The Milwaukee Bucks roster is deeply flawed, and even the most genius coaching performance possible from new head coach Taylor Jenkins wouldn’t have the Bucks at the top of the Eastern Conference. A coaching masterclass would have them in a better spot than 1-10 with the second-worst net rating in the NBA, though.

Jenkins is working to instill both a culture and new schemes on the floor, and that isn’t an easy job with a roster that is essentially spare parts cobbled together following the Giannis Antetokounmpo trade. Milwaukee is playing a more modern style of basketball, chasing offensive rebounds, utilizing more innovative screening and cutting actions on offense, and utilizing the constraints-led approach to player development.

The Bucks are also losing. A lot. While players losing playing time as a result of poor play is an important tenet to built accountability into the culture Jenkins is seeking to establish, that standard has not been applied evenly across the roster.

Struggled mightily is about as generous as possible a term to describe Myles Turner’s play over Milwaukee’s last three games. Turner has scored 6 total points on 2/22 shooting overall and made just one of his 13 attempted three-pointers in that stretch. Turner has never been a prolific rebounder, but his lack of effort in certain sequences has been frustrating for both Milwaukee’s coach and fans to watch.

I’ve watched this 12 times pic.twitter.com/plUTOssQKo

— Bill Simmons (@BillSimmons) November 9, 2026

And yet, Turner played nearly 27 minutes against the Knicks on Tuesday, leading all Bucks in total playing time. While Turner has contributed strong block shots totals, his lack of physicality on the interior has mostly cancelled out his defensive impact. The Bucks give up just one fewer point per 100 possessions with Turner on vs off.

Kel’el Ware, despite some noticeable lapses that have severely impacted his playing time, has a stronger (4+ points per 100 possessions) positive impact on the Bucks defense. It’s immediately obvious why some of Ware’s tendencies to roam outside of the team structure on defense would drive a coach crazy, but pulling him after just one minute of playing time is setting Ware up to fail.

Kel’el Ware just got yanked one minute and one second after he last checked in toward the end of the second quarter. Fouled Towns on a drive and that was that, with Taylor Jenkins talking him through something on the sideline on his way out.

— Ti Windisch (@TiWindisch) November 11, 2026

Milwaukee’s best lineup this season (by far) is the initial starting five of Ryan Rollins, Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kyle Kuzma, and Myles Turner. That is a point in Turner’s favor as clearly the team has found success in a group with him at center. Milwaukee is +27 in the 80 minutes that lineup has played this season.

The Bucks have just 6 other lineups with a plus/minus at or above +5 this season. The only constant in those lineups is Ware. The sample size is tiny at 23 total minutes between those six groups, but the Bucks have had success in multiple configurations with Ware on the floor alongside a host of other guards and wing players.

Ware himself is also struggling to hit shots this season: he’s at 20% from three-point range after hitting 39.5% of those looks last season. Unlike Turner, he does not have the dual benefit of more total minutes to establish a rhythm, or lots of minutes with the starters who should in theory be the best players on the team.

The Bucks have gotten blitzed in both players minutes, with a slightly better defense with Ware on but a much worse offense. That makes sense, given Turner has gotten to log 235 minutes with Tyler Herro, the obvious best offensive player on the Bucks this season, with Ware only getting 76 of those minutes. Ware’s own cold shooting is a factor too, as the Bucks have shot an unseasonably cold 29.5% in the Ware/Herro lineups thus far.

Questions in the Backcourt Also

Ryan Rollins is another player who’s seen a quick hook from Jenkins. Even beyond the future-focused move to start Brayden Burries over him, Rollins simply isn’t getting enough playing time recently. Without Tyler Herro in the lineup due to his knee injury, Rollins got the start and was pretty clearly the best Bucks guard against the Knicks.

Despite scoring 14 points on 5/9 shooting (4/6 from deep, where his pull-up three-ball seems to have returned following a brutal start to the season), Rollins played just 24 minutes in the loss. Every other starter played more, including Turner, Burries, and Kyle Kuzma, who combined for 11 points on 3/17 shooting.

Rollins has at times struggled with ugly turnovers or early fouls, but he committed zero turnovers and just three total fouls against New York, and only one of those fouls came in the first half. Two of them were committed in the third quarter as part of a great performance from Rollins, when he posted 9 points and an assist on 3/4 shooting from deep. The Bucks won his 9 third quarter minutes by 2 points, and cut a huge Knicks lead down to 13 points entering the fourth.

Rollins logged less than two minutes in the fourth and didn’t get a single shot up. Some of the lower fourth quarter minutes are due to Jenkins pulling the plug on the main rotation players when the game got out of hand, but that doesn’t justify Rollins getting less burn than the rest of Milwaukee’s starters.

To be abundantly clear: Jenkins is not the main culprit for Milwaukee’s dreadful record. The Bucks roster was expected to be one of the worst in the East, and both Turner and Ware have played well below their standard this season, making it difficult to build lineups that work.

That said, the questionable rotation decisions around Turner, Ware, and Rollins haven’t helped matters. To his credit, Jenkins seemed cognizant of needing to make further adjustments to the lineups than simply starting Burries after the loss to the Knicks.

Taylor Jenkins said "what we're doing right now is not working" and "I got to find something that's going to build consistency for us... starters, off the bench, sub patterns." On rebounding: "we've had this struggle the last couple of games. It's really hurt us."

— NBA Wire (@nbapresserwire) November 11, 2026

Playing Ware and Rollins more may not solve everything for the 1-10 Milwaukee Bucks, but it can’t really get much worse on the court than we’ve seen so far. In addition to hopefully improving the team’s performance, sending a message that the level of play on display over the last week is unacceptable is necessary at this point.