS Sports, about the possibility of trading Antetokounmpo. That was likely never going to happen, but the fact that it was even a conversation was disappointing for Milwaukee.

Internally, at least on the playing side, no one panicked. There was always confidence that they could right the ship, and that’s exactly what has happened. Since Nov. 10, when they fell to 2-8, they are 23-9, which is the third-best record in the league in that span, and boast a plus-5.6 net rating. 

“Really?” Antetokounmpo said when told about that stat. “I’ll take it. I’m happy. We’re playing great team ball, we’re competing defensively, we’re playing in a good pace. There’s gonna be times, maybe one or two times we wasn’t ourselves the last couple of weeks but overall we’ve been competing every game and getting better.”

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All told, the Bucks are fourth in the Eastern Conference, and the regular-season record doesn’t even include a dominant win over the Thunder in the NBA Cup championship game — their best performance of the season. Antetokounmpo and Lillard are more comfortable together, they’re second in the league in 3-point shooting (39%) and have quietly grown into a top-10 defense. 

“I think the way we’ve been playing, we’re trending in the direction we want to be in, especially at this point in the season. That’s all you can really control,” Lillard said. “You want to build good habits, you want to be stacking and building on the right things, and right now, aside from the New York game… we’ve been putting the type of efforts together that we need to, and we’ve been doing it the way we need to to have success against anybody.”

…but a lot left to prove

As well as the Bucks have been playing lately, they still aren’t regarded as a true title contender. Over the second half of the season they have a lot left to prove. Not only to the outside world, but themselves. 

“Guys are playing great and making shots, playing the right way, making the extra pass, helping one another defensively,” Antetokounmpo said. “So I’m happy where we are right now. But we gotta keep on improving. Gotta keep on improving every single day. But we’ve been playing good. But it’s not enough.”

The “New York game” Lillard mentioned was the Bucks’ 34-point defeat to the Knicks on Jan. 12. With that loss, they fell to 0-8 against the top-three teams in the East: the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics and Knicks. Those games haven’t all been routs, but you would have liked to see the Bucks find a way to win at least one of them. “We’ve gotta get our stuff together, simple as that,” Antetokounmpo said in Madison Square Garden that afternoon. 

Furthermore, the Bucks have played 24 games at home compared to 18 on the road, and have the sixth-hardest remaining schedule. Save for their destruction of the Thunder to win the NBA Cup, there haven’t been many standout wins during their turnaround. Can they continue playing like this when the road gets a bit tougher?

“Being at the halfway point of the season we felt and are starting to understand what makes us the best version of ourselves,” Lillard said. “Now it’s just a matter of us holding on to that and carrying it out through the rest of the season regardless of opponent, regardless of if it’s home or on the road, we’re starting to feel what it’s like when we do what we’re supposed to do.”

Middleton a work in progress

One reason for the Bucks’ slow start was the absence of Khris Middleton, who underwent surgery on both of his ankles during the summer. Despite the team’s insistence that he would be ready for the start of the season, and that he had suffered no setback throughout the process, Middleton remained sidelined until Dec. 6. 

Missing a player of Middleton’s caliber was especially difficult for a top-heavy team like the Bucks that was also trying to introduce a number of new role players early in the season. His shooting, playmaking and institutional knowledge were all sorely missed, and the team was thrilled to see him back on the court. 

“He’s a big organizer,” Bobby Portis said shortly after Middleton’s season debut. “He’s a big leader. He has a big-time voice that everyone respects. So when you play on the court with him, you can’t help but to be organized.”

But while Middleton has put up solid numbers — 12.6 points, 3.9 rebounds, 5.1 assists on 48.0/37.7/83.3 shooting splits — his return remains a work in progress. 

The Bucks went 3-4 with him as a starter, including losses to the tanking Brooklyn Nets (twice) and Portland Trail Blazers, and he was soon relegated to a bench role. That decision was made at least in part because his ankles remain an ongoing source of concern. He’s played both parts of a back-to-back just once, and more than 25 minutes just four times in 18 games. 

“I think we’re thinking about this way too much, I’m just being honest,” Rivers said in mid-January of his decision to remove Middleton from the starting lineup. “The bottom line is he’s just not moving every night the way you like him to. One night, you see he’s moving great, one night he’s not. His minutes go up and down with the way we want to do this medically, and it’s just a tough go for him.”

That’s fine for the regular season, when it’s relatively easy to manage a veteran’s workload and the opponents aren’t as difficult. But what happens come playoff time? Is Middleton going to be ready by then to play 30-35 minutes every other night for weeks on end? If not, it’s going to be awfully difficult for the Bucks to make a deep playoff run. 

Such concerns are why the Bucks have been mentioned in trade rumors involving the likes of Jimmy Butler, Bradley Beal and Zach LaVine in recent days and weeks. Trading Middleton would be a tough bridge to cross given how much he means to the franchise, but it’s something the front office has to at least consider given the circumstances.