Bucks are ready for difficult stretch
Every NBA player and every coach knows exactly when the all-star break is. It's an anticipated oasis during the 82-game grind that's circled on everyone's calendar and they look forward to the day it arrives.
As focused as the Milwaukee Bucks (32-25) were on the respite of the past week, they've also been keenly attuned to what awaits them on the other side.
Beginning at 6:30 p.m. Friday against the Eastern Conference-leading Toronto Raptors at the Air Canada Centre, the Bucks will kick off one of their most challenging and critical stretches of the season.
“We’ve just got to regroup as a team," Giannis Antetokounmpo said of coming back strong from
the all-star break. "We definitely know that things were going well, so we’ve just got to come in, be locked in; we can’t be messing around and joking around because this 25-game stretch is really important for our team. We’ve just got to make a push right here.”
The Bucks went into the break as winners of 9 of their past 12 games. During that stretch, they went 8-0 against teams with sub-.500 records.
Milwaukee will be seeing little of those types of teams the rest of the season.
"These 25 games we’re playing good teams," Antetokounmpo said. "Usually when you play teams below .500 they usually, in these situations, are tanking. … But now we’re playing good teams. We’ve got to be mentally prepared.”
The stretch run throws the Bucks right into the fire with nine games in 15 days without two consecutive days off until March 10-11. During that stretch, they'll play eight teams in a row that are either in the playoffs or very close to it before finishing up with a match-up against the New York Knicks on March 9.
To this point in the season, the Bucks are 12-19 against teams with .500 records or above.
“We had a nice little stretch where we got some wins early on, so now this is our tough stretch. We’re ready for it," center John Henson said.
“This is the time we need to be picking it up. I mean, what seven weeks (until) the playoffs start? Something like that. It’s no time to kind of chill. We’ve got to start pulling together and getting in our best form and hopefully, we can start doing that.”
The stretch begins with Milwaukee's final game against Toronto this season. The Bucks lost the first two match-ups, their fourth and fifth defeats in a row to the Raptors dating back to last season's playoffs.
This season, Toronto's become the best team in the East thanks to an offensive revamp that's landed it in fourth in offensive efficiency. The Raptors' ball movement has been great, their depth has been stellar and their shooting — buoyed by DeMar DeRozan stretching his range beyond the three-point line — has been lethal. Combine all of that with further improvement on defense and the Raptors have become an even more formidable force.
While they would never say they're looking ahead, the Bucks recognize Friday's challenge is just the tip of the iceberg.
For the Bucks to keep up during this grind, they're going to have to find a way to translate their recent defensive success against a weaker, friendlier schedule into consistency against some of the league's best teams.
During their first 11 games under interim coach Joe Prunty, the Bucks held the No. 1 defensive rating in the league while going 9-2 in that span. The nine wins, though, were against eight sub.500 teams and the Philadelphia 76ers without Joel Embiid. The losses were to playoff teams — the Minnesota Timberwolves and Miami Heat.
Then, right before the all-star break, any talk of improvement on defense was swept away by a 134-point barrage, including 24 three-pointers, by the Denver Nuggets last Thursday.
“For us, we have to keep the same mindset that we’ve had for most of those games," Prunty said. "As evidenced by the last one, defensively we missed a lot of things. We have to make sure we’re sharp defensively on our system and on our game plan.”
The schedule-makers did throw the Bucks a bone, though. Their stretch of nine games in 15 days includes six games at the BMO Harris Bradley where they're 19-10 this season compared to 1315 on the road.
Taking advantage of these home opportunities is the team's main objective, especially considering Milwaukee will only play at the Bradley Center six times over the season's final month.
“We’ve definitely got to take care of business at home," Henson said. "You figure if you can get to 45, 47 wins fairly quickly then we can kind of cruise from there and try to rest guys and kind of lock in our seeding. I think that’s kind of the goal we need to have.”
The road to the playoffs, with the Bucks just one game out of home-court advantage in the first round, kicks off Friday. While the challenge will be great against the Raptors, the Bucks recognize the need to hit the ground running to begin the final stretch of the marathon.
“Like we talked about with Jabari (Parker) coming back from injury, he’s got to get a timing and a rhythm. Well, we now have to get that back as a team," Prunty said. "How quickly we can do that, how sharp we can get, that will determine how much success we have.”