Oscar Robertson is not walking through that door.
However: Malcolm Brogdon will be, soon.
The Bucks are probably not going to make it to fourth in the East after all. That means they will not be favored in the first round. But, as they move toward the postseason (which starts in less than three weeks, on April 14), they are also moving toward full strength, or close to it.
Will that matter? We are about to find out.
The Bucks have tried more than 250 different five-man lineups this season. Everything from Bledsoe/Snell/Middleton/Giannis/Henson -- by far the most frequently-used lineup, with 542 minutes together -- to three minutes of Payton/Terry/Vaughn/Wilson/Bolomboy.
What they have not had the chance to roll out this year is their five best players in the same game: Giannis, Middleton, Bledsoe, Jabari, and Brogdon.
It is a leap to think that adding Brogdon -- expected back in early April -- should transform the team into something significantly more than what it has been over the past six months, which is to say, a team battling in the bottom half of the East playoff bracket. Some teams are nervously hoping for legitimate saviors to return to health in the playoffs: Golden State (Curry), Boston (Irving), and San Antonio (Leonard). Here are superstars, with histories of superstar performances while leading their teams to championships. And their teams have excelled without them. Brogdon is a competent, complementary player, one who struggled in his first playoff appearance last season. The Bucks don’t have an injury excuse.
But part of it is adding Brogdon, and part of it is reorganizing the depth chart. Jason Terry is in the handful of my favorite Bucks ever, but he has played most of the game (24+ minutes) in most of the games (seven times in 13 games) in March. Brogdon will let Terry be what he is: a stabilizing and inspiriting veteran reserve with one of the highest basketball IQs in franchise story. (Granted, the Bucks have outscored their opponent with Terry on the court in 14 of the last 16 games during this heavy-minute stretch of his, a testament among many to him.)
In Toronto, Dwane Casey has hinted that the Raptors are not feeling compelled to shorten their (very effective) rotation in the playoffs, merely because that is what teams have done in the past. The Bucks will have interesting lineup and rotation decisions to make too, come the postseason. Does Snell start? Does Maker get bench minutes? What of Dellavedova and Jennings?
But stars will carry the day in the end.
And you cannot help but reorder the names of the five best players on the team like so: Bledsoe, Brogdon, Middleton, Jabari, Giannis. Or put another way.
Giannis
Jabari
Middleton
Brogdon
Bledsoe
Don’t think of that as a starting lineup, or even a frequent lineup, and don’t expect it to become a Wikipedia page. Giannis has played so sparingly at center that the historical data is hardly worthwhile. There is a lot of usage in that five to go around. Defensively, it is… precarious. It is best to think about these five and how they fit within lineups overall, not necessarily together. But this is the optimal Bucks version of a smallball quintet (particularly if Jabari is going to make a habit of those tip-passes) that could give jitters to just about any team outside of Golden State, Houston, and Cleveland. At the least, it could provide a test of the best-case-scenario of this core, and is something that the Bucks will finally have in their back (middle? front?) pocket.