2 weeks Ago
INDIANAPOLIS — Following his team’s 117-98 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Saturday, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers wanted to focus on his team’s poor offensive performance. When asked about his team’s defensive performance, Rivers talked about the symbiotic relationship between offense and defense and how poor offensive execution led to poor defensive play. Advertisement So, let’s start at the beginning.
With a layup through contact, Giannis Antetokounmpo brought the Bucks to within one point, 19-18, with 5:46 remaining in the first quarter. In the first six minutes and 14 seconds, the Bucks scored on nine of their first 13 possessions through made shots or made free throws. That means that, following Rivers’ logic, the Bucks were overwhelmingly given the chance to set their defense in the first six minutes to start the game, and thus they should have been executing at a high level defensively as well.
That was not the case. The Bucks’ defensive work in the first six minutes was rife with errors, poor execution and questionable design. And it started with the game’s opening tip.
It may not matter who gets the game’s first possession. Some teams may prefer to open the second and third quarters with the ball instead of the first quarter. But the game’s first 50-50 ball went to the Pacers with Andrew Nembhard securing a loose ball bouncing in the middle of three Bucks.
It would be a sign of things to come. To open the game, the Bucks deviated from their normal matchups throughout the season and put Ryan Rollins, starting in place of Damian Lillard, on Tyrese Haliburton. That put Taurean Prince on Aaron Nesmith and Kyle Kuzma on Nembhard to open the game.
Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez stuck with their normal matchups of Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner, respectively. The first Pacers possession ended in a 3 for Turner, which is a poor result for the Bucks, but it is important to note the process that created that 3. It was not the pick-and-pop action between Haliburton and Turner, which we featured in our series preview .
It was a pick-and-pop with Nembhard and Turner, an action that should never result in a catch-and-shoot 3 for Turner. Why? Nembhard was a 29.1 percent 3-point shooter this past season.
He is a playoff riser, but ultimately, Nembhard doesn’t want to score his points shooting 3s behind screens. He wants to get to the rim. And that is why Lopez gave Kuzma the space to go underneath the screen.
That is not what happened. Not only did Kuzma get caught on both the screen and re-screen from Turner, but Kuzma also attempted to go over the top of the second screen. That gave Nembhard a runway to the rim, which forced Lopez to help and left Turner a wide-open look at a catch-and-shoot 3 to open the game.
Part of the appeal of starting Prince and Kuzma together — each out of position — is supposed to be their size. Going underneath screens against Nembhard would be a good way to leverage that size and make it tough for him to get to the rim, but failing to execute that coverage left Kuzma chasing a quicker player. Advertisement “I feel like we just weren’t ourselves, we weren’t physical, we weren’t playing to our advantage,” Bucks guard AJ Green said after the game.
“So just kind of game plan, execution, knowing what we need to do, but not doing it as well as we should, so we gotta clean that up.” But that first possession was only the start of the Bucks’ defensive miscues. Keep an eye on Prince during the Bucks’ second defensive possession.
The Pacers preyed on Prince’s expectations and fooled him. Indiana used Nesmith to set a double screen for Haliburton in situations similar to this one above in their regular-season matchups, but Nesmith never set a screen. He sprinted out to the wing, and Prince started to defend Haliburton, despite Rollins getting through the screen and being in a strong defensive possession.
Nesmith missed that catch-and-shoot 3 badly, but the possession was a significant breakdown of the Bucks’ defense. After a layup from Antetokounmpo, the Bucks got another “stop” defensively on their fourth defensive possession, but it had little to do with their execution. It was another great example of a defensive breakdown, as Kuzma and Prince botched a switch on a dribble handoff on the right wing.
Two defensive possessions later, the Pacers took advantage of a coverage that the Bucks appeared to execute correctly. That the Bucks did something correctly and it resulted in a wide-open corner 3 suggests that the Bucks may need to rethink what they’re trying to do defensively. Even though Antetokounmpo made another layup immediately before this possession, the Bucks got cross-matched in transition.
With Kuzma on Haliburton, the Bucks executed a switch. While Antetokounmpo stayed in front of Haliburton, Lopez communicated another switch that put Kuzma on Turner, the most immediate perimeter threat. That left Antetokounmpo in isolation on Haliburton, who danced for a bit and then drove to the rim.
Lopez is expected to protect the rim, so Milwaukee’s big man left the corner to protect it. But before Game 2 on Tuesday, the Bucks are going to have to reconsider if this is a situation where Lopez needs to help: Antetokounmpo is running side-by-side with Haliburton on that drive. He may be able to handle that situation himself, especially since the Bucks know what Haliburton is trying to do every game.
“He’s an interesting kid, because he’s more than just a scorer,” Rivers said after Haliburton put up 10 points, seven rebounds and 12 assists on Saturday. “On the nights that he sees that they’re taking stuff away, he’s smart enough to feel that and just make plays for his teammates. I thought he was very happy doing that.
Advertisement “But he’s a point guard. And I thought he had a hell of a game personally, even though he didn’t score. He still got everybody involved, and that’s just as dangerous.
” As Game 2 approaches, Rivers must decide what he wants his team to do with Haliburton, because his drives regularly splintered the Bucks’ defensive structure. Here was another early example of Haliburton not getting all that close to the rim, but Lopez still helping and compromising the entire defense: Prince did a nice job helping off Nesmith and taking away an open 3 from Turner, but Lopez was recovering from too far away, and the Bucks’ rotations could not cover for the defense getting broken down early by giving up a bucket on a goaltend. These clips show situations where a defense would normally collapse and try to take away looks at the rim, but maybe the Bucks need to change their normal rules with Haliburton, as it may be worth deviating from what they might normally do to keep Haliburton from getting his teammates involved.
After the game, Antetokounmpo told reporters he had some ideas about what the Bucks need to do differently on defense for Game 2 but didn’t want to share those ideas because the Pacers might hear his comments. The Bucks’ superstar forward did admit that the Bucks did not perform well in Game 1. “I think we were late,” Antetokounmpo said.
“We were getting ourselves in a lot of scramble mode, which they were able to get downhill and create for the next guy. And then we were just in scramble modes. “That’s what they want you to do.
And then they kind of break our defense and create way more open 3s and guys getting downhill to the paint. ..
.We didn’t have enough urgency. Going to Game 2, hopefully we can improve that, or we can change that.
We’ll see.” Sign up to get The Bounce , the essential NBA newsletter from Zach Harper and The Athletic staff, delivered free to your inbox. (Photo of Kyle Kuzma and Andrew Nembhard: Trevor Ruszkowski / Imagn Images).
