The Bucks went into the season with title-or-bust expectations. They fell well short of that goal after losing to the Pacers in the first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs.
The Bucks felt they needed to make a major change after getting bounced by the No. 8 seed Heat in the first round of last year’s playoffs. Days before 2023-24 training camp began, the front office took a swing for the fences and traded franchise cornerstone Jrue Holiday, an unprotected 2029 first-round pick and two first-round pick swaps for superstar guard Damian Lillard in a three-team deal with the Trail Blazers and Suns.
The blockbuster deal shook the landscape of the NBA, catapulting Milwaukee into becoming the odds-on favorite to win the 2024 NBA title.
Pairing a two-way unstoppable interior force like Giannis Antetokounmpo with a 3-point-bombing prolific scorer like Lillard … what could possibly go wrong? Just about everything that could go wrong, did.
The Sporting News breaks it all down below.
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There is no denying that the Bucks did not get their best shot at a championship in 2024.
The injury bug plagued Milwaukee’s locker room at the worst possible time, starting with Antetokounmpo’s calf injury (soleus strain) in the final week of the season.
The Bucks were still fighting for the No. 2 seed in the East going into their last five games. That meant Antetokounmpo couldn’t afford the rest that some other stars got ahead of the playoffs, and it cost Milwaukee in the long run.
The Bucks were destroying the first-place Celtics on April 9 — two weeks before the playoffs — when Antetokounmpo went down with a non-contact calf injury. The All-Star forward was ruled out for “the start” of the Bucks’ first-round series with the Pacers but never got healthy enough to play.
That put the pressure on Lillard to step up, and he was trying to do his part before he went down with an injury in Game 3. The All-Star guard was diagnosed with an Achilles strain and missed Games 4 and 5 before playing hobbled in Game 6.
On top of that, Khris Middleton played through a right ankle sprain in the first round and Sixth Man of the Year candidate Bobby Portis was ejected midway through the first quarter of a crucial Game 4 — the first game without both Antetokounmpo and Lillard in the lineup.
Once Milwaukee went down 3-1 and didn’t have Antetokounmpo available, the series was all but over.
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Defense has been the Bucks’ greatest strength lately. With three Defensive Player of the Year-caliber defenders in Holiday, Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez, Milwaukee was a brick wall on that end of the floor.
There were questions about how the Bucks would continue to succeed defensively after replacing an all-world defender like Holiday with a passive defender like Lillard. Those concerns turned into a reality this season, as Milwaukee registered its worst defensive rating in franchise history.
It was an impossible task to fill Holiday’s void, but it goes beyond Lillard’s shortcomings. Middleton took a step back defensively this year and the team’s first head coach, Adrian Griffin, didn’t offer many solutions for that unit.
Milwaukee was slightly better on defense under replacement head coach Doc Rivers but nowhere near where it stood over the last couple of seasons.
You know the saying, “You don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone?”
You have to wonder if the Bucks have any remorse over letting go of head coach Mike Budenholzer this past offseason. Under Budenholzer, the Antetokounmpo-led Bucks were consistently a top-ranked offense and defense in the NBA.
