3. Tobias Harris has the look of an eventual starter, which may come sooner rather than later
Harris had more than a few promising moments as a 19-year-old rookie last season, flashing an impressive in-between game and a knack for scoring on the block that went well beyond his years. But for all his youthful promise, the former Tennessee Volunteer looked mostly lost during a seven-game stint as a starter in March and entered the summer with open questions about his ability to defend small forwards and knock down perimeter shots.
Those questions still remain heading into the preseason, but a dominating performance in summer league, a more powerful physique and Mbah a Moute’s slow rehabilitation from knee surgery should mean major preseason minutes for Harris and the inside track for the starting small forward position. Skiles’ preference for bringing Mike Dunleavy off the bench also is a major part of the story, but it seems more a matter of when rather than if Harris becomes a permanent fixture in the starting lineup.
4. “Oh no, they have too many young shot-blockers!”
Adding lottery pick Henson to a roster that already includes Dalembert, Larry Sanders and Ekpe Udoh led to more than a little bit of head-scratching among Bucks fans, who understandably wondered exactly how many similarly skilled big men the team really needed. But Henson’s impressive summer league quieted the skeptics (for the moment at least), and the Bucks can now boast three young big men capable of changing the game on the defensive end. Considering the historical premium NBA GMs have put on mobile, defensive bigs, that’s hardly a bad thing, especially with Dalembert an unrestricted free agent next summer.
Ideally, one of the youngsters will make the leap from rotation player to quality starter by the end of the season, but the downside is fairly low even if they don’t. All of them are easily movable on their own and could be packaged as sweeteners in a larger trade as well.
5. With Skiles, GM John Hammond and half the rotation in contract years, something’s gotta give
Coming off back-to-back ninth-place finishes in the East, the Bucks have become poster children for the most undesirable position in the NBA food chain: the middle. Owner Herb Kohl’s annual mandate for a “competitive” team means the roster is typically good for somewhere between 35 and 45 wins, a spectrum that inevitably leaves the Bucks far short of contention in the best-case scenario and too good to compete for a top lottery pick in the worst case.
But this roster is far better suited to a quick makeover than the prior iterations built around Jennings and
the oft-injured Bogut, which is probably for the best. If things go well, Ellis and Jennings click, Harris breaks out, Ilyasova maintains the form he showed last spring and the big men lock down the paint. It might not spell championship, but it’s a formula that would compete for a mid-tier playoff spot in the improved East.
And if things go south in a hurry? Skiles likely will be gone before the season is over and the Bucks could blow things up rather quickly by dealing the expiring contracts of Ellis, Dunleavy, Dalembert and Beno Udrih. That would leave them with enough money to re-sign Jennings (likely to be a restricted free agent) and still have a boatload of cap space with which to reload the roster. It doesn’t solve the Bucks’ problems automatically, but it’s the kind of cap flexibility that any rebuilding team would like to have.
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Frank Madden is the founder and managing editor of BrewHoop and has covered the Milwaukee Bucks for SB Nation since 2007. You can follow him on Twitter.