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MILWAUKEE — In five seasons with former coach Mike Budenholzer, Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez completely flipped outside perceptions of his defensive abilities. In the summer of 2018, when Lopez signed with the Bucks on the biannual exception after one season with the Los Angeles Lakers, much of the league believed he was an offensive-first player who was either a defensive liability or a slow-footed center who may struggle to survive in a modern NBA, where offenses featured heavy pick-and-roll usage.
After one season in Milwaukee, the assumption proved to be false.
In Budenholzer’s defensive scheme, Lopez quickly turned into one of the league’s best rim protectors and a vital anchor for the Bucks’ league-best defense. He became a master of exploiting the NBA’s defensive rules, finding not only a way to seemingly never leave the area around the rim but also boisterously calling out everything the offense was doing to help his teammates prepare for their opponents’ next move.
After a decade in the NBA, Lopez put together three of the five best shot-blocking seasons of his career, made two All-Defensive teams and finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2023. With Lopez back in a deep drop coverage against pick-and-rolls, the Bucks excelled defensively with the partnership between Lopez and Budenholzer serving as one of the driving forces for that success.
“We had a special relationship, and Bud was absolutely one of the people who stuck himself out for me when I needed help,” Lopez said on media day. “When my career was at a point where I needed someone to reach out for me, he was there for me. He’s a very special person to me, a very important person to me. We got to talk a few times this summer, and I let him know how much I appreciated him.”
Budenholzer, though, is no longer Milwaukee’s head coach, replaced by Adrian Griffin. With a new coach comes new roles, opportunities, expectations and, as Lopez detailed on media day, a brand new energy in the building.
“It’s definitely exciting to have coach Griff here,” Lopez said. “A fresh feeling. First-time head coach, so that’s really energy you can’t fabricate in any other sort of way.
“He’s just so excited to be here, finally achieve one of his goals, one of his dreams, so we’re lucky to be a part of that. That’s energy, feel you can’t get anywhere else. I think that’s going to be a huge benefit for us and something we can all feed off.”
While fresh energy may help reinvigorate the Bucks after two disappointing postseasons after the team’s NBA championship in 2021, the change in coaches also means the Bucks will be making tactical changes.
In the five years Budenholzer executed his defensive vision in Milwaukee, Griffin put together a very different plan for the Toronto Raptors. A cursory glance over each team’s leaguewide rankings in the “four factors” numbers shows how drastically the two systems differed.
Effective FG%Turnover %O-Rebound %FT Rate
Bucks
Raptors
Bucks
Raptors
Bucks
Raptors
Bucks
Raptors
2018-19
2nd
4th
24th
9th
3rd
18th
1st
8th
2019-20
1st
2nd
24th
2nd
1st
21st
6th
15th
2020-21
16th
20th
24th
1st
3rd
28th
1st
30th
2021-22
19th
18th
26th
1st
2nd
23rd
2nd
21st
2022-23
1st
29th
30th
1st
2nd
16th
2nd
25th
(Note: In 2004, Dean Oliver, considered to be “the godfather of basketball analytics” by some, published the book “Basketball on Paper.” In that book, he identified “four factors of basketball success” and the best ways to measure those things: effective field goal percentage, turnover percentage, offensive rebounding percentage and free-throw rate. Coaches may disagree on the best way to balance those four things to win basketball games, but it is an undeniably useful shorthand to see how different teams approach the offensive and defensive end of the floor.)
In Griffin’s first two seasons in Toronto, the Raptors excelled at forcing turnovers and keeping opponents’ effective field goal percentage low. As the Raptors lost some of their rim protectors and instead experimented with more “positionless” basketball without a traditional big man, the Raptors’ main focus became forcing as many turnovers as possible. In their quest to become an elite turnover-forcing defense, the Raptors sent opponents to the free-throw line more often and also saw opponents’ effective field goal percentage rise.
This was quite different from the Bucks under Budenholzer, who essentially did everything in their power to limit opponents’ effective field goal percentage by denying shots at the rim and forcing opponents to shoot midrange looks and above-the-break 3s, then tried to dominate the glass and foul as little as possible.
Since taking the job in Milwaukee, Griffin has talked about how he wants the Bucks to be more aggressive defensively. He discussed some of the details of his vision following Thursday’s practice.
