With media day in Milwaukee on Sept. 30, the Bucks are 10 days away from starting the 2024-25 season.
In his first full season as Bucks head coach, Doc Rivers will attempt to get the team back into the championship picture after first-round exits in its last two postseasons. One of Rivers’ tasks will be developing a rotation that features multiple lineups that can provide different looks for opponents and maximize the skills of his best players.
As we wait for some of those lineups to reveal themselves in the preseason, here are five ideas for unique bench lineups that could help get the Bucks through the regular season and, in some cases, prepare them for the postseason.
Lineup No. 1: Small-ball unit
Players: Delon Wright, Gary Trent Jr., Khris Middleton, Taurean Prince, Giannis Antetokounmpo
It should come as no surprise this is the first lineup that intrigues me heading into the season.
The Bucks will never play Antetokounmpo at center full-time. It is far too grating on his body and a poor allocation of the Bucks’ talent on a nightly basis across 82 games, but small-ball lineups with Antetokounmpo at center will always be something the team should think about during the regular season to ensure those looks can be weaponized in the postseason.
As discussed in our first September mailbag story, the Los Angeles Lakers’ small-ball lineups with Prince and Anthony Davis were successful last season. The Bucks would be wise to try capturing that same magic this season by playing Prince at power forward alongside Antetokounmpo at center. Antetokounmpo and Davis are not the same players, but they are similar in some ways, and there is a possibility the Bucks can find similar success as the Lakers with this small-ball alignment.
This lineup has no negative defenders, as well as the size, length and athleticism to think about switching across multiple positions and actions to cause problems for opposing offenses. Offensively, there are capable shooters to space the floor around Antetokounmpo and an on-ball creator in Middleton to help if the offense gets bogged down.
Again, this lineup is not something the Bucks should use for large stretches of time, but it is a good place to start as they attempt to figure out how they will create small-ball advantages this season.
Lineup No. 2: Dunker spot Giannis
Players: Damian Lillard, Wright, Middleton, Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez
Admittedly, this is an excuse for me to talk about an offensive concept, but it’s interesting enough for the lineup to be intriguing.
The lineup may not seem all that exciting as I’ve merely switched in Wright for Trent, but the Lillard-Wright pairing is something I find fascinating because, as Jon Horst told The Athletic in July, Wright was one of the Bucks’ main targets entering the offseason, and that would suggest that the organization believes Lillard and Wright can share the floor together.
While watching pick-and-rolls involving Lillard and Antetokounmpo, I found myself wondering how the Bucks could get Antetokounmpo easy alley-oop finishes with Lillard handling the ball. Because of the quick-hitting nature of Lillard’s offensive game, it didn’t seem like something that could be accomplished with Antetokounmpo serving as the screener in the pick-and-roll. So, I started watching Lillard work in the pick-and-roll with Lopez.
That brought me to this play in the Bucks’ first-round series against the Indiana Pacers:
All season, Lillard and Lopez had a strong connection in the pick-and-roll, so it was no surprise to see the Bucks lean on their connection with Antetokounmpo on the sidelines. As Bucks fans will remember, it led to issues in transition defense at times against the Pacers because it put Lopez in precarious positions around the basket and put him behind the play. That isn’t what I’m focusing on here. Instead, I wondered what would happen if you ran this play with Antetokounmpo in the lineup for Bobby Portis and stationed him in the dunker instead of the weak-side corner:
While it might feel like a bad idea to put the weak-side defender in a better help position by stationing Antetokounmpo in the dunker, it is worth noting that Antetokounmpo could, you know, dunk on a quick alley-oop. For example, look at this broken play from the Bucks game against the New Orleans Pelicans on March 28:
Look at the difficult decision presented to Larry Nance Jr. Also, look at what Lopez and Antetokounmpo were able to do freelancing in a situation they were not expecting. Lopez’s slow roll to the basket and catch on a jump stop allowed him to easily control his footwork and avoid a travel to toss a pass to Antetokounmpo with Nance caught in no man’s land standing flat-footed between two 7-footers.
The Bucks shouldn’t make their entire offense out of sticking Antetokounmpo in the dunker, but after years of avoiding putting him in that position, what if the Bucks opted to lean into Lillard-Lopez pick-and-rolls with Antetokounmpo waiting for lobs in the dunker for two minutes each night at the end of the first quarter or the start of the second?
