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NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n In writing about the years-long issue Milwaukee has had with one-way point guards, my mind immediately went to weak link theory. What is weak link theory? In essence, it is a theory that can be applied to many different sports, stating that the most positively influential players have less impact on team success than the most negatively influential players do. For those interested in a deeper explanation, Owen Phillips has written<\/a> extensively about weak link theory on his Substack, The F5. Looking at it through a basketball lens, weak link theory states that a player who defends poorly or cannot shoot efficiently, for example, will do more to limit a team\u2019s ceiling than a flawless player can do to raise it.<\/p>\n In fact, Caitlin Cooper\u2014who writes about the Indiana Pacers on her excellent blog named Basketball, She Wrote<\/a>\u2014spoke on her podcast<\/a> with Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle about a slew of topics centred around \u201cplaying random\u201d (Coach Bud might\u2019ve been onto something there). In that podcast, one of the topics discussed that related to playing random was the Pacers\u2019 high-octane, chaotic tempo. Specifically, Carlisle got into why Indiana opts to guard 94 feet and the physical demand that places on his players, which dovetailed into the advantages of having lots of serviceable players without notable weaknesses who can rotate through and not miss a beat on either end, essentially discussing the increasing prevalence of weak link theory in today\u2019s game without necessarily labelling it as much:<\/p>\n \u201cThe NBA game has now become a play-hard league. It\u2019s not just being top-heavy with stars. Roster construction is changing. It\u2019s become more important to have more good players than be top-heavy with two or three great players that get all the touches.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2014 Rick Carlisle<\/p>\n Now, if I\u2019m discussing weak link theory through a Bucks lens, the position that I think it would apply to the most would be the ever-rotating cast of shooting guards. Andre Jackson Jr., Wesley Matthews, Grayson Allen, Malik Beasley, I can go on. The point is, none of those guys fit what the Bucks needed out of that position because, while they were solid players, they were too flawed to be starters on a championship team. They were \u201cweak links\u201d in the truest sense, I suppose. But I want to make a diversion in this article and discuss a slightly different idea: that the Bucks have spent the last seven seasons with starting point guards who ended up being severe weak links on just one end of the floor, while being elite at the other. This complicates things because these players, unlike the shooting guards I mentioned above, functionally cannot be taken off the court; you\u2019re living and dying with their weaknesses. Now that I have that preamble out of the way, I want to dive deeply into how the Bucks got to the current moment, starting with the 2018\u201319 season.<\/p>\n Back to where it all began<\/p>\n Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n The Bucks became a dominant defensive team in the 2018\u201319 season, mainly due to Mike Budenholzer installing his analytics-based defensive system. But no matter how innovative a defensive system itself is, it still requires prolific individual defenders to bring it to life. Giannis was (and still is) a two-way machine, Eric Bledsoe made his bones as a point-of-attack pit bull, Brook Lopez developed into one of the better drop defenders in the league, and Ersan Ilyasova was seemingly the league\u2019s most proficient charge taker!<\/a> The Bucks became known that season for their ability to dominate games on defence (first in defensive rating). Additionally, Giannis led the team to the fourth-best offensive rating in the league.<\/p>\n Much of the reason Milwaukee was so potent on offence, despite not having many dynamic shot makers, was because of their stifling defence. By consistently forcing opponents into a bunch of missed shots, the Bucks were able to attack defences that weren\u2019t set and regularly score in transition; having Giannis helps with that, for sure. The team ended the 2018\u201319 season tied for first in transition points. In fact, Milwaukee ranked within the top three teams for transition scoring in Budenholzer\u2019s first four seasons at the helm, which is pretty remarkable. This defensive identity gave the team such a high floor, making them incredibly hard to beat from night to night. Side note: As I\u2019ll get to in Chapter 3, that floor seemingly began to diminish in Bud\u2019s final season in 2022\u201323 when the team finished ninth in transition scoring (despite their defence remaining elite at fourth). Now, given the fact that defence stayed steady, that dip in transition scoring may well have been an outlier, but it\u2019s impossible to know for sure; there wasn\u2019t another season with the same core to test that theory out. Then, as the team\u2019s main pillars got shifted around the following season, the transition scoring decline continued, finishing 12th in 2023\u201324 and plummeting to 22nd last season.