Bucks banking on continuity heading into the season

BROOKFIELD - The Milwaukee Bucks' annual golf outing always brings out big names. Former and current members of the team stop by every year to play a round or share in the event.

That was again the case on Monday at Westmoor Country Club where for the second year in a row the event was being held to benefit the team's eponymous charitable foundation. There were plenty of reunions, with former players like Vin Baker, T.J. Ford, Bob Dandridge and others among the familiar faces exchanging pleasantries.

However, unlike many of the past years, there were relatively few introductions to be made regarding the current players on the roster. With the re-signing of Jason Terry becoming official Monday, the Bucks are set to bring back 13 members of last year's squad — the most in team history.

Milwaukee's 15-man roster currently consists of 12 returning players on guaranteed contracts, one (Gary Payton II) who is back on a non-guaranteed deal signed last spring, and rookies D.J. Wilson and Sterling Brown. In the past, the most players the Bucks have brought back from one season to the next is 11, which happened four times according to roster continuity data on Basketball-Reference.com (1973-'74, 1987-'88, 1989-'90 and 2001-'02).

When asked about continuity Monday, the responses from head coach Jason Kidd, center Greg Monroe and Baker were unanimous. Their first response, in some form or fashion, boiled down to the same thing, "It's huge."

“That’s going to be huge, I think, with training camp being a little shorter," Kidd said. "The veteran teams are going to have the advantage — there’s not a lot of time before your first game. Just understanding that continuity is big for us. We’re still young, but hopefully, we feel we’re going in the right direction. Hopefully, we can use that to our advantage early on in the season.”

This level of continuity is something many NBA teams strive for both in terms of keeping good players together and allowing a certain team culture and chemistry to grow. Over the past two decades, few teams have reaped the benefits of continuity more than the San Antonio Spurs, which have consistently kept their rosters together on the way to five championships since Gregg Popovich took over as head coach in 1996.

For the Bucks, continuity has not been the norm for more than a decade. Since the team's last playoff series win in 2001, Milwaukee has generally achieved poor to middling results with a rotating cast of characters. From 2002-'12, no more than eight players returned to the Bucks from one year to the next as the organization attempted to field a playoff-caliber team each season.

In 2013-'14, the Bucks went to an extreme with their roster overhaul. They brought back just four players, who accounted for just 24% of the team's minutes that season — the smallest percentage in franchise history. That overhaul, combined with numerous injuries, resulted in a franchise-worst 15-67 record and set off a rebuilding period.

With a new coach and new, future-focused ownership group, the Bucks began to construct a new-look roster centered around a youthful core that included Giannis Antetkounmpo and Jabari Parker, the No. 2 overall pick in 2014. After a surprising playoff berth in 2015 followed by a disappointing 2015-'16 campaign, the Bucks made numerous free-agent moves last summer to support their young stars. That effort led to a 42-40 record and No. 6 seed in the playoffs.

Now, following a summer in which many Eastern Conference teams seemingly took a step back, the Bucks have stood pat and in doing so have entered into the conversation among the most competitive teams in the conference.

“There was never any reason to make a change," said Monroe, who in June opted into the final year of his contract. "We feel like we had a good season, something we can build on and we want to continue to make the right strides. … I feel like we’ve been together a lot this summer, especially toward the second half of the summer, already getting back into the rhythm and trying to get ready for the season."

The Bucks will begin training camp on September 26 at their new downtown training facility with just six days to prepare for their preseason opener in Dallas on Oct. 2. The regular season will be right around the corner, beginning for them in Boston on Oct. 18.

“These guys have been together now for two years, some three, so that’s hopefully going to help us," Kidd said. "We’ve got guys that have been here and I think, again, building on how we ended the season last year is something that we’re going to talk about in training camp and understanding we can’t wait like last year because those first 10 games are pretty tough.”