Bucks can find benefits in their big loss to 76ers
PHILADELPHIA – The visiting locker room at Wells Fargo Center was quiet in the aftermath of the Milwaukee Bucks’ 121-109 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday.
The Bucks had just wrapped up their worst performance of the season, trailing by as many as 29 points before making the game respectable over the final minutes. It had happened against a 76ers team that many expect to be their toughest competition in the Eastern Conference come playoff time, an idea that gained credence with every big play by Joel Embiid or 76ers threepointer that swished through the net.
And worse for the Bucks, everything had transpired on one of the NBA’s biggest regular-season stages, with all eyes on them as the only game on during the league’s five-game Christmas Day slate.
Amid the silence of the locker room, Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo met with the media, the last player still in the room. Coming off his worst shooting game of the season and
sporting a red, swollen right eye, Antetokounmpo had every reason to embrace the kind of gloom and doom, what-haveyou-done-for-me-lately notions often found on social media.
But he went the opposite way. To him, a game like this was exactly what the Bucks needed.
“I feel like in life you’re always in the right moment at the right time. God put you in the situation you go through every day,” Antetokounmpo said. “I think we had to go through this today. We had to be down 30. We had to have our character tested today because, as I’ve said in the past, the only way you get better is when you face adversity.
“I feel like our team is going to be better. I feel like going into to tonight’s game we had a lot of confidence in ourselves, which is good, but at the end of the day, we’ve got to bring it every night. And we’ve done that in the past, but we didn’t do it tonight.
“From now on, we know that we can be down 30, so we got to get our stuff together and keep believing in ourselves, keep having that high confidence, keep working on our game, keep getting better individually and as a team.”
The message of continuing to get better, learn and grow has been a constant refrain from Antetokounmpo, Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer and the rest of the team. It’s been spoken on a daily basis both at practices and games, win or lose.
That theme cropped up when the Bucks opened the season with a win in Houston. It came up again after losses to the Miami Heat, Boston Celtics, Utah Jazz and Dallas Mavericks. After bigtime home wins over the Los Angeles Clippers and Lakers, the Bucks didn’t rest on their laurels or accentuate their success. Instead they just offered the reminder that each was just one, regularseason win and that they’ll need to improve more as their season goes on to be their best at the end.
So while Wednesday’s humbug performance swirled up doubts about the Bucks’ potential as an Eastern Conference contender and their inadequacies relative to the 76ers, none of that pierced the quiet conversations of the Bucks’ locker room.
“The only one that says that is you guys,” Bucks guard George Hill said. “To us, it means nothing. It’s one game. We didn’t shoot the ball well, we didn’t play well and you get those games, but it doesn’t define our team, it doesn’t say anything negative about us. They just outplayed us today.”
As the Bucks continue their holiday week with a trip to Atlanta for a 6:30 p.m. game against the Hawks on Friday, they’ll certainly look back at Wednesday’s game to glean whatever they can from the loss.
Yes, the 76ers had an outlier shooting performance, tying a franchise record with 21 three-pointers on 44 shots, but what could the Bucks have done better defensively? They switched to zone for the first time this season, something they felt worked all right.
“A lot of credit to Philly. They played really well today, they shot the ball really well, a lot of individual guys stepped up,”
Budenholzer said. “As crazy as it is, their 68 points or 58 or whatever it was at half, I don’t think our defense was great but I don’t think it was terrible. …
“I love the character they showed, the fight they showed including in the zone. I think it’s something we haven’t used a lot, so whether it be against this team where a lot of teams have been zoning these guys lately or just in general to have something we can use to give us an opportunity, it’s a good thing.”
Speaking of outlier shooting performances, Antetokounmpo won’t always go 8 of 27. He had never before missed more than 18 shots in a game. After shooting 44.4% on 5.4 three-pointers per game in December, Antetokounmpo missed all seven of his tries from long range.
As Antetokounmpo has said many times before, though, he’s not going to stop shooting.
“He’s growing and developing both his confidence and comfort level as a three-point shooter,” Budenholzer said. “Some nights he’s going to make 5 out of 8 and some nights he’s going to go 1 for 6 or 1 for 7 and we want him to keep shooting and that’s part of his growth and we’re excited about how he’s going to grow.”
It’s not often the Bucks are going to have to weather nights when Antetokounmpo is off to this magnitude, but they believe it’s important for them to have that experience. While the numbers are propped up by stats accrued in the fourth quarter after the 76ers had largely eased up, the Bucks finished Wednesday’s game shooting 54.4% outside of Antetokounmpo, including 50% on three-pointers.
That’s not something the Bucks want to experience every game, but it’s something they can build on and building is their goal. While their Christmas performance will surely bring questions and doubts from all sides, the Bucks know that playoff series and championships aren’t won in December.
There’s still plenty of time and plenty of games to go.
“It’s good. This is good. I like it,” Antetokounmpo said. “Obviously, I don’t like losing, but I think sometimes when you lose this way you get better as a team.”