After a rough 1-3 start to the season, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks needed a win — and the basketball gods lined one up for them Thursday night. A rested Bucks team was about to take on a Memphis squad on the second night of a back-to-back with six players out, including starters Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart.
The result? The Bucks got blown out by 23 points in a game they never led after three minutes and were never within 10 points by midway through the second quarter.
Milwaukee has now dropped four in a row, is 1-4 on the season, and has the third-worst net rating in the league (-8.2) thanks to a 24th-ranked offense and defense. Antetokounmpo was spot on when he said, “Right now, we don’t have an identity,” and Khris Middleton returning from surgery on both ankles isn’t going to fix things.
It may be a small sample size, but it’s time to start reaching for the panic button in Milwaukee.
WHAT IS WRONG?
Plenty. But it starts with this:
Missed jump shots and lousy transition defense are a losing combination.
Milwaukee is just flat-out missing shots. Against Memphis, the Bucks were 9-of-42 from 3 (21.4%), and for the season they are shooting 33.3% overall from beyond the arc and 28% on above-the-break 3s. It’s not just 3-pointers either, the Bucks are shooting 35.1% on jump shots this season (any shot outside the paint). They are shooting just 33.9% on shots in the floater range (inside the paint but outside the restricted area). If they don’t get to the rim, they don’t score, at least not consistently.
Now combine that with a 154.1 defensive net rating in transition, second worst in the league, and you have a real problem — the Bucks are missing shots, opponents are grabbing the board, racing out and scoring in transition.
“The defensive transition was still awful tonight and so that’s on me. Everything is on me until we get it right,” Coach Doc Rivers said postgame. “We gotta fix this.”
Rivers’ bigger problem may be the book is out on how to attack Milwaukee’s defense — bully Damian Lillard and other Bucks guards (as Zach Lowe noted). The defensive rotations behind them have not been sharp, but there are places to attack Milwaukee now and teams are going at them.
DAMIAN LILLARD’S SLUMP
Opening night, against an undermanned Philadelphia squad, Damian Lillard looked like he was back, hitting 6-of-12 3-pointers on his way to 30 points.
Contrast that with Thursday night, when Lillard shot 1-of-12 from 3 and finished with four points against the Grizzlies. If it were just one game we could wave it off, but since opening night Lillard has shot 6-of-33 from beyond the arc. He is slumping, and the Antetokounmpo/Lillard pick-and-roll everyone thought would be unstoppable is not connecting like it needs to.
Milwaukee’s issues are more extensive than just Lillard or Middleton being out — they are not sharing the ball, there is little motion in the offense and things are just flat on that end. Milwaukee used to have a defense that carried them through those rough offensive patches, but despite the best efforts of Brook Lopez — who has some bounce in his step to start this season — Milwaukee looks out of sync on both ends.
It’s ugly. This is one of the teams under the most pressure this season and if things don’t turn around quickly that pressure will only build, which leads to…
GIANNIS TRADE RUMORS ARE STARTING
We predicted before the season that trade rumors about Giannis Antetokounmpo would start once the Bucks began to struggle, league sources telling NBC Sports he was on everyone’s “watch list.” We just didn’t expect the noise to start the second week of the season.
Already the rumors are circulating — via the well-connected Bill Reiter of CBS Sports — that “teams are circling — and hopeful” and that the Heat and Nets are at the top of the list. You can be sure Golden State would be interested, too, and willing to throw Jonathan Kuminga in the deal.
To be fair, Antetokounmpo signed a contract extension with Milwaukee just a season ago — after he decided the Lillard trade was evidence ownership and the front office was committed to winning — but the ultra-competitive Antetokounmpo is not a patient man. After the ugly loss to Memphis, he sounded like a guy trying to figure things out where he is, not move on, via Jim Owczarski of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“Losing, it’s frustrating, but we are doing the right things. Like (Wednesday) night we arrived in Memphis and we came together as a team, watched film. Not as eight, nine guys that play. We watched film, we talk about, like what can we do better? What we’re not doing as good, let’s keep one another accountable. We’re doing the right thing…
“This is part of the season it’s not going our way. But, losing two, losing three, losing four, losing five, losing six in row; losing one, it’s always frustrating. But, again, my dad used to say, ‘why do (you) whine if you’re not going to give up?’ So I’m not going to give up.”
Milwaukee is not about to trade Antetokounmpo unless he asks out and right now that is not on the table. Even if he does, with that contract extension the Bucks have leverage to drag things out. Still, the pressure is mounting and the idea that Antetokounmpo could ask out is not ridiculous.
Especially if the Bucks don’t turn things around and start winning some games.
