After a 104-93 loss on Tuesday to a Golden State Warriors team that was resting “exhausted” top scorer Stephen Curry, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers held a meeting with superstars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, according to NBA insider Chris Haynes, as the Bucks search for “ways to improve” a team that has lost five of its last seven games in the heat of a battle for postseason seeding in the Eastern Conference.
Haynes’ sources described the meeting as “an open forum” in which all three parties could share their points of view on why Milwaukee’s offense has continued to bog down late in games, and a “productive” session between the coach and players tasked with getting the Bucks back to competing for championships after consecutive first-round playoff exits.
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For the season, the Bucks rank sixth in the NBA in offensive efficiency in the first quarter, tied for 10th in the second quarter, 14th in the third quarter … and dead last in the fourth quarter, scoring just 105.8 points per 100 possessions in the final frame. The struggles grow even more pronounced when you focus in on crunch time, with Milwaukee producing a mere 97.1 points-per-100 in “clutch” situations — when the score is within five points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime — while shooting just 38.7% from the field and 30% from 3-point land with nearly as many turnovers (38) as assists (44) in those scenarios.
After sputtering for most of the first half against Golden State, the Bucks roared back in the third quarter, riding the playmaking of Antetokounmpo and hot shooting from Kyle Kuzma and Brook Lopez to erase a 17-point deficit and take a lead into the final minute of the period before the Warriors answered with a Jimmy Butler-fueled 16-2 Warriors run. The game was still in the balance in the clutch, though, with Milwaukee trailing 96-93 with four minutes to go — only for the Bucks to score just two points on 0-for-6 shooting the rest of the way, stumbling to the finish line as Golden State closed out its 15th win in 18 games since trading for Butler and rejuvenating its season:
The Warriors deserve a fair share of the credit for Milwaukee’s late-game struggles in its lowest-scoring outing of the season — most notably Draymond Green, who finished off a masterclass performance against Antetokounmpo that served as a reminder of just how phenomenal a defender he remains, eight seasons removed from his lone Defensive Player of the Year trophy.
Watching those possessions, though, Milwaukee’s overall stagnation leaps off the page.
Giannis clears out the left wing to attack Draymond, with Lillard one pass away to occupy Gary Payton II … and all three other Bucks remain stationary as Antetokounmpo goes to work, ending up with a non-rim runner over a good contest by one of the best defenders in the world.
Giannis kicks the ball to Dame on the right wing, flashes to the right elbow and calls repeatedly for Taurean Prince to vacate the right corner to try to remove Butler from the help-defensive equation on the strong side. Several seconds elapse before Prince follows the instruction; Jimmy doesn’t bite, staying put because Milwaukee’s already down to 10 seconds on the shot clock by the time Antetokounmpo comes up to try to set the ball screen for Lillard.
The screen attempt itself goes nowhere, because Giannis never actually makes contact with Payton, shuffling from his right hip over toward his left and standing perpendicular to the sideline — an angle that left Dame nowhere to go on his right, forcing him to reject the screen, retreat and try to make something happen with a hard left-hand dribble at midcourt with seven seconds left on the shot clock. The result isn’t terrible — a Gary Trent Jr. catch-and-shoot look over a late contest by Brandin Podziemski — but it certainly wasn’t Plan A or B out of that action.
“We didn’t execute [the play], but that wasn’t why we lost the game,” Rivers said after the game, according to Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “We didn’t execute most of the game. We’re in an offensive funk right now and we have to get out of it.”
On the next trip, again, Milwaukee doesn’t even approach getting into its primary action — a Trent Jr. inverted ball screen for Giannis, aiming to either get the big fella downhill against a smaller guard on a switch or open a pitch back for a clean catch-and-shoot 3 — until there are 14 seconds left on the clock. That goes nowhere, so Giannis pivots into a handoff to Dame, with GPII all over him and Draymond in his lap on the hedge, Podziemski sliding up to take Trent, Jimmy picking up Giannis on the roll, and Buddy Hield zoning up to play two on the weak side, leaving Milwaukee with no better option in the dying seconds of the clock than a tightly contested Dame stepback in the corner.
Going oh-fer down the stretch against a defense that ranks seventh in the NBA this season and second since Butler’s debut does not, in a vacuum, constitute a crisis. But when it comes on the heels of similarstruggles during recent losses to the Magic, Cavaliers and Thunder — three other top-10 defenses, replete with length and physicality at the point of attack — it represents the continuation of a troubling pattern for a Milwaukee side that is now 11-18 against teams with a .500 record or better, 5-15 against teams with top-10 point differentials and just 2-12 combined against the Cavaliers, Celtics, Knicks, Thunder, Rockets and Nuggets — the top three seeds in each conference.
This Bucks team was expected to overwhelm opponents with offensive excellence after pairing Antetokounmpo and Lillard before last season. Milwaukee now sits just 14th in offensive efficiency and has scored 117.9 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with Giannis and Dame sharing the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass — a mark that would rank seventh in the NBA for the full season. Good, but not great — and, even with Antetokounmpo continuing to produce at an MVP level, certainly not great enough to consistently beat the kind of opposition Milwaukee’s likely to face in the playoffs.
Opponents looking to defang the Bucks offense can cross-match wing defenders onto the floor-spacing Lopez, slot bigger defenders onto Kuzma — who was guarded primarily by Quinten Post and Chet Holmgren in the last two games — and have them sag off to clog the paint, daring Milwaukee’s trade-deadline acquisition to knock down enough perimeter shots to beat them. He’s 27-for-88 from 3-point range (30.7%) and 38-for-120 on jumpers overall (31.7%) since the trade deadline — a level of ineffectiveness that will only embolden opposing defenses to continue cranking up the pressure on Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Lopez when the games matter most. And, at this stage, they all matter most.
Milwaukee’s West Coast road trip continues Thursday with a matchup with the Lakers, who rank 11th in defensive efficiency for the full season and third since acquiring Luka Dončić, who will miss the Bucks game. The Bucks enter Thursday’s action at 38-30, a game behind the Pacers for fourth place in the West, and in a virtual tie for fifth with the surging Pistons, fresh off a buzzer-beating game-winner by Cade Cunningham on Wednesday. If Rivers, Antetokounmpo and Lillard can’t find answers to pull the Bucks out of their offensive malaise, it could cost them home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs — and potentially drop them all the way down to the sixth seed and a matchup with a Knicks team that has blown Milwaukee out in both of their meetings this season.
“It’s everything,” Rivers said after the Warriors loss. “We’re missing shots too, but we don’t have the right spacing. The ball’s not moving. We’re not attacking. We’re not getting to the paint. I got a whole list. But we gotta do it, and I gotta get them to do it. That’s my job.”
