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Let us begin with a basic truth that undergirds this Milwaukee Bucks-Indiana Pacers playoff series: there are no silver bullets available to these Bucks that aren’t the Pacers shooting well below their averages for the hell of it or Giannis Antetokounmpo returning to the court in relatively good health. I simply don’t see a third way through with the group of players available to coach Doc Rivers that doesn’t heavily involve one of those two scenarios coming into play.
However, we’re a website with a mission to try and strike that fine balance between emotion and analysis to better understand the conundrum the Bucks recurrently find themselves in. What I’d like to do in this article is to pick apart the pieces of the (extremely) small sample size these teams have given us and try to divine feasible responses to the punches thrown so far. While the Bucks cannot control whether guy eight, nine, or ten in Indy’s ideal rotation makes a gazillion wide-open threes out of nowhere, there remain some elements of the game they have a chance to impact. Rather than give in to the very real desire to have a conniption, it may be more instructive to collectively think our way through the issue at hand.
Below are a couple of my initial observations about tactical shifts Rick Carlisle and the Pacers implemented on their way to a big Game 2 victory. I’ll summarize the shift and do my best creative thinking for what Rivers and his players can realistically do in response.
As always, vociferous feedback, commentary, and further ideas are extremely welcome in the comments. Let’s get through this together.
Punch No. 1: Pascal Siakam-Tyrese Haliburton high P&R
This was one of two obvious changes to Indiana’s approach from my spot in the peanut gallery (obvious change number two is next). There was always going to be a risk in assigning Brook Lopez to “cover” Siakam—and by cover, I mean try to bait him into taking as many threes and midrangers as possible while Brook stays home near-ish the paint. That risk came to haunt the Bucks when Indiana stopped furiously screening, forcing hand-offs, and generally running around the perimeter to test Milwaukee’s guards in the hopes of an error in execution the Pacers could take advantage of.
Instead, Indiana was far more deliberate in their perimeter play. Often, that meant Pascal Siakam would get the ball above the break from Haliburton with Lopez half-heartedly moving further from the rim or Haliburton screaming off a pick, pulling two to three defenders into the paint, and whipping a great pass back out to the perimeter. The result through two games isn’t damning insofar as Siakam is scoring a ton (if anyone must get dinged there, I offer up Jae Crowder for sacrifice), but that the Pacers are pretty casually getting some of the most open shots they’ve seen all year:
Indiana Pacers 2023–24 Regular Season Shooting (closest defender):
Indiana Pacers 2024 NBA Playoffs Shooting (closest defender):
Again, EXTREMELY small sample size here, but through a very short series so far, the Pacers are getting more space to shoot on ~12% of their shots versus what they saw during the regular season, with over 10% of those being “wide open”. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that the Pacers haven’t absolutely crucified Milwaukee from out there. The bad news: an eFG% of 62.0% on tight contests. That two-man game between Siakam and Haliburton has a lot to do with what enabled Indiana to take off on Tuesday. When they can shrug off pressure with ease like they did repeatedly in Game 2, it spells trouble for the Bucks.
Counterpunch No. 1: This is a tough ask, but my initial thought is to see if you can find a way to make Haliburton beat you with his scoring rather than overcommitting too many defenders to him when he drives. Instinctually, defenders want to hedge in and help Patrick Beverley because Beverley doesn’t have the agility to even try to maintain defensive pressure on Haliburton from behind, helping Brook Lopez and keeping Lopez’s assignment honest. Besides, if you put Lopez on Myles Turner what would stop Siakam-Haliburton from spamming P&R and going right at—God help them—Bobby Portis in space? It may ultimately come down to pushing Beverley to go generously under screens to avoid worst-case scenarios where Haliburton drives with a head of steam and grabs the rest of the Bucks defense for the ride. That doesn’t eliminate the Siakam danger, but you’ve got to pick your poison, and it turns out they can’t stomach Pascal right now.
Punch No. 2: Damian Lillard hounded for 94 feet every second he is on the floor
Obvious change number two for Carlisle here, and it was Andrew Nembhard given the primary duty which he executed with aplomb having racked up just four fouls. The Bucks did their best to mix things up with Pat Bev, Pat Connaughton, and Khris Middleton taking turns moving the ball up the court, but it never really led to anything consistent. That’s because their acting as a “decoy” wasn’t done hand-in-hand with an action up the court to engage Lillard off the ball and make the Pacers’ defense react. While Lillard’s three-point heroics early were fun to watch, it was glaringly obvious that he was totally gassed by the third quarter and those close shots he crafted late stopped falling completely. If the Bucks can’t or won’t punish the Pacers for selling out two to three defenders up the court an entire game, the Pacers will not let up.
Counterpunch No. 2: One side effect of the pressure thrown at Dame was the precipitous drop in effort exerted when Beverley brought the ball up the court. While it would be deleterious to concede the space to Indiana, there is creative room here to try and involve the entire team in off-ball actions to result in an open catch-and-shoot look for Lillard on occasion to help keep him fresh (i.e. not having to scrap every time he comes up the floor) and to keep the Pacers honest. Reader drowntown had some great insights on this very idea that Golden State implements with Stephen Curry. The Bucks aren’t Golden State (they’re actually in the Playoffs) and Dame is not Curry, but there has to be a more efficient response than using three Bucks at a go to get the ball across the half-court line. Milwaukee shouldn’t be gunning offense anyway, so utilizing secondary guys to help advance play wouldn’t be a waste, especially if it means a better Lillard late.
