Taylor Jenkins keeps turning the Milwaukee Bucks’ rotation over, but Tyler Herro has stayed planted in the same spot.
Herro is the only Buck averaging more than 30 minutes per game, and he remains the hometown kid in the starting two-guard role while Jenkins keeps reshuffling everyone else on a nightly basis. The coach has clearly been willing to experiment, and almost nobody has been immune from the changes.
That includes some of the players who opened the season with bigger expectations. Brayden Burries and Nate Ament started the year on the bench, but both are now in the starting five.
That shift came with Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Ryan Rollins getting moved out of those spots, even though they were initially viewed as two of the team’s top players this season. Jenkins has shown he’s not locking himself into any one look.
The rest of the rotation has been just as unsettled. AJ Green, after what he did last season, is seeing his role shrink.
Ousmane Dieng has been in and out of the mix and is still trying to claw his way back in. Kasparas Jakucionis may have a tougher path now that Rollins and Jaquez are handling the ball off the bench.
And even that could all change again the next time Milwaukee takes the floor.
That kind of volatility makes sense for a team still searching for anything that works. The Bucks have talent on the roster, but the fit is messy, with aging veterans, rookies, and players in between all trying to find their place. This doesn’t look like the Bucks teams from the past decade, when the age profile made rotations easier to sort out.
Herro, though, is the one exception Jenkins doesn’t seem interested in touching.
A benching for Herro doesn’t appear to be coming anytime soon, even if a backcourt of Rollins and Burries would be an intriguing look. Milwaukee needs to figure out what it has in Herro, whether that means viewing him as part of the future or as a possible trade chip, and the clearest way to do that is by keeping him in a major role as the first option and a locked-in starter.
There’s also the simple scoring reality. Outside of Herro and Jaquez, the production has fallen off sharply.
Rollins is struggling. Green’s numbers are down.
Myles Turner looks lost. Kyle Kuzma has been all over the place, just as he often is.
With the games already lacking much competitiveness, taking out the team’s only 20-point-per-game scorer would only make things worse.
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For the Bucks, the concern is bigger than just a paperwork issue. Media analysts have already raised the possibility of league discipline if Milwaukee is found to have crossed the line on cap circumvention, with potential punishment ranging from a suspension for general manager John Horst to the loss of draft picks. However this plays out, it has the chance to linger well beyond the current roster and shape how the franchise is viewed going forward. [Read more 🡒]