It’s been an extremely common narrative amongst talking heads and YouTubers alike, that the Bucks are a broken team still struggling to find their way. While that was certainly true to start the season, the Bucks have quietly turned things around since getting blown out by the Raptors on 11/1/23. Over the last 9 games (or 2/3 of the season so far), the Bucks per game stats are as follows:
W/L: 7-2 (T-2nd)
PPG: 120.9 (T-4th)
FG%: 49.5 (6th)
3PTM: 15.4 (4th)
3PT%: 39% (2nd)
DREB: 35.7 (2nd)
TOV: 13 (7th fewest)
BLK: 6.0 (7th)
+/- : 6.3 (7th)
As for advanced stats, the following apply to the last 9 games as well:
OFFRTG: 118.9 (5th)
NETRTG: 6.2 (7th)
AST/TO : 1.93 (9th)
EFG%: 58.2 (1st)
TS%: 61.5 (1st)
Pace: 10.67 (T-6th)
All this comes while the Bucks are currently 9-4, the 3-seed in the East, and tied in wins with Philly, Denver, and Minnesota. Their defense is certainly still suspect and there’s work to do on that end, but it’s not as doom and gloom and most outlets would have you believe.
It’s so funny there is this narrative driven approach to sports “ reporting” these days. It’s actually prevalent in all aspects of society so it’s hard to narrow it to just sports. It’s quite annoying actually.
We have access to basically any opinion we want to hear and that is dangerous and misleading in finding the truth.
Statistics used to be the way we grounded ourselves and separated fact from fiction but even stats are being muddied with new benchmarks etc.