Punch No. 3: Deny Khris Middleton the ball in all but the most difficult situations
The guy just can’t catch a break. With the offense looking at least passably robust, Khris Middleton inadvertently steps on Siakam’s foot and rolls his ankle. Middleton returned in the second quarter, but is probably dealing with a good bit of swelling today.
All that is to say, a hard job got even harder once he was physically hobbled, and the Pacers followed up their active defense of Dame by turning Aaron Nesmith loose on Khris off-ball. Entry pass denial was something fierce, especially in Khris’s preferred spots at the elbow or short-ish midrange. If he got possession at all, it was likely through wrestling with Nesmith just to end up with his back to the basket about 20 feet out. A recipe for disaster even for a tough shot maestro, and a bad place to start those drives he was so effective with in Game 1 and parts of Game 2.
Counterpunch No. 3: There was a lot of talk (rightfully) about the effort put in to create any semblance of space for Lillard to operate in. Unfortunately for the three other players on the floor, they may need to redouble or redirect those efforts to do the same for Khris as well. That, or consider running a lot more two or three-man sets involving Milwaukee’s two best offensive players to use the modicum of gravity they generate and break a Pacers deadlock open. They have to get creative with Middleton because he is the most creative playmaker available to the team right now. It probably means they’ll need him to dribble a lot more and live with the consequences. They may not have another choice.
Punch No. 4: Don’t look for errors in Bucks switching—instead, allow them to switch into mismatches that play to your strengths
There is a fine balance any coaching staff has to nail when it comes to emphasizing team aggression in switching schemes. Do you hand off your man at every opportunity regardless of the possibility of falling into mismatches? Do you deputize your players to fight like hell through screens in a point-of-attack mindset? Can you find a middle road between these and have players mindful enough to make the right reads for 48 minutes?
In Game 1, the Bucks benefitted from the Pacers’ willingness to keep all their activity at the perimeter. Haliburton had a quiet performance relative to expectations, and when pushed to switch competently, Lillard, Malik Beasley, and Beverley hung in there through aggression and crisp execution. Game 2 saw a shift in approach from Indiana that brought Milwaukee’s perimeter defense right back down to Earth.
Rather than run Milwaukee’s guards in circles, they run right at them off single screens.
The result was as you’d expect. Beverley couldn’t keep up with Haliburton, the next man up down the chain was too hesitant or too eager to provide help defense, and a pass or two later saw yet another Pacer open to bomb away. Not only that, but Indiana also began running off-ball screens to get switches into great matchups for which Milwaukee had no solution. Think Siakam-Lillard, a matchup that came up via chaos defense that was moving faster than it could think or recover. Like a fine judo fighter, the Pacers took Milwaukee’s tendency to momentum and threw the whole system off-kilter by relying upon their predictability.
Counterpunch No. 4: As far as personnel goes, there is no fix for this that isn’t largely reliant upon the players being far more connected as a unit as a game wears on. Lillard has proven himself willing to be active in passing lanes and on the perimeter, but the Bucks can’t fall into the game of handing off a ticking time bomb down the line until it is in the hands of the player least capable of defusing it. For it to work, the key pieces are Bobby Portis and Khris Middleton as help guys. Bobby must dial back how much he hedges P&R coverage (and push himself to recover to his man far quicker than he’s ever done before) and Khris may have to dig deep to be the key size equalizer on select possessions. So far Crowder has been a zero and isn’t a solution. Malik Beasley gives effort, so if he can remember to play team basketball you can give him a try too. But barring Andre Jackson Jr. getting dusted off the shelf out of nowhere the fix has to come from within the starting group.
Punch No. 5: Let Bobby Portis wear himself out
Live by Bobby, die by Bobby. Is that enough for a season mantra?
You always ride the finest of lines with Portis. When he’s the fourth-order scorer you can readily live with how wildly he runs hot and cold. When he’s sometimes promoted to option number two, you better pray he makes even a handful of the fifteen shots he’s bound to get up come hell or high water (or advisability of shot).
It isn’t even so much the shooting that kills you with Portis—it is how wound up he gets in the course of a game leading him to put blinders on at the exact wrong time. When the Bucks have hit a vein of momentum and look prepared to even the score or even take the lead off a hard-fought comeback, you can almost feel Portis’ will to be the final payoff guy through your screen hundreds of miles away. Sometimes he does just that off a great team set that demands he simply receive a final pass and put in the easy lay-up. Too often it has him gunning threes or taking on an individual defender like his name is at stake rather than the team’s best interests on a given possession.
Add in a Pacers team that quite obviously riles Portis up unlike many other opponents in the league and it is a recipe for a fiery ride prone to burning you.
Counterpunch No. 5: Tough love might do the trick. In the wake of Tuesday’s loss, Doc Rivers commented along the lines of his disappointment in the team’s “shot discipline.” Beasley was a candidate here, but the same rule can readily apply to Portis on any given night. It is unfortunate that there are no feasible tertiary options if you were to pull Bobby from the floor the second he starts going rogue (and harming the team), but you may need to in Game 3 to get through to him the wider team sets that will ultimately place both he and the group in the best position to succeed. I don’t envy Doc the task of reining things in without loss of roster composure, but you can’t have Portis contribute to shooting you out of things. Dial it in or take a seat.
This is a fast and loose set of thoughts and conclusions, and I’ve surely missed plenty more that the readership picked up on watching Game 2. Whether the Bucks are capable of following through on the adjustments needed or even finding better ideas is an open question that will be answered this Friday.
Either that or Giannis Antetokounmpo makes a miraculous return to the lineup, able to go from sitting to a dead-on sprint. That’d be one hell of a counterpunch.
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Publish date : 2024-04-25 07:00:00
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