The Deep 3 Podcast - Is It Time For The NBA To Fear The Bucks Again? | TD3 Clips

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

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19 plus Ontario only. Please play responsibly. Concerned by your gambling or that if someone close, you call 1866-3-3-1-2-60 or visit comixonterio.ca. I think it's only right. We start with what I think is a big surprise of the season to me so far. The Milwaukee Bucks, my first team. I learned two things about the Bucks. I'm already cheating from the top.

I'm telling you two things instead of one. I learned that one, Janice will be the MVP. And two, Ryan Rollins will be the most improved player. They got two awards on their hands. This team has been special through four games. If you guys noticed, I've been saying Ryan Rollins' name as like my poster boy of randoms over the course of the offseason. For a reason, I always thought it was good.

I'm not going to sit here and have actual conversation about him. But my thoughts and my theories and me noticing over the course of, I guess the last year, specifically when he was with the bucks, they're starting to come into fruition. Dude, this guy has been the most pleasant surprise in the entire NBA so far through four games. Just walked down, the Golden State Warriors by himself with no Yonis playing for a victory last night to give them, was it the fourth one of the season? They are currently.

Yeah, the four and one. Four and one performing way better than anybody thought. And yeah, it's a whole interesting conversation, but we can start. with Ryan Rollins real quick. This has been the breakout talent ejection this team needed from the guard position. You know, we spent the whole summer saying what are the bucks possibly gonna do

with this mishmash of parts that they did, scrapping together what was left over the Damien Lillard era, bringing in Miles Turner as a one-al-in move. And now we look at the roster and say, there's no guard creation, there's no wing defense. There's one center and he's not the most physical guy

so there's no rebounding, yada, yada, yada. This team clearly doesn't have the talent that some of the other top teams in the league have, right? Doesn't matter because Yonis has been playing outrageous basketball to me clearly been the most viable player besides maybe Victor Womenyama

for the course of the season all those roster deficiencies that we talked about they are there Jan has said it doesn't matter because I'm going to grab all the rebounds I'm going to do all the playmaking I'm going to do all the scoring

I'm going to have a crazy motor the highest motor we've seen in the past like four or five years he looks like a player that hurt all the noise understands that this team doesn't have the most talent around him they did a good job building around the right types of archetypes

to make the most of those scraps I talked about they have good shooting they have athleticism we knew that but the question was, was it wasn't going to be enough to win a playoff series? Is it going to be enough

to be better than the 60 I picked them to be? Yannis is kind of single-handedly way, bringing them up there. This is an insane carry job. Right now, the, because, like, we talked about the East in like three different tiers,

top tier, Cleveland, New York, second tier, Orlando, Detroit, Atlanta, and then we get to like the bucks and all them, the team's in the middle, they look shaking. They're folding.

Even the Knicks at the top are still like, like they're two and two and we think that they can, you know, they're also like have their own problem so now i'm looking at the bucks and it's like all right top three seed like top two seed it's for the taking yeah and it it's okay if you are going to wave and stretch dame's contract if you're going to get damy lillard for four million dollars a year right

like if you if you're able to find that amount of value and ryan rollins can go out and score 30 last night scored 25 the the night before hit mad three's like if he's doing all the things that you need a dame to do then you're fine like this is this is honestly what they envisioned that the bucks would look like two years ago when they first got dame and it's like oh yeah we're going to have the best player in the world we're going to have this this very dynamic guard and we're going to have a a seven foot stretch five who can provide some type of room protection and now instead of dame and brook lopez that's Ryan rollins and miles turner yeah yeah and i don't know how long's going to last obviously but the entire summer all bucks fans heard from us and everybody else that

has a mic or a TV channel or anything that talks about basketball. All they've heard is that how this Bucks team simply isn't good enough. They stand no chance of competing against the top teams in the conference, top teams in the league, right? So if it's for one week only, I don't know how long it lasts. Bucks fans, now is your time to tell us and everybody else, I told you so, because they are competing and they're doing it in the exact way that you guys told us they would. All Bucks fans said is yes, they're not quite as talented, but for the first time in years, we have the best spacing Ragnanis, and we finally have youth and athleticism. We said, okay, that's nice. if there's no star power next to him

there's no creation ability next to him I don't think that gets you much further than regular season success and then here they are the one guy they said not one guy because they have a ball of young players like every team does but they also said Ryan Rollins is one of those type of guys that's ready for a bigger role

and we all said okay he was good last year broke out finally found his place with the team and from bouncing around for a few years they said look at the per 36 minute stats this guy's clearly ready for more I said okay I guess it's Ryan Rollins it's probably a good six man I'm not really expecting him to be the difference

