Ten Bucks Top Tens

This is the team without a single player in the top 50 in the NBA in minutes per game. The team that has played its bench more than any other team in the last 17 years, probably ever. This is the team with more wins than losses. This is the team.

And so you hardly ever find individual players near the top of the big and traditional individual categories, like points per game or rebounds per game. Newspaper stats. And I have loved newspapers. Anyway, those are newspaper stats. You will not find any per game numbers below. 

Here they are. Here are 10 Bucks top-10s with a sentence or two or three. This is not all of them. Well, maybe I am saving some of them for another story, because I like them.

Henson doesn’t quite qualify for the official leaderboard yet, due to lack of minutes. But he should soon. And here it is, the forward-center is blocking more shots per minute than anyone in the NBA. And it is not all that close. Anthony Davis leads all qualified players, with 3.9 blocks per 48 minutes.

Alas, Henson doesn’t qualify for this leaderboard yet either. But just like the blocks on defense, this represents another major progression on offense, as he has improved from 48.2 to 53.8 to 57.1 over his first three seasons with the Bucks.

He of the occasional 10-10 shooting night is one of the best outside shooters in the NBA this season. It is the second best percentage of his career, trailing only the 45.8 percent he shot from long range with the Suns in 2009-10.

Last season, Zaza Pachulia made an improbable run at the Free Throw Shooting Championship. This season, it is Bayless, who is doing so less improbably. But still surprisingly. Always a good free throw shooter, his best full season before this was 83.6 percent with the Raptors in 2011-12. If Bayless stays at or above 98.3 percent, it would set a NBA single-season record.

Knight is also hitting at the stripe better than ever, and it is important, because he is getting there quite a bit, too, more than anyone on the team except Giannis Antetokounmpo.

This is sort of a different one. This means that 30.0 percent of Marshall’s points are scored off turnovers. That is more than anyone in the NBA. Now, he doesn’t score a ton in the first place (though that is changing some of late), but this is something to keep an eye on, to see if this is more by chance or if there something to it.

Sanders is the best in the league when it comes to winning contested rebounds, which are pretty important, which are the opposite of uncontested rebounds, which are also important because a lot of rebounding is knowing where and when to be. Sanders is just ahead of Enes Kanter, Joakim Noah, Robin Lopez, Amir Johnson and Taj Gibson on this list.

Okay. According to basketball-reference, this stat is a box score estimate of the defensive points per 100 possessions a player contributes above a league-average player, translated to an average team. Sanders can play a bit of defense, and the Bucks remain a much better defensive team overall (8th in defensive efficiency) than offensive team (22nd in offensive efficiency).

Something of a surprise? Ilyasova shares top company with more usual suspects like Rudy Gobert, Andrew Bogut, Roy Hibbert, Serge Ibaka, Dwight Howard and Taj Gibson. One massive difference is that Ilyasova has precisely four blocks this season. Everyone else named in this short paragraph has at least 33 blocks.

Look who we have here. Still here.

(Thanks to basketball-reference and stats.nba.com for the stat magic The stars mean the player does not qualify for the official leaderboard in that category. Stats noted are through 1/4/15.)