It’s been a wild year and a half for Malcolm Brogdon. On June 23rd, 2016 he was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 36th overall pick. A 22-year-old shooting guard out of UVA, he was touted more for his character than his play on the court. The Bucks were lackluster at the point-guard position, with Michael Carter-Williams set to be the returning starter, but with the eventual addition of then reigning NBA Champion, Matthew Dellavedova it felt unlikely Brogdon would be a significant piece in Milwaukee’s rotation. In October of that year MCW was dealt to Chicago in exchange for Tony Snell, moving Malcolm into the backup 1-spot. Two months later Delly went down with a hamstring strain which opened up the starting role for Brogdon who would hold it down for the remainder of the season. The Pres ran the Bucks’ offense with a level of maturity and poise rarely seen in a first-year player as Milwaukee made a late season push to land a playoff spot. Malcolm finished his rookie campaign with averages of 10.2 points, 2.8 rebounds, and 4.2 assists. Then, on June 26th 2017 he was named the league’s Rookie of the Year, edging out Sixers’ Joel Embiid and Dario Saric.
Coming into the ’17-’18 season most felt as though Malcolm had secured a starting role alongside Giannis and Khris. That is until Eric Bledsoe sent out the “tweet heard ‘round the world”.
Almost immediately the Bucks were thrown into conversations about potential landing spots for the disgruntled former Wildcat, and on November 7th Bledsoe became a Buck. It wasn’t long before Malcolm lost his starting job, just 11 games in to his second NBA season.
Before Bledsoe, Brogdon had posted averages of 14.6 pts, 2 rbs, and 4.4 ast, putting up 20 or more points in each of the last 3 games before Eric’s arrival. There’s no doubt that this was a tough situation for Malcolm to handle mentally. Going from starter and budding star to bench rotation player would be detrimental to anybody’s ego, but the man we fondly refer to as our president handled it with poise and maturity and has played well off the bench for Milwaukee this season. He’s posting a 12.5/3.6/2.8 split since Bledsoe’s arrival. Not the numbers we expected to see from him at the beginning of the season, but he isn’t in the role we expected from him back in October. Malcolm undoubtedly understands that Khris, Giannis, and Bledsoe all need to get their shots and if there’s one thing that concerns me about his production is the drop in assists. The Bucks are an above average offensive team with scorers all over the floor, which should allow for both Brogdon and Delly to come off the bench and facilitate while also picking up some easy buckets as the defense routinely gets sucked in to Giannis’ gravitational pull.
Malcolm suffered a partially torn quad on February 1st in a game against the T’wolves and isn’t expected to return until mid-March at the earliest. God-willing, he’ll be 100% for the Bucks’ late-season playoff push as they try to position themselves to make a second round appearance for the first time since 2001. Milwaukee’s biggest issue offensively is that they begin to stagnate as primary scorers look to play too much from an iso set and this is where I believe Brogdon can make the biggest impact. If he can come in, inject a shot of life into the offense, knock down a few open shots, and play with the defensive intensity he’s brought to the floor since the day he was drafted, he’ll put us in a great position to make some post-season noise. As far as his future in Milwaukee, I tend to believe Eric Bledsoe will not be a life-long Buck and that eventually we’ll see Malcolm earn his spot back. For now I’d love to see him just continue to learn and grow as a player, as he looks to be a huge piece on the future-owning Milwaukee Bucks.