between you guys being a whatever team the regular season that loses in the first round or being a team that gives yons a chance to compete but apparently he is because he broke out like crazy in the past few games yeah and it's not only guys like ryan rawlins of course mouse turner is doing his thing well it's his thing as well you got col anthony who i'm not expecting again to be like the world's difference maker but for this team he is he is like him ryan rawlins dairy bird again all those guys gary tren jr and like the craziness and the consistent force spreading that he provides all those guys combined playing at their peak level, which is play really fucking hard and space

the floor and be fast, be quick, be athletic, be just annoying to deal with, has created this combination of just, like, this is honestly the biggest surprise in NBA so far for me because you going back to what you said about how everyone counted them out, me specifically as well, I think I probably had the Malky books, the lowest in our Eastern Conference standings predictions. I was not foreseen this coming. I mean, I could envision a world in which, okay, Ryan Rollins can do something. That's why I named dropped them a couple of times, but I'm just dancing around it.

This is just like literally every single NBA fans dream come true. NBA GM's dream come true to have a guy who was at Ryan Rawans' level just ascend out of nowhere to this degree. Yeah, that's funny. I was the highest one in the rankings. And I put them six, which that is not being high on the buck, supporting cast at all. I just said, you have your honest for a healthy season and you have good spacing. You'll be a good regular season team and that we cast. east and six looks like it's too low because like you said those teams above them aren't

necessarily taking the opportunity that's there for them the hawks look like shit the magic offense looks like shit the pistons have some stuff to figure out shooting wise so yeah they could definitely be higher than we give them credit for and uh the funny here's funny part is people keep bad at me and they keep saying uh remember what y'all said about Ryan rollins because there's a clip we were talking about the bucks over under type thing uh you said no chance in hell they're winning 45 games or something like that and I was like you're not moved by the athleticism the spacing they finally got stuff and you were really like, are you moved by Ryan Rollins?

Yeah. Which makes it sound like you think he's the shit from a butt. Yeah. Which really what you meant is like the Ryan Rollins of the world. Yeah. There's like amalgamation of random players. But you did say, you did, you did besmirch Ryan Rollins. So I guess you're Ryan Rolls hater now.

I did. And I mean, listen, he gave, he gave myself and my favorite team belt two nights ago. And I was like, I was wrong. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you heard that. Next time I'll say you're moved by KPJ. I'll pick a different random target. Yeah. Yeah.

And like he, I hope it's not. just a couple crazy games, but like he solidifies himself because he's just such a fun player to root for. He's so well-rounded, active defender. He's been shooting the lights out. It's been crazy. He moves with so much, like you ever see. People talk about like he moves like a star. That's how I feel watching him drive sometimes. I'm like, these movement patterns, there's something to this going to the rim. Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I'm very, I'm very shocked. And I will say that I was wrong. And even over the course of a week, because the last two, the first three games, She wasn't shooting that well.

And the last two games he's really come on. So obviously he probably will be, you know, somewhere in the middle. I am a believer on this Bucks team. I do think that everything that they've done over the first five games is real. And so now I'm rethinking, like, how I think of the Eastern Conference. I do think that they probably are going to be a top four seat. Like I think that they are going to have home court advantage. Yeah, I'm with that too.

I don't think I'm ready to say they're going to like make a. deep playoff run just because the reasons we said that be a first-runner exit are still there, I think. But I do think for the regular season, they're even more well equipped than someone like me thought putting him at the six-seed. Yeah, I agree with you. That's also probably because I just feel worse about the teams I put right above them in the Hawks, Magic and Pistons.

So I also think Janus is best suited for playing the Superman role where he has to do everything. I think in the past two years of Dane, he still played fantastic, obviously. He still played MVP-level basketball. But I think he's one of those players kind of like Prime James Hardin, where he really needs a specific floor layout and he's specifically the ball in his hands in certain spots with the most spacing

and there's diminishing returns when you take the ball out of his hands and ask him the playoff ball. We learned with Dan, that's not really his game. He's equipped to be this heliocentric guy and I think you get the most out of him there. He's not.

