Bucks are banking on defensive effort
Thursday night, the Milwaukee Bucks lost their fifth-straight game, 11096, to the Toronto Raptors.
It was their lowest-scoring output of the season as the Raptors had harangued Khris Middleton with double teams and the Bucks made 10 of 34 three-point attempts (29.4%). Yet after the game, the team saw a way to make victory tangible through the incorporeal.
“The response and the energy, the effort, the chip on the shoulder – we gotta make sure we have that every single night,” Bucks guard Pat Connaughton said Thursday. “I think that’s something that we took a step in the right direction tonight. As far as a response, I think it took us a few too many games to have that response, but it’s something that we can build upon and we truly intend on building upon tomorrow.”
Sure enough, the Bucks allowed a season-low 85 points to Oklahoma City to stop the losing streak Friday. And, somewhat quietly, the Bucks have snuck into the top-10 in defensive rating (No. 9 at 110.4).
“Pat’s right – we had good energy (Thursday), especially on the defensive end, and I definitely think it carried over (Friday) right from jump,” center Brook Lopez said.
“You guys are probably tired of it but we’ve been saying this little stretch has been tough but it’s also been good for us.
It’s kind of helped us learn about the new guys, learn about our returning guys, help both groups kind of gel a bit more especially on the defensive end. Whoever we put out there we’re going to be good offensively. I think it’s been good for us to kind of create a sort of (a) similar, new identity with the same results, but with a new group.”
As they’ve searched for that defensive identity, some flaws have been exposed.
Milwaukee is sixth in defending shots inside eight feet of the rim (55.3% opponent shooting) but 24th in defending the three-point line (38.3%). They have allowed the fourth-most wide open three-point attempts (the nearest defender being six feet or more away) in the league at 19.3 per game and opponents are hitting 42.7% of those. They are 17th in points allowed (112.0).
“I think the best way to put it for us is we’re trying to figure it out,” Middleton said after the Thursday loss to Toronto. “That’s really all I can say about it.”
They did so, at least for one night, against Oklahoma City.
For some perspective, the Thunder had already beaten the Bucks once on the streak and are the second-worst team in the Western Conference. But a win is a win and the effort defensively allowed the Bucks to catch a breath while the offense continues to stutter.
Head coach Mike Budenholzer acknowledged the team was in an offensive funk after Thursday’s game and said Friday felt like the team was in mud. And the numbers matched how it looked: Over the last six games the Bucks have averaged 109.2 points per game.
Within that, the issue which the Bucks would go several minutes without being able to score returned. Earlier in the season they would either string stops together or score at a rapid rate to mitigate those droughts.
Over the last six games, however, both solutes were harder to come by. In every game of the losing streak they suffered through long stretches either with no points, or just a few, as leads fell away and deficits climbed.
When asked about those issues, Budenholzer and Giannis Antetokounmpo said getting stops would create points, but in that stretch the defense could not be relied on to do so.
“We gotta trust,” Antetokounmpo said of the team defense. “We’ve got to trust one another, we gotta trust our coach, trust our system. We’re trying to improve. We’re trying to improve. That’s all. We’re trying to improve.
"Obviously, we had a system that was working but we didn’t get to where we wanted to get. And now we’re just tweaking stuff so we’ve just got to trust ourselves, trust what we’re about, trust our system, trust our philosophy.
“At the end of the day you can change stuff, you can tweak stuff but at the end of the day you’ve got to do it with some urgency, some effort behind it. I would say trust, and try to put effort behind whatever you do.”
In the streak-snapping win over Oklahoma City, they did.
Milwaukee went 3:03 to end the first quarter without a point and scored five points through the opening 6:52 of the fourth quarter. But, this time, the defense remained stout and the Bucks finally hit a few timely baskets to win.
More than one thing has to go wrong to lose five straight and the Bucks fell victim to that over the last week and a half. And, a singular victory over an inferior team doesn’t mean those issues are fixed.
But if the Bucks could point to their competitive spirit and effort as a reason for breaking the losing streak, perhaps they’ll have to rely on that to jumpstart the next winning one.