Lineup No. 3: Mobile long-range duo
Players: Lillard, Trent, AJ Green, Antetokounmpo, Lopez
While it wasn’t necessarily this way for other young players on the roster, Green, the second-year shooting guard, saw his role grow after Rivers took over midway through last season. After playing 7.5 minutes per game and appearing in only 28 of the Bucks’ first 43 games under former head coach Adrian Griffin, Green averaged 14.5 minutes per game and appeared in 28 of the Bucks’ final 36 games with Rivers at the helm. If Rivers still trusts Green, the 6-foot-4 guard may be looking at one of the final 10 spots in Rivers’ nightly rotation. If that’s the case, the Bucks might as well take advantage of it.
In previous stops, Trent has shown the ability to be a threat as a movement shooter. Why not throw him in a lineup with Green and fully leverage two talented shooters? Dribble handoffs and ghost screens are all the rage in modern NBA offenses, so why not have two great shooters whip around screens to receive dribble handoffs?
Or, put those shooters in a position to screen for Antetokounmpo in inverted pick-and-rolls?
Last season, Rivers encouraged Green to run both of the actions above. Trent and Green both could have success in either situation, and Wright’s size could turn him into a capable screener for Antetokounmpo as well. Again, these won’t be the base actions for the Bucks’ offense, but these are wrinkles the team can leverage throughout the game with the right personnel on the floor.
Defensively, the big-man duo of Antetokounmpo and Lopez should be able to solidify the area around the rim, and the trio of guards should be able to survive on the wing, even if there isn’t a traditional bigger wing in the group.
Lineup No. 4: No Lopez lineup
Players: Wright, Trent, Prince, Antetokounmpo, Portis
The reality of having only three bigs on the roster is that the Bucks will need to lean on the big-man pairing of Antetokounmpo and Portis. Last season, those two shared the floor for 1,018 minutes, which was the most since they played 1,109 minutes together when Lopez missed a majority of the 2021-22 regular season with a back injury. While Antetokounmpo and Portis have played together quite a bit over the last four seasons, the Bucks have not found as much success with them on the floor together over the last two seasons.
| NET RTG | OFF RTG | DEF RTG | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
2020-21 (541 min) |
9.5 |
118 |
108.5 |
|
2021-22 (1,109 min) |
12.5 |
121 |
108.5 |
|
2022-23 (628 min) |
0.5 |
119.6 |
119.1 |
|
2023-24 (1,018 min) |
0.1 |
122.1 |
122 |
As the statistics show, units with Portis alongside Antetokounmpo have had their moments offensively. Portis is a talented offensive player, and he has always played well spotting up from behind the 3-point line with Antetokounmpo attacking the rim.
The pathway to more successful units — which the Bucks found during Portis’ first two seasons — is pretty simple: better defense. With the way these lineups tend to score, the defense doesn’t need to be great; it just needs to be closer to average.
With Wright in the lineup, as well as Trent, this lineup would feature above-average defense at the point of attack. Prince playing small forward gives the lineup some size to potentially help out on the glass. To add, Antetokounmpo remains an above-average defender. The Bucks have struggled to find a highly effective pick-and-roll coverage for Portis the last two seasons, but if they can stumble into something that works, this unit might be able to defend well enough to turn into a positive and allow the Bucks to find a successful lineup without both Antetokounmpo and Lillard on the floor.
Lineup No. 5: Let’s get weird
Players: Lillard, Green, Andre Jackson Jr., Portis, Lopez
This lineup is similar to the third lineup on this list, except we’ve added Jackson into the mix. While the Bucks’ second-year wing shot 37 percent from behind the 3-point line as a rookie, teams do not view him as a threat from the outside and sag off him. Because the four other Bucks on the floor can shoot the ball well, let’s try to leverage the space between him and his defender for open looks for his teammates.
On this play against the Houston Rockets last December, the Bucks used Jackson in a dribble handoff, and the Rockets paid so much attention to Lillard that Jackson was able to get to the rim and then create for Lopez. With Lillard and Green on the floor with Jackson, the Bucks could use him as a dribble-handoff hub and let both players run off the screens he sets for them.
In the playoffs, the Pacers tried to hide Tyrese Haliburton on Jackson, and the Bucks used that to their advantage to create a mismatch for Danilo Gallinari on the block.
While creating a look for Gallinari might not be something teams want to do on a regular basis, that same screen/re-screen action could be used to create a favorable matchup for either Portis or Lopez on the block when teams decide to try to go underneath screens against Jackson.
Overall, for this to be viable, Jackson will need to take another step forward developmentally this season. But even if this isn’t a lineup the Bucks decide to use, these are the types of things they need to be thinking about as they try to build young depth pieces at the bottom of the roster.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
