Earlier in the week, we had our first SB Nation Reacts survey of the year. As we’ll do throughout the year, we’ll focus these on larger picture narratives around the team and leave more time-sensitive questions to our Tuesday Tracker, which you’ll see for the first time in a few days. First off, we asked where you thought the Bucks would finish, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see some real optimism in this year’s squad:

In our roundtable from Wednesday, I picked fourth, which was actually on the optimistic end; all but one of my colleagues picked fifth or sixth. Meanwhile, 71% of voters think they’d do better, with a mere 10% picking them to finish below five, where they slotted last season. With a seemingly wide-open East, and no (extremely) early results suggesting that it won’t be, I certainly can see them finishing third. Better? Probably not, but who knows? If anyone thinks they can be the two seed or higher, I’d be curious to hear how you think that’ll happen.

Next up, a question of statistical benchmarks. Giannis has averaged 30+ in three years straight—four if you round up 29.9 from 2021–22. With Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton gone, almost the entire scoring load falls to him now, which would seem to suggest he’ll make it four (or five) in a row. Nevertheless, it was a topic of discussion among some analysts this offseason whether or not he’d get there, with the rationale being that he’s going to spearhead the offense in ways he hasn’t for years. That would up his assists—the logic goes—while curtailing scoring volume, but what say the voters?

Pretty decisive. I can’t say I disagree, and I’m of the mind that he’ll average 30-plus and notch a career high in assists per game. I think he’s just a 30 PPG scorer at this point in his career—that’s the baseline for him. If he did it with two more heavily-starred iterations of this team (Jrue Holiday/Middleton and Dame/Middleton), that’s even more reason to believe he’ll do it again. He’s averaged 6.5 APG in each of the last two seasons, and I think he’s going to become the 12th player in NBA history to average 30 and seven. Coupled with his rebounding, that’ll put him in even more rarified air, as only two players have ever averaged 30/10/7 in a season: Oscar Robertson and Russell Westbrook.