He's not reversed scalable. And it's okay because he's the best dropping down in the rankings. And also like, props to him, man. He's rebounding more than he ever has. It feels like he's really taking that upon him because he knows his team is small and Miles Turner isn't going to get 12 rebates.

bounce a game and he's just he's also deferring when needed off ball like he's putting the ball on ryan rollins hand so he can cut more like i guess the only question i'd have is like how long can you do this for because he's truly doing everything exactly that's the main thing i think yonis when it comes to superstars we play the hardest there's not many guys who you put above yoncinecoupo in the history of the league that's it now when you say you're worried about how long you can do this for obviously we're not talking about like the mentality wise and whatnot. We're talking about physically and whether or not his body can sustain

like an 82 game long season while playing to this level of this degree because Janice, out of all these superstars out of the top five guys, he's been the most injured prone guy once April starts to come around, more starts to come around, things just happen with his body

and that's when things start to look scary because the conversation starts with Janus and ends of Janus and has never been an NBA season like that to this degree. Yeah, it feels very much like a like an old school team built from our one star where they just do everything like you don't see that these days in large part which you just mentioned bodies break down with the pace of play and how much ground these guys have the cover especially yannis who has always been a do-it-all guy

maybe not quite to this degree or he's doing even more than ever but it's hard to have that guy do that for 82 games with modern pace and space you don't ever see teams built like this with one superstar and i guess wemby's kind of like that but he has fox coming in yeah and i don't know also like we've also kind of seen he didn't he didn't play in the last game yeah right he was already out which is probably smart yeah and it's it's been interesting because he's been extremely extremely dominant he's only played he's played 26 37 33 and 33 minutes and so it's not like crazy crazy high volume just in terms of like looking at that number and it being like mad big but for everything that you're saying he is doing everything and in those games he scored 37 31 40 and 37 and 37 and so

I don't know I'm with you guys like and we've seen especially in like modern NBA history we've seen stretches of guys where they really do have to backpack and then something unfortunate happens so obviously like we're not like wishing for anything like that but i do wonder the for the same like for everything that you guys are saying i i wonder how long that he can do this or if there's going to be some like baked in like load management that comes with how you know with like how the bucks are moving because he's also not like he's not 26 anymore he's not 25 he's he's 30 and he is he is now like trying to save himself for the playoffs see if we can like if we get to like February and they are in top six top five and that feels a little bit firm we'll probably

see a lot of that like low management stuff starts to happen with it yeah I hope he keeps it up because this definitely feels like his version of 2018 playoff run where he had to backpack and like he understood the moments he understood that this team's only going as far as I take them I don't have the shooters around me I don't have the talent around me doesn't matter I'm yonness I don't have any excuses, no matter what. If I fail, people will point to me and not point to X player next to me. He understands that clearly. And he understands that he has every reason to request a trade and every desire to stay and not request a trade. So he's clearly laying it on the line doing every single thing he can to justify staying and being loyal.

Because he's talked about it if it doesn't work out. He probably won't be if it's a first on exit. So props to him, man. Mentality-wise, he's risen to the occasion so hard for these first few games. And I do kind of feel like, of course, Going back to what you said, I agree with you guys' stance points in terms of them being a firm playoff team due to everyone else's, not regression, but just not necessarily meeting up to expectation. We'll start. And right now, I'm thinking about how the ways this can be actually sustainable. And of course, like, Janus has to be there playing at like 100% all the time. But even if he's like not there necessarily, they're Doc Rivers, we never give him props.

The only time we talk about him for real is when we're jumping on his ass. He deserves a lot of props or doing the simple stuff, of course. alongside that their defense has improved surprise surprise to get rid of someone like damey lure who isn't a fantastic defender at all by any means and you have nothing but good defense surrounding yannis at all times and also miles turner he's been playing elite basketball on both ends he's a true difference maker the again like they realize how important it is to have someone like uh miles turner a four a five out spacer alongside yonis and you just have like a lot of length around him when it comes to all these guys defensively and them getting deflections Ryan Ron's I think he has like

a 610 wingspan AJ Green he has like a 6-7 wingspan all these guys have positive wingspans by several inches so it's their defensive floor will help succumb all the offensive wills I think potentially have when you when yonis isn't at like that's the part I'm less I'm less 100% sure about just because they are like they really are relying on yonis to finish plays as a rebounder and the guys you mentioned are like good guard defenders that don't have a true wing stopper, which Janus helps cover up. I do want to see them nailed the one trade asset they have. They have one first round pick in between Kyle Kuzma and Bobby Portis and a couple of their salary. They can get to like $38 million a salary. If they can go out

there and get them a true wing defender, which I'm sure they'll push the deadline to do that. They want to keep you honest, right? Then I could be really moved. Like if they got an Andrew Wiggins or Dylan Brooks or whatever, the guys that keep talking about from these other teams I need that, then I would really be like, okay, I see the defensive vision for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I can get with that honestly but right now the vibes feel so good we're not changing the thing yeah I agree fair enough yeah good for them good for bucks fans

tell us we're stupid we deserve it for this week you guys deserve all the glaze you guys deserve all the glaze of your own team you can't right now because you were up