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s get back to the 2018\u201319 season, where Milwaukee had seemingly struck the perfect balance on both ends entering the postseason, winning 60 games and earning the top seed in the Eastern Conference. Funnily enough, the Bucks had the same statistical profile in the playoffs (first on D and fourth on O) that they had in the regular season; as the NBA champion table later in this article shows, that statistical profile is safely within the realm of previous NBA title winners. I discussed the advantages of transition scoring in the above paragraph: it allows teams to attack defences that aren\u2019t set. Well, attacking defences that aren\u2019t set is especially preferable in the playoffs compared to going against the opponent\u2019s half-court defence due to the extra time opponents have to prepare and the raised level of competition. Let\u2019s just say Milwaukee took that advice to heart! This stat seems almost fake, but in addition to the regular season, the Bucks also led the league in transition scoring during the 2018\u201319 playoffs, averaging 29.9 points per game; the next highest transition scoring team averaged 21.7 points per game. No, that is not a typo. Absolutely bonkers.<\/p>\n Anyway, despite all of these positive statistical indicators, the team couldn\u2019t get it done that postseason; I don\u2019t need to do the play-by-play. Milwaukee lost that Eastern Conference Finals series for several reasons, one being that they played a great team in Toronto, another being the way the Raptors stymied Giannis to a degree that other opponents had not. However, an under-discussed reason was that the team\u2019s starting point guard, Eric Bledsoe, struggled to shoot efficiently and was a weak link in Milwaukee\u2019s offensive chain.<\/p>\n Weak link #1: Eric Bledsoe<\/p>\n Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n Key elements of weak link theory hit Milwaukee at the most inopportune time, in the form of Eric Bledsoe, whom the Bucks acquired from Phoenix the season prior in a trade for Greg \u201cMoose\u201d Monroe. Ironically, in ESPN\u2019s write-up<\/a> of the trade, they paraphrased an unnamed Eastern Conference head coach who believed Bledsoe would immediately become the Bucks\u2019 best pick-and-roll player (swing and a miss there!) but, and I quote, \u201cwondered how Bledsoe would assimilate away from the ball when Antetokounmpo is making plays.\u201d An ominous harbinger for things to come, and boy, did they ever. Eric struggled in that series against the Raptors. In total, he shot 5\/29 (17.2%) from three and 15\/39 (38.5%) from two. The Bucks were so close to going up 3-0 against the Raptors and booking their ticket to the NBA Finals. If Bledsoe shot even marginally better, that might well have put them over the edge.<\/p>\n But those shooting struggles weren\u2019t a one-time thing either. The Bucks again finished with the Eastern Conference\u2019s top seed in the following season. They dismantled Orlando in the first round of the playoffs without much fuss and faced the Heat in the second round, eager to return to the Eastern Conference Finals. But it all came crashing down, and Milwaukee lost in five games to Miami (of course, ancillary factors such as the Covid \u201cbubble\u201d and the team\u2019s stand for racial justice during that time played roles as well). In that series, Eric shot 3\/14 (21.4%) from distance and 13\/34 (38.2%) from two. Following that disappointing series loss, Jon Horst made a monumental move to trade Bledsoe for Jrue Holiday<\/a>. The hope was that adding Jrue would allow the team to maintain or even improve its already elite defence while also being an upgrade on Eric\u2019s offence. And to be clear, Jrue\u2019s stats before getting traded to Milwaukee reinforced the idea that he could help achieve such two-way success for the team. Unfortunately, that theory did not play out in practice when it mattered most\u2026<\/p>\n Chapter 2 of this series will be published next week, discussing Jrue Holiday\u2019s offensive struggles in the playoffs with the Bucks, statistically analysing Milwaukee\u2019s title and how it compares with prior champions, and if the trade for Holiday actually paid off. I know this chapter may have seemed a tad brief; including the introduction and obligatory preamble meant the Bledsoe section would be a little shorter. Expect more robust analysis in Chapters 2 and 3. Thanks!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n