I have a *thing* for young athletic men full of unrealized potential. If you’re thinking *like that* then I’m not saying *like that*, but I definitely swooned a bit watching Anthony Davis last year, before he was definitely one of the best 5 players in the NBA. It’s great watching that kind of talent blossom so fully only 3 years removed from receiving his John R. Wooden Award, but for me some of the fun is lost in the transition from a young player oozing potential and when that ooze materializes into a star.
That said, I like the young teams just putting things together, when you can still see their abilities and minds merging into a cohesive basketball unit one game at a time. I feel like every year there is a Most Exciting Young Team that I really enjoy watching. Last year it was the Phoenix Suns – with the Morris twins tossing in threes, Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe as the primary ball handlers (I’ll try not to refer to them as Point Guards, cus, ya know, they were mostly scorers who got to dribble the ball a lot). (footnote 1)
If you didn’t read the footnote (how dare you!) then the point is: last year’s Phoenix Suns wasn’t very good, but they were a lot of fun to watch. And stayed in contention long enough (finished 1 game behind the 8th seed Mavericks) to make their games matter all season.
Every year I try to find the Most Exciting Young Team. Sometimes I pick wrong. Sometimes fun is just a small part of the larger phrase “I’d like a refund. No, I’m sorry.”
With all that I nominate my first hope for this year’s Most Exciting Young Team: The Milwaukee Bucks
Milwaukee hasn’t been fun for a long time. It’s probably easier to be good than fun (mostly because no GM’s goal is to be just fun), but the Bucks haven’t been much of either since Generation Y hit pre-school [2]. Well, this year will be half different!
They have the most NBA-ready rookie (I feel like this is a straight-up ESPN trademarked term) in Jabari Parker. And as if to increase the fun times: Parker is really only NBA-ready on the offensive end.
If he was their most fun player the Bucks would only make it as high on the Fun Rankings as an up-and-down rookie season could deliver, but he definitely is not.
Enter the ring, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
He’s a beautiful 6’10” basketball machine in his second NBA season from Greece. He’s raw but has already shown huge improvement since his rookie year. And he just turned 20 on December 6th. The Greek highlight machine uses his long arms and high basketball IQ to keep his talented and flawed team in games. Antetokounmpo has done something great almost every night, but the one that made the most rounds about the Internet is this double block:
[footnote 3]
Milwaukee is currently the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference. That doesn’t mean they’re good, but it helps the excite-o-meter of a young team if their games still matter late in the season.
For whatever reason, the Milwaukee franchise saw fit to give the young duo teammates. Teammates with names like OJ Mayo, Jerryd Bayless Brandon Knight, and Ersan Ilyasova (4). All of them can have personal spurts of fun times but the most interesting, for me and the Bucks franchise, are the building blocks of Parker and Antetokounmpo. These guys will hopefully feed off each other for years to come, and if they crumble under the pressure of being my first (probably not last) pick for Most Exciting Young Team in the NBA, then they will almost certainly be on the short list next season.
Footnotes:
- Last season, Eric Bledsoe’s 1.64 Assist/Turnover ratio was the 2nd worst in the league (46 out of 47) among qualified point guards (Alec Burks was a distant last at 1.42. But, be real, Burks isn’t a PG and never should be but when you’re contractually obligated to field a basketball team it’s good manners for one of your five players on the court to bring up the ball – of those, Burks was often the most qualified).
The Suns other sort-of point guard last season was Goran Dragic. He had 2.10 A/To ratio, which would have tied for 38th out of 47 Point Guards (if he was considered a PG – which he’s not, but he has been during his career and was at times last year).
2.Last winning season for the Bucks was 2009-10 – and that was their only winning season since Ray Allen was donning those purple road unis. The Milawauke franchise has had five winning season since 1990-91 (not including the strike shortened 98-99 season).
2.A personal favorite from my favorite highlight machine: the finger-roll where he doesn’t dribble for 25 feet (and it wasn’t traveling!)
4.Or as he should be known, the Turkish James Franco:
http://a.espncdn.com/combiner/i?img=/i/headshots/nba/players/full/2767.png&w=3
Big Four and More 
