Coming into the season, I considered the Milwaukee Bucks a sleeping giant. Not actually slumbering, to be sure, but appearing that way to those who misremembered their 23-24 campaign. Full of disappointment, disorganization, and general slop, the season also saw the Bucks demonstrate dominance at the highest level. At one point or another, they whooped most of the other best teams of the year; the Oklahoma City Thunder, the Denver Nuggets, the Boston Celtics, the Dallas Mavericks, the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Despite a bunch of what seemed like watershed victories, though, the Bucks never mounted a watershed month, floundering against their own lack of seriousness every time it appeared they were turning the corner. Replacing new head coach Adrian Griffin, mid-season, with Doc Rivers only briefly made them more focused. And then, right at the end of the year, when it looked like they might flip on the professionalism switch for good, Giannis Antetokounmpo got injured, and didn’t see the floor for the rest of the season. During their first-round loss to the Indiana Pacers, Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton also got hurt.
At the beginning of 24-25, their problems seemed bigger than either cultural tendencies or circumstantial injuries. During their 2-8 start, Milwaukee simply looked old. Ancient! Even I, the long-time Bucks Defender, was running out of positive talking points. Giannis might very well be a top-three player, still, but in a league that progressively demands depth, the Bucks didn’t have any. They’d failed to add youth and athleticism, through the draft or trades or even free agency, and were not built for the marathon of an 82-game season. Veteran additions Taurean Prince, Gary Trent Jr., and Delon Wright could not carry them past the low point that this shortcoming had brought them to.
Then, out of necessity, Rivers said “to hell with it,” and dramatically increased the nightly minute loads for Andre Jackson Jr. and A.J. Green. Pat Connaughton, meanwhile, saw his role shrink just as dramatically—a tacit admission that some of what worked for the 2021 championship team no longer has much of a place in this new shape of Bucksdom. The youngsters seemed to energize the Giannis/Dame/Brook Lopez core back into something more intense and selfless. Prince caught fire from deep. The Bucks won 12 of their next 15, and Middleton came back from the injury he started the season sidelined with.
Then the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup tournament placed them head-to-head with two lethal up-and-comers: the Orlando Magic, and Atlanta Hawks. The Magic were without their two best scorers, so didn’t figure as scary, but Jamahl Mosley’s guys don’t quit. The Bucks survived admirably psychotic effort, and a career-boosting shot-making performance from Jalen Suggs, to go to Las Vegas and take on the Hawks. Their seasoning proved too much for Atlanta. Middleton still looked to be getting into game shape, but no one is better at passing to Giannis, who made Atlanta look like little kids throughout.
What was considerably more surprising was when, a few nights later, he did the same thing to the Thunder. In the NBA Cup championship game, Antetokounmpo played the best basketball we’ve seen from him since his last healthy playoff appearance, back in 2022. The spring and early summer are, in the NBA, Big Boy Season; what a thrill to see that competitive ecology for a handful of do-or-die games in December, and for Giannis to stomp through them like all the mess between his championship and right now was just stuff he could stride right over. Years of questions, cleared like they’re the distance between the top of the key and the rim, which no one can shrink like he does.
Antetokounmpo made the the best defensive team of the season look feckless, and was at the center of dismantling their plans on the other side of the ball, too. He brutalized the paint like a one-man missile defense system. Key, too, in shutting OKC down was Jackson, who hassled Shai Gilgeous-Alexander into his worst game of the season. If the second-year guard can keep doing that kind of work at point-of-attack defense, it will be like the Bucks got Lillard without sacrificing everything Jrue Holiday does, after all. And Lillard, himself, is finding increased comfort as a Buck, operating as a ticking off-ball time bomb, and carving up coverage in his two-man game with Brook Lopez.
Should Middleton—who missed the game with illness—turn back into anything like his previous self, no one will suspect this contending giant of naptime any longer. Wide awake and roaring, the Bucks have shaken the fog around them away, and have only health in their way now. Huge, mean, and poised like they used to be, Milwaukee also has one of the most dangerous perimeter scorers of the 21st century on their roster. The basketball fantasies imagined when Lillard was acquired last October are starting to look more like realities. What looked like an unrealized dream is now the sport’s nightmare.