The NBA season is right around the corner and the Milwaukee Bucks 2013 NBA Championship Odds are currently at 175-1 ($100 bet pays $17700). They are 100-1 to win the Eastern Conference and their over/under season win total projection is 37,5. Below is the overall season preview by Pregame Pro André Gomes. 

2011-12 Regular Season Numbers:

The Bucks had the goal of coming back to the Playoffs last season, as Andrew Bogut was once again healthy and ready to start the season. With Bogut back, Coach Scott Skiles had hope that with him, the Bucks would once again be one of the best defensive teams in the league.

Milwaukee Bucks month-by-month record:

In January, the Bucks were in fact one of the best defensive teams in the league, but that wasn’t being enough for them to be competitive, as the Bucks offense was too inconsistent and not productive enough to take advantage of their good defensive work.

Unfortunately, Andrew Bogut missed once again several games due to injuries and Skiles simply gave up from all the work he had been done in Milwaukee over the last few seasons: the team started to play at a faster pace and they changed their priority to focus primarily on their offense.

They traded Andrew Bogut for Monta Ellis and this deal only confirmed this new philosophy from the Bucks. This is why their regular season numbers are very different when we divide the season in two parts:

With this new style, the Bucks were in the mix for the #8 seed in the East, but they missed that chance by losing 7 of their last 10 games and finishing the season with a negative record of 31-35, far away from Philadelphia.

Offseason moves 2012-13:

With Bogut out of Milwaukee, the biggest priority of the Bucks on this offseason was to improve their frontcourt. Therefore, the Bucks traded to sign Samuel Dalembert and on the free agency, they got Joel Przybilla for the Center position. Finally, with the 14^th pick in the draft, they picked John Henson to improve their frontcourt.

Monta Ellis will remain in the team and Milwaukee has practically the same players that formed the backcourt in the second half of the season, with the exclusion of Carlos Delfino and Shaun Livingston that left the team.

 “Milwaukee Warriors”?

Scott Skiles was never known for being a coach that liked their teams to play on a “run and gun” style, as in fact we can classify Skills as the opposite: a coach with a defensive mentality that likes to implement a half court style to his teams.

This changed last season since Monta Ellis and Brandon Jennings started playing at the same time, while Drew Gooden was the team’s primary center.

With the team playing on this style, the Bucks ended the second half of the season with a positive 18-15 record, but will Skiles continue using this style? Having in account the roster he currently has, I believe the answer to that question will be positive, so the real question should be: will the Bucks remain competitive on this style?

The main question mark about that is obviously related with the way that Jennings and Ellis will adapt to share the same position. This “problem” basically happened in Golden State with Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry, so Ellis is already used to handle this kind of pressure.

In Milwaukee last season, Ellis played 21 games and had basically the same numbers he was having in Golden State before the trade: 43% FG and 6 assists per game, even though he was having less volume of shots. On the other hand, after shooting 40% FG on the first half of the season, Jennings was a bit better in the second half by shooting 43% FG, while averaging 6 assists per game.

The numbers of these two players were incredibly similar with both shooting 43% FG and having six assists per game. These two players combined a total of 33 FG/game and this is a huge volume, if we have in consideration that both contributed with 43% FG and Milwaukee won’t definitely be a good defensive team with both players on the court simultaneously.

Skiles’ task for this season will be to make these two players more efficient on offense, as we all know about their limitations on the other areas of the game. This task won’t be easy, as Skiles has never dealt with this kind of system before and so, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up working pretty badly for Skiles and consequently for the team.

Milwaukee without Bogut

Bogut isn’t in Milwaukee anymore and the Bucks signed Dalembert, who will be the team’s starting center. The key in their frontcourt has been the breakthrough of Ilyasova in the team, who is coming from an excellent season, so great that he should have won the Most Improved Player of the Year award last season. He was excellent on the rebounding battle by being in the top 10 in terms of offensive rebounds and in rebounds per 48 min, while offensively, Ilyasova shot 45% 3pts and almost 50% FG!

Drew Gooden, Ekpe Udoh, Larry Sanders and rookie John Henson will give the team some depth in the frontcourt, even though none of these players have Bogut’s skills. However, the truth is that Bogut was never able to keep himself healthy long term, so the Bucks couldn’t use his skills conveniently.

Final Thoughts

The Bucks have one of the weirdest rosters in the league for this season. They don’t have a lot of options on the backcourt, so Skilles will be forced to give a lot of minutes to Jennings and Ellis. During the preseason, Skilles has been giving opportunities to Tobias Harris in the SF position, so let’s see what he will be capable of doing in the regular season.

On the frontcourt, only Ilyasova seems to give some solid quality in both ends of the floor and this should become a problem for Milwaukee, in a division where they will have to face two dominant frontcourts in Chicago and Indiana. I don’t have a lot of expectations for this team, so if they are able to fight for a playoff spot this season, then we’ll have to consider this season as a positive one for Milwaukee.

Follow Andre Gomes on Twitter @GomesCapper 

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