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For the last five seasons, the Milwaukee Bucