Looking to get it back in gear
Bucks focused on playing at high level
Now that the regular season is done, the Milwaukee Bucks have taken their brief pre-playoff intermission to focus one team and one team only. You might be surprised to hear it’s actually not the Orlando Magic, their first-round opponent.
No, the top-seeded Bucks aren’t thinking as far ahead as Tuesday afternoon. They’re not yet back in the one-game-at-a-time mentality. Right now, they’re just looking in the mirror, focusing on the only team that matters at the moment – themselves and how to get back to playing at the level they know they can.
“We probably even backed it up a step more today and just, you know, I think it’s about us,” coach Mike Budenholzer said after Saturday’s practice. “We have to be in a good place and really focus on the areas where we can improve and be the best no matter who we’re playing . ... We’re almost more focused on just how we can be our best and that will give us our best chance in Game 1.”
After going 53-12 in 65 games before the NBA went into a COVID-19-induced hiatus in March, the Bucks went just 3-5 in their eight seeding games in the Walt Disney World “bubble.” Their offense looked sloppier, their defense less cohesive and in general never got back into a clear rhythm.
Some of that had to do with the Bucks sticking to their plan of managing minutes to safeguard against injuries going into the playoffs. In the relatively few minutes its top players spent together on the court, Milwaukee generally approached its high-level of play from during the season.
But there’s no denying the Bucks weren’t quite themselves in the seeding games. For Bucks star and reigning MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, who Saturday was named the NBA’s allseeding games second team, the losing wasn’t all that frustrating. That’s part of basketball. However, the experience during that time was unsettling for a different reason.
“It was frustrating because at times I think we wasn’t ourselves,” said Antetokounmpo, adding that it was also frustrating to have to watch Thursday’s game from his hotel room – and lose “a lot of money” as a result of a league suspension for headbutting Washington Wizards forward Moritz Wagner.
“Wasn’t moving the ball as much as I wanted. Wasn’t moving the ball as much as Coach Bud wants us to move the ball. Wasn’t defending as hard . ... But yeah, this is over. This is in the past. It’s playoff time.”
Since it’s playoff time, the Bucks
went back to the drawing board with a solid practice session Saturday. Point guard Eric Bledsoe noted that the practice had a different gravity to it, with everyone – players and coaches alike – locking in just a little bit more as they scrimmaged and went through drills and game situations.
One of the themes of the day was that getting back to normal starts with practice.
“We can’t go in worrying about how we’re going to play in Game 1, we’ve just got to come out starting in practice working on creating good habits,” Bledsoe said. “I think we’re doing that and we’re going to be fine going into Game 1.”
Getting back to the way they were playing earlier in the season will be paramount if the Bucks are going to achieve the goals they’ve laid out for themselves. Their run to the Eastern Conference finals last season and dominant regular season have them positioned as the favorite to win the East and among the favorites to take home an NBA title.
In order to climb that mountain, though, they’re going to have to take things one step at a time, even if, like Budenholzer said, the move for today needed to be momentarily stepping back.
The Bucks know their system works. They believe in their five-out offense. They believe in their dropscheme defense, which was far and away the best in the league prior to the hiatus. They believe in their talent, depth and experience.
Now they just need to find it within themselves to recapture what they had all those months ago in the regular season and turn it into 16 wins over the next couple of months. The first step to doing that is blocking out everything else and thinking about just one team – the Milwaukee Bucks.
“I don’t think anybody on this team right now is thinking about if you’re 16 wins away from winning a championship, we just try to focus on ourselves,” Antetokounmpo said. “How we can get better? How can we play good basketball? ...
“We’ve got to go out there, w got to compete, we got to play hard, we got to take pride in what we’re doing and hopefully we can leave this place with a smile on our face.”