There are two different Milwaukee Bucks teams this year.
There’s the team that won the second-ever NBA Cup; the team that Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 59 points for en route to an incredible 127-120 overtime comeback over the Detroit Pistons in November without co-star Damian Lillard; the team in which Kyle Kuzma notched two double-doubles within his first 11 games as a Buck; and the team where sophomore Andre “Ajax” Jackson Jr. and third-year A.J. Green endeared themselves to the fanbase with early season heroics on both sides of the floor.
Then… there’s also the team that started the season at 2-8, leading ESPN’s Tim MacMahon to declare “It’s unbelievable the Bucks are this bad.” There’s the team where sixth-man star Bobby Portis gets a heavy 25-game suspension for taking the wrong painkiller, where Giannis and Damian Lillard miss “bunnies” in crunch time during a Tuesday loss to the Warriors in a game where Steph Curry was benched, and the supposed contending team that sports the pretty abysmal 12-18 record against teams with records above .500.
After this year’s Trade Deadline, despite the heartbreak of dealing away Khris Middleton, the Bucks initially seemed to have gotten better. Kuzma and Kevin Porter Jr. are filling their roles, and after their acquisitions, the Bucks won eight of their next ten… and then they lost three straight, won two, then lost another two. The most recent loss was the aforementioned trap-game to the Warriors, when the team made fewer than 40% of their shots and got out-rebounded 52-34.
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“Streaky” and “potential of greatness” seem to be descriptive of the Deer, not only this year but throughout the past decade.
Throughout Giannis’s stardom, the Bucks have largely been a really good regular season team that flops in the postseason. The Bucks have made the playoffs for eight straight seasons, but have been bounced in the first round half of those times and only made the conference finals twice. They’ve been poor in close games throughout 2024-25, losing 8 of 13 games decided by 3 points or fewer.
There’s a reason why the national media’s powers-that-be continuously spin rumors about Giannis wanting to leave Milwaukee. Antetokounmpo, to his credit, has forever rebuffed those rumors. At 30, even with Lillard in the locker room for a second season, it’s appearing less likely that he’ll get another ring here – especially with the front office’s habit of trading away valuable future first-round draft picks; barring future trades, the Bucks are unlikely to secure a lottery pick until 2029 at the earliest.
Head coach Doc Rivers has shown an affinity for experience. Jackson and Green have seen their minutes dip since the trade deadline – especially Ajax, who’s barely played in the past month – as the Bucks continue to trot out one of the NBA’s oldest rosters year-after-year.
What could bring some hope? Antetokounmpo is healthy this year, and so is Lillard. In recent years, fans have typically blamed badly timed injuries for Bucks’ early exits: In 2024, Giannis missed all six of the Bucks’ playoff games, and Lillard missed two. In 2023, Giannis only appeared in three of his team’s five games. And in 2022, defending the franchise’s first championship in 50 years, Middleton appeared in just two of 12 games.
The primary reasons the Bucks won it all in 2021 can probably be attributed to one injury, and one man’s endurance through injury: 1) Kyrie Irving spraining his ankle in Game 4 of the 2021 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals against the Bucks, a happenstance that led the Bucks to a comeback; role player Jeff Teague, in a podcast reflecting on the series, said that “If they had a healthy Kyrie, we didn’t stand a chance” in that series. 2) Antetokounmpo’s heroic return from a hyperextended left knee in the Conference Finals – his leg literally bent the wrong way – made the Bucks’ eventual championship possible.
This is going to sound trite, but that’s only because it’s true: With a healthy Dame and Antetokounmpo, the Deer are still really tough to beat. They just need to stay healthy, and they can’t miss bunnies. (That is until they might have to face the Celtics, who out-talent the Bucks in almost every way. The luck of the Irish will need to abandon Boston in such a matchup if Milwaukee wants a chance at making it to another Finals.)
The Bucks odds to win it all, despite currently having the fifth-best record in the conference, are still super slim. Basketball-Reference.com’s projections indicate the Bucks have just a 0.1% chance of winning it all, and only a 1.5% chance of even making it to the finals, despite a playoff berth being all but cinched. Bookmakers have little more faith, giving Milwaukee lines between +5000 and +8500; the Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder are the only teams with lines of less than 1000.