“Some of it is a little different, but at the end of the day, it’s what you’re willing to live with and what you don’t want to give up,” Griffin said. “So, we have our non-negotiables as far as the rim, layups, no dunks and with Brook and (Bobby Portis’) size, they’re gonna be great. Brook probably has more size than Bobby, but he can still protect the rim — verticals, verticalities at the rim — and then in pick-and-rolls, just a little different. They’ll probably be up a little higher.
“I think the biggest thing is just pressuring the ball. We want to pressure the ball, one through five, and that’s a little different for Brook, who has kind of been the quarterback in the paint, but that’s going to be situational where we’re going to ask him to pressure the ball, but there are times where he’s going to be back. He’s been extremely coachable, so it’s been fun.”
Players also have discussed how that desire to be aggressive has manifested itself.
“It’s always a balance of how physical can you get without fouling,” Bucks forward Khris Middleton said. “Playing against him — against those Toronto teams, those Chicago teams — very physical teams that didn’t foul that much. Great at being in gaps, getting out to shooters, using their bodies and just making it a living hell for us offensively to really get a rhythm, to get to our spots and whatnot. To see that philosophy firsthand and for him to teach us that, I think it could be very useful. We have a lot of great defenders out, I think. Great team defenders also, which I think could benefit us.”
For a team used to defending without fouling, getting more physical with a coach willing to accept those types of fouls will be quite a difference. Those changes could ultimately help the Bucks make their opponents less comfortable on the offensive end.
“It’s been great. The aggression has stepped up,” Lopez said. “With Bud, we were less about deflections, forcing turnovers and stuff like that. It’s definitely different in this regard with this group. I think it’s something that’s infectious. You see someone else do it, and then we’re all riding off it.”
The changes could help the Bucks turn up the pressure, but they are still changes. And it will take time for the Bucks to get used to them. For Lopez, in particular, those changes could end up being drastic.
“It’s definitely been great this week to feel that out,” Lopez said. “Because you see those Toronto teams, they’ve always been about pressure, picking up a little bit more, being in passing lanes, things like that. So, it’s been great to work on that this week. There’s been a lot of talking to coaches, give and take, feeling things out, but it’s been very positive.
“I have been up more in the pick-and-roll, applying a bit more ball pressure for the player that I am, doing things that I can to make his system work for our team to the best of our ability.”
There will be quite a bit of intrigue to see what it all looks like Sunday against the Chicago Bulls in the Bucks’ preseason opener. With the rhetoric surrounding the Bucks’ defense through a week of training camp, it seems fair to think Lopez will not be in deep drop coverage in pick-an-roll coverage like he was in the play below:
“One of our core defensive pillars is ball pressure, so they’ve asked everyone — and by extension, me — to put more pressure on the ball,” Lopez said. “So it’s me stepping out of my comfort zone a little bit, getting up in the (offensive player). So, we might get beat occasionally. That might happen, we’re human, none of us are perfect. So, I think it’s going to be at times, as we feel this out and learn it out, sometimes I’m going to be reliant on the help behind me, which is obviously an inverted situation.”
Asking Lopez to play higher up the floor in pick-and-rolls was going to be a significant change from the moment Griffin was hired in May. The topic has only gotten more compelling in the five months since the hire.
In free agency, former backup point guard Jevon Carter opted to sign with the Chicago Bulls. Carter, while undersized, was one of the league’s most aggressive ball-pressuring point guards last season, picking up opposing point guards for full-court pressure more often than any other player. Days before camp, the Bucks traded away Jrue Holiday, one of the league’s best perimeter defenders, to obtain Damian Lillard, a below-average defender.
While the Bucks now have worse defenders at the point of attack, they are primed to move away from a defensive strategy that might have been able to more easily protected those defenders. Even if he is going to be asked to move higher up the floor and defend more aggressively at the point of attack, Lopez still wants to try to direct his teammates into the right positions and quarterback the defense.
“It’s definitely been learning to do those same jobs and have those same roles in that position,” Lopez said of serving as the Bucks’ on-floor defensive command center. “I still feel like I can do it. It’s something that obviously starts with transition defense and continues, so it’s just a matter of seeing who’s in front of me and knowing who’s behind me when I came up in the pick-and-roll. Just having an idea pretty much. It’s still something I very much take pride in and see as my job.”
(Photo of Brook Lopez: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
Source link : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4937534/2023/10/07/milwaukee-bucks-defense-brook-lopez/
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Publish date : 2023-10-07 07:00:00
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