All over the message boards, twitter and comment sections of Bucks Nation the complaint is the same. What is with the Bucks roatations. It feels like the young guys are not being played. The 2008 Oklahoma City Thunder are used for a minutes "guideline" often, Kevin Durant's Sophomore season and Russel Westbrook's Rookie campaign are thought, more wished, to mirror that of Giannis and Jabari. I wanted to dive into this comparison and see what similarities, if any, arose.
The main few things I saw from this chart was that our top three minute getters are Brandon Knight, Jabari Parker, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. While the Thunder had Durant, Westbrook, and Jeff Green. However the amount of minutes the young guys got was far more than the Bucks youngens have gotten, this might be attributed to the fact that the Bucks have been playing 11-12 man rotations every night, and eventually the Thunder got down to a 9 man rotation to close out the season. So I went back and I looked at the Thunder's first 10 games and compared them to the Buck's first ten games.
Player | Age | Minutes Played | | | Minutes Played | Age | Player |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Kevin Durant | 20 | 353 | | | 325 | 23 | Brandon Knight |
Jeff Green | 22 | 348 | | | 291 | 19 | Jabari Parker |
Earl Watson | 29 | 287 | | | 253 | 19 | Giannis Antetokounmpo |
Nick Collison | 28 | 271 | | | 240 | 27 | OJ Mayo |
Russel Westbrook | 20 | 235 | | | 224 | 26 | Larry Sanders |
Joe Smith | 33 | 205 | | | 192 | 29 | Jared Dudley |
Robert Swift | 23 | 150 | | | 191 | 26 | Jerryd Bayless |
Damien Wilkins | 29 | 142 | | | 171 | "27" | Ersan Illyasova |
| | 164 | 23 | Khris Middleton | |||
| | 162 | 30 | ZaZa Pachulia | |||
| | 116 | 24 | John Henson |
Oklahoma City Thunder 2008 first ten games vs Milwaukee Bucks 2014 first ten games***
The top three minute getters through ten games were not the top three minute getters, through the entire season in fact numbers four and five were not even on the Oklahoma team at the ten game mark. While the amount of minute load placed on the young guns of the Thunder were more, those minutes should smooth out as the Bucks try to trade away some pieces.
Overall you can't be overly upset with the minute distribution of the first ten games, as it is hardly any indication of how the entire season will play out. In fact the past two games Giannis had 32 and 31 minutes his first time all year going over 30 minutes. While Jabari had a nice 27 and 33 minutes.
So Bucks fans what does this mean? It means with a long season ahead of us, and many more to come. We need to take a minute to appreciate the moment, of watching two 19 year old's go from teenagers, to all stars. All the while they will get plenty of minutes.
****averages for first ten games were impossible to find so I went with total minutes here, the Bucks only had one over time game in first ten the thunder had zero