Milwaukee Bucks Ranking the Roster - Introduction

Would you believe the first Milwaukee Bucks preseason game is less than a month away? While I could go a lifetime reliving the highlights from last year’s magical postseason run, it’s time to turn our sights towards the team’s mission to repeat. With the offseason practically over and training camp opening this month, it’s time to reboot one of the time-honored traditions at Brew Hoop: Ranking the Roster.

Last year, the truncated offseason forced us into a bit of a pickle, but we’re bringing back the whole kitten caboodle for this year. For anyone new, here’s how it works: day by day we’ll rank each player on the roster, from 16 to 1, in terms of how important they’ll be to Milwaukee’s repeat championship aspirations this year. In years past, this exercise focused on each player as an asset (contract, age, potential, etc.), but that was in the pre-Giannis Antetokounmpo ascension days. This franchise has championship blinders on. Win-now is the mantra, and they’ve retooled their roster with a host of new contributors the hope are going to be contributors that can help them get over the hump again this year.

With that being said, postseason success should be paramount in your mind when considering your rankings. Regular season competency is a bonus, especially if they can help the team get to a higher seed that yields dividends in the Playoffs, but think about how you envision each individual player factoring in when postseason games arrive.

A good example for this year’s distinction is PJ Tucker (had he stuck around). When thinking about Tucker in the regular season context for this Bucks team, you don’t envision his contributions as all that critical. If we were using the old asset parameters for this exercise, given his contract and age, I wouldn’t have expected him to rank anywhere above eighth maybe. But with our emphasis on postseason success, he would’ve been critical to their defensive malleability. Ergo, I could’ve seen him ranking as high as fourth.

The top players likely won’t be any mystery, but I’m curious to see how folks feel the new arrivals may contribute to the Bucks this postseason. In particular, the triumvirate of George Hill, Grayson Allen and Donte DiVincenzo make an interesting crew to compare in that regard. DiVincenzo’s injury leaves him a question mark, and one that Allen has a chance to answer soundly in his absence. Will either of them be more vital than Hill though, who flamed out with the Sixers last year but was pivotal in past Bucks runs.

For now though, we’ll be starting towards the end of the roster with players who likely won’t be all that important in the Playoffs. But, we can try our best to project which of these players could theoretically contribute. I am also going to continue with this exercise under the assumption Elijah Bryant could be cut given his absence from Milwaukee’s Summer League roster.

Without further ado, let’s get started with our first poll for the 16th most important player:

This poll will close at 7 am on September 8th.