How the Milwaukee Bucks can finally win a game

The Milwaukee Bucks have displayed some reason to be confident in their long-term outlook under new head coach Taylor Jenkins. What Milwaukee has not done is win a game, as the Bucks are 0-3 after losses to Washington, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

Things won't get any easier for the Bucks in the near term, as Milwaukee has been perfectly healthy to start the season and a gauntlet of expected playoff teams is waiting over the coming weeks. What will it take for Milwaukee to finally win a game with Jenkins at the helm?

The easiest answer is avoiding self-inflicted wounds. The Bucks had the Chicago Bulls on the ropes on Friday, taking a slim lead into the final two minutes of the game, but couldn't close out Chicago late. That slim lead would've been much more comfortable if the Bucks could make free throws: Milwaukee shot 14/26 from the charity stripe, a ghastly 53.8% success rate.

The Bucks will either be at a talent deficient or on even footing pretty much every night they play this season. That is obviously going to limit their ability to win games in itself, and further magnifies how impactful mistakes will be for Milwaukee. Without any real margin for error, the Bucks need clean games to notch wins.

On that same theme, turnovers have been a huge issue for Milwaukee in all three of the team's losses. The Bucks have lost the turnover battle in each game, coughing up the rock 57 times versus forcing just 36 opponent turnovers. Milwaukee is tied with Dallas in lost turnovers per game at 19, good for fourth-worst in the NBA.

Just as the Bulls game was lost due to free throw foibles, the Bucks lost in Philadelphia mostly due to turnovers. Milwaukee turned the ball over 22 times and still managed to cut the Sixers' lead down to three points with 2:02 to play in the game. Removing some of the 26 points off turnovers Philadelphia scored on Saturday could've changed a close loss to an exciting upset for Milwaukee.

The good news is more time together should help with both of these issues. Nobody in the Bucks rotation has been a sub-60% free throw shooter in recent NBA or NCAA seasons, so unless several players suddenly regressed as free throw shooters the ugly result against the Bulls was a statistical outlier.