Who can forget scrolling through Twitter until the sun came up after the Milwaukee Bucks won the title in 2021, just so you could be consumed in every bit of championship content imaginable?
I couldn’t forget, even if I tried.
And how could you forget Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton being tipsy during an interview and cracking up when asked, “How much champagne have each of you consumed?”
Not me.
We are going into the fourth season since that amazing July night. Since then, the Celtics eliminated us in the second round the year after, and two first-round exits followed.
The Bucks embark on a critical season with their window of opportunity closing as each day passes by. The roster last season had some significant holes and Jon Horst did his best to fill them with Taurean Prince, Gary Trent Jr. and Delon Wright.
Unfortunately, we need to take the championship goggles off.
Bobby Helped Bucks Earn a Title
I have nothing but respect for Bobby Portis and I’m not one of the chronic “GET HIM OFF MY TEAM NOW” people, who even doubt a solid performance from him. If we didn’t have Bobby, we wouldn’t get that title.
Nevertheless, Portis’ defense has dropped significantly over the past three seasons. Sure we can point out the dip in defensive rebounds per game, but that’s all too easy.
His defensive win share places him at 286th on the NBA’s ranking for the 23-24 season. If you’re trying to comprehend what defensive win shares mean, to put it simply: An estimation of how many wins a player contributes to, on defensive possessions. Bobby’s last year was at 0.053.
DWS is a specific stat that is hard to understand, but to make a comparison, Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert had 0.164. Seeing as this stat is rounded to the one-thousandth, that’s a significant separation.
Portis has been a perennial pick for Sixth Man of the Year, but your next man up can’t be that bad on the defensive end, especially with the struggle the Bucks had defensively when the regular season ended.
Pat Slumping?
Who doesn’t love a Pat Connaughton volleyball-type spiked closeout? Actually…I’m not sure if people do or don’t. Entertaining and a great effort to say the least.
Connaughton’s role is to come off the bench and shoot threes. His shooting has hit a slump over this past season, as it was his first year since 2019 where he didn’t make 100 threes.
His three-point percentage dropped two percent below the league average at 34.5%, while in 2021 he averaged 37.1% on 101 made threes, and a career-high of 146 made threes the year after.
The Bucks are rolling the dice on another season with Connaughton and he likely knows that. At the very least, that mentioned volleyball-type spike closeout always gives 110%.
Trade?
You can play with the ESPN NBA trade machine all you’d like, but you need players that teams want. The fact that the Bucks couldn’t find a deal last season when the two were a year younger than they are now tells where the league’s interest is.
Pat Connaughton will turn 32 in January and Bobby Portis will turn 30 in February. Portis and Connaughton averaged 13.8 and 5.6 points per game respectively last season. For a package of those two guys straight up, you won’t find a player that will move the needle drastically.
If either player finds themselves on another team, regardless of your take, it would be incredibly sad to see them in a different uni and only three players from the championship team would remain (Giannis, Khris, Brook).
Horst is going to cook. What will he cook? Well, Bucks basketball is right around the corner.
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