{"id":961,"date":"2016-10-16T07:31:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T11:31:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/?p=961"},"modified":"2016-10-07T20:12:23","modified_gmt":"2016-10-08T00:12:23","slug":"keys-milwaukee-bucks-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2016\/10\/16\/keys-milwaukee-bucks-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Key Factors to a Successful Milwaukee Bucks Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>During the 2016-17 <strong>NBA<\/strong> season, headlines will be dominated by <strong>Kevin Durant<\/strong> and the <strong>Golden State Warriors<\/strong> on a daily basis. However, having a super-team doesn&#8217;t guarantee a championship; just look at the <strong>2012-13 Los Angeles Lakers<\/strong>. Everything can change and anything can happen in the NBA. A team can implode, the injury bug could strike, or a team simply might not play to its potential. In this <strong>Last Word On Pro Ba<\/strong><span class=\"text_exposed_show\"><strong>sketball<\/strong> series, we&#8217;ll break down which two key factors will determine the fate of each team in the upcoming season.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>In this edition, we&#8217;ll take a look at the\u00a0<strong>Milwaukee Bucks<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h1><strong>Two Key Factors to a Successful Milwaukee Bucks Season<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h2><strong>First Key: Improved Outside Shooting<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Last season\u00a0was dismal in terms of\u00a0three-point shooting as the Milwaukee Bucks ranked dead last in the NBA. The <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/2016\/09\/21\/khris-middleton-suffers-torn-hamstring-will-undergo-surgery\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">injury to <strong>Khris Middleton<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0did not help as he was their best outside threat &#8211; shooting 39% from three point range. They also lost their 2nd best shooter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bayleje01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Jerryd Bayless<\/strong><\/a> in free agency.<\/p>\n<p>Milwaukee was\u00a0able to add shooters this off-season by bringing in\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/t\/teletmi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mirza Teletovic<\/a><\/strong>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/dellama01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Matthew Dellavedova<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in free agency as well as\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/b\/beaslmi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Beasley<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0In order to become a potent offensive unit, they will need more improvement from key players such as <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/a\/antetgi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a><\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/p\/parkeja01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Jabari Parker<\/strong><\/a>, and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/c\/cartemi01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Carter-Williams<\/a><\/strong>. Neither of these players have shot above 30% from three so far in their young careers.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Second Key: Continued Development<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The\u00a0Bucks unexpectedly made the playoffs in 2014, but took a step back last season finishing 12th in the conference at 33-49. This did not necessarily mean that things didn&#8217;t go to plan, they just made a jump earlier than expected. This year is has to be a continuation of their plan of\u00a0continuing the growth of their young players.<\/p>\n<p>Antetokounmpo will be entering his 4th NBA season and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/2016\/09\/19\/giannis-antetokounmpo-agrees-extension\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recently signed a 4 year extension<\/a> worth $100 million. He&#8217;s grown into an amazing young player, but\u00a0he has to improve his three point shooting. He shot only\u00a025% on threes last season and is a career 28% three point shooter. If he can get that percentage around 35%, he&#8217;ll become that much more lethal on the offensive end.<\/p>\n<p>Khris Middleton&#8217;s injury means players such as\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/v\/vaughra01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rashad Vaughn<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>will have to step up in his absence. Vaughn\u00a0didn&#8217;t make much of an impact his rookie year only averaging 3.1 points in 14 minutes per game. Now he&#8217;s expected to take a big jump in playing time and he has to provide them with his shooting in order to stay on the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>During the 2016-17 NBA season, headlines will be dominated by Kevin Durant and the Golden State Warriors on a daily basis. However, having a super-team doesn&#8217;t guarantee a championship; just look at the 2012-13 Los Angeles Lakers. Everything can change and anything can happen in the NBA. A team can implode, the injury bug could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1496,"featured_media":79,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,62],"tags":[65,306,324,219,96,362],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bucks","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","tag-khris-middleton","tag-milwaukee-bucks","tag-nba","tag-rashad-vaughn"],"modified_by":"Jack Moon Perrin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1496"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}