Ranking the Roster 2018: Arrivederchi, Donte DiVincenzo!

After a few rounds of tight votes and dual departures, the Brew Hoop readers were crystal clear on this one. With 55% of the vote, rookie guard Donte DiVincenzo has been sent packing in our annual roster ranking series.

There’s very little to go on when evaluating DiVincenzo’s outlook as a pro: he was an athletic perimeter scorer at Villanova, but played less time in Vegas than D.J. Wilson (due to a groin injury). He’s a rookie, meaning that the Milwaukee Bucks have a full four years of low-cost control over his career, but opinions vary wildly as to whether he’s ready to contribute now, who he’ll beat out for minutes, and how high his ceiling is. Eighth isn’t too bad for Donte’s first exposure to this exercise, but that may also be an indictment of the other assets (or lack thereof) on the roster.

We’re over the halfway point in these rankings, so it’s time for some thoughts. Here’s how things have shaken out so far:

1. ______________
2. ______________
3. ______________
4. ______________
5. ______________
6. ______________
7. ______________
8. Donte DiVincenzo
9. Tony Snell
10. Sterling Brown
11. Pat Connaughton
12. Matthew Dellavedova
13. John Henson
14. Christian Wood
15. Tyler Zeller
16. Shabazz Muhammad
17. D.J. Wilson

Thoughts

• The first four players that were voted on during this exercise are guys who, if we’re being honest, would not shock anybody if they failed to log a single minute of playing time this NBA season. Tyler Zeller certainly is the most deserving of some NBA playing time, but Wood and Muhammad are long shots to be on any roster.
• That fourth player, though, is a doozy. D.J. Wilson, despite his status as the team’s first round draft pick from last year, was the first player voted off the island. That’s absurd! There’s no reason why a young player should be given up on THAT quickly...unless of course that young player has shown little promise and even less NBA-level ability.
• I wonder if the team had one fewer of their middling wing players, if they wouldn’t have all gotten bunched up together. Connaughton, Sterling, Snell, and DiVincenzo are all 3&D perimeter players who appear to overlap with one another (some offer more of the 3, some offer more of the D), quietly making the backup wing positions a logjam on the team. If one of these players breaks out in 2018-19, it’ll be a pleasant surprise. If two of them break out, then we’re really cooking.
• Henson and Delly make up the next tier of players; merely competent at the NBA level but paid like major rotation pieces. It doesn’t bode well for your cap sheet when you can generally only rely on certain players to average the same number of minutes per game as the number of millions of dollars in their contract.
• We’re at the point of this exercise where the remaining players should be either a) major contributors and recipients of the majority of the rotation minutes, or b) high-ceiling assets that have room to grow and time under the team’s control. The fact that only one player (Thon Maker) falls into the second category (and only then, just barely), and a pair of remaining 6 players (Brook Lopez and Ersan Ilyasova) figure to be closer to part-time than full-time is probably one of the top reasons for Bucks fans’ pessimism.