Last week, our Reacts survey continued to explore Ryan Rollins\u2019 nascent tenure as Bucks starting point guard, this time in the wake of news that Kevin Porter Jr. will be out even longer. If you forgot, KPJ played the one from jump street this season, but not ten minutes in, sprained his right ankle. He was close to returning\u2014according to GM Jon Horst, he was going to play in last Saturday\u2019s Kings tilt\u2014and playing five-on-five last Friday when he tore part of his left meniscus. He underwent arthroscopic surgery a week ago and will almost certainly be out four-plus weeks.<\/p>\n
That hasn\u2019t meaningfully slowed the Bucks down, or at least not yet, due to continued excellence from interim (perhaps longer?) starter Ryan Rollins. To say he\u2019s been solid would be an understatement, and he\u2019s looked the part of a high-level lead guard at times, notably in wins vs. Golden State and New York. Look at his game log and you\u2019ll only see a couple stinkers, notwithstanding turnover issues in last Monday\u2019s Pacers victory. His traditional statistics look like what some predicted for KPJ this year: 16.9 PPG on .525\/.431\/.826 shooting and 5.4 APG versus 2.5 TPG. His defense looks predictably great, though it\u2019s not totally showing up in all the advanced numbers yet (small sample size alert): Milwaukee\u2019s defense is actually 1.4 points per 100 possessions better when he sits.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, you can understand why Bucks fans are dreaming on the 23-year-old\u2019s long-term potential. But what about the short term? Several have raised the question about what should happen upon KPJ\u2019s return, so we turn it over to you\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019m actually a little surprised to see his support isn\u2019t higher, but perhaps some of the excitement of the Warriors and Knicks performances wore off. Regardless, put this in the \u201cgood problems to have\u201d column\u2014with so many questions from national voices about the Bucks\u2019 backcourt entering this year, the point guard room has been a strength. If KPJ looks anything like he did in that brief opening night stint, that should remaint he case.<\/p>\n
We posed one more about expectations during a week when the Bucks improved first to 5-2 and then back to two games above even, where they remain today at 6-4. Fans have been bullish on the team over the first three weeks, with large chunks predicting a top-three seed or better and 50+ wins. How do those predictions stack up relative to before the action began?<\/p>\n
I\u2019d be curious to know what those who aren\u2019t moved by Milwaukee\u2019s start thought entering the year. Does the team\u2019s current state match up with what they foresaw? Or are they just waiting to see a larger sample size? In any case, I think I\u2019m among the 57%: I\u2019ve seen enough over 10 games to believe this team could be one of the East\u2019s best three or four teams, and to expect commensurate results game-to-game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, our Reacts survey continued to explore Ryan Rollins\u2019 nascent tenure as Bucks starting point guard, this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,42595,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-405403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-bucks-polls","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","13":"tag-milwaukeebucks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115535287725655186","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}