Scouting one-pager: Milwaukee Bucks (MIL)
2025-26 regular season · 82 games · 7,012 FGA. Auto-generated by scouting/build_onepager.py from public data; every number traceable to a gated pipeline in this repo. Shot pricing uses the 2023-24 shot-quality model, whose season-out transfer was validated in the backtest; shot-making is empirical-Bayes shrunk before it is allowed to drive a conclusion.
Terms
- PPS: Points per shot: total points on field-goal attempts divided by attempts. Free throws excluded.
- xPPS: Expected points per shot - the model's fair price of a shot diet: what an average shooter would score on the same attempts, judged from location and shot type alone, before knowing what went in.
- shot-making: Actual minus expected points per 100 shots: conversion above or below what the shot diet itself explains. Positive means making shots the model prices as hard.
- EB making: A player's shot-making after empirical-Bayes shrinkage: the observed number pulled toward the league mean in proportion to its sampling noise. The number to trust for projection.
- FGA: Field-goal attempts.
- RAPM: Regularized adjusted plus-minus: a ridge regression crediting each player with net points per 100 possessions while adjusting for the other nine players on the floor.
- net_100: Net points per 100 possessions: 100 x plus-minus / possessions; sits on the same scale as the NBA's published net rating.
- rush: Shots in the final four seconds of a period - the desperation window where both shot selection and execution collapse.
- empirical Bayes: Estimate the spread of true skill across the league from the data, then pull each individual's noisy estimate toward the league mean in proportion to its noise.
- shrinkage weight: The fraction of an observed number that survives empirical-Bayes regression: 1 means fully trusted, 0 means replaced by the league mean.
- CI: Confidence interval.
- corner three: A three-pointer from the corner, where the NBA line is roughly 3 ft closer than the arc - the geometry discount that makes it the cheapest three.
Keys
- They hunt corner threes: 29.0% of their threes come from the corners (league 25.9%). Run shooters off the corner line first.
- Volume-three profile: 45.7% of attempts from deep (league 41.5%).
- Mid-range reliant: 13.1% from mid-range vs league 10.0%; live with contested twos over open threes.
- Bobby Portis is a genuine shot-maker: +9.4 pts/100 above expectation after empirical-Bayes shrinkage; contest even the bad shots.
- Best shot diet: Giannis Antetokounmpo (1.26 xPPS on 598 FGA). The value is where the shots come from; deny the spot, not the release.
- Their most-used five that wins its minutes: G. Antetokounmpo - M. Turner - K. Porter Jr. - R. Rollins - A. Green (+12.1/100 over 364 possessions).
Shot profile vs league
| MIL | League | Δ |
|---|
| PPS (points per shot) | 1.131 | 1.091 | +0.040 |
| xPPS, the shot-diet price* | 1.099 | 1.097 | +0.003 |
| Shot-making, pts/100 vs model | +3.1 | -0.5 | +3.7 |
| Rim share | 25.5% | 28.4% | -2.9 pp |
| Mid-range share | 13.1% | 10.0% | +3.1 pp |
| Three share | 45.7% | 41.5% | +4.2 pp |
| Corner share of threes | 29.0% | 25.9% | +3.1 pp |
| Final-4s (rush) shot share | 1.8% | 1.8% | -0.0 pp |
* xPPS prices where they shoot from, independent of whether shots fell: the stable, scoutable part of the profile (year-over-year r ≈ .9).
Personnel (top 8 by volume)
| Player | FGA | PPS | xPPS (diet) | Making/100 | EB making | RAPM/100 |
|---|
| Ryan Rollins | 1,030 | 1.122 | 1.061 | +6.1 | +4.5 | +0.8 |
| Bobby Portis | 750 | 1.156 | 1.020 | +13.6 | +9.4 | -1.7 |
| Kyle Kuzma | 689 | 1.104 | 1.107 | -0.3 | -0.4 | -2.0 |
| Myles Turner | 646 | 1.107 | 1.102 | +0.5 | +0.1 | -1.6 |
| AJ Green | 618 | 1.223 | 1.089 | +13.4 | +7.6 | +0.7 |
| Giannis Antetokounmpo | 598 | 1.273 | 1.257 | +1.6 | +1.1 | +3.5 |
| Kevin Porter Jr. | 514 | 1.019 | 1.065 | -4.5 | -3.2 | +0.2 |
| Gary Trent Jr. | 473 | 1.034 | 1.058 | -2.4 | -1.6 | -4.1 |
EB making = shot-making regressed to league mean by reliability: the number to trust. RAPM from the opponent-adjusted 2025-26 lineup model (±≈3/100 CI at a season of minutes; treat as descriptive).
Most-used lineups
| Lineup | Min | Poss | Net/100 |
|---|
| G. Antetokounmpo - M. Turner - K. Porter Jr. - R. Rollins - A. Green | 173 | 364 | +12.1 |
| G. Antetokounmpo - M. Turner - G. Trent Jr. - R. Rollins - A. Green | 169 | 350 | -9.7 |
| M. Turner - K. Kuzma - G. Trent Jr. - R. Rollins - A. Green | 135 | 297 | -7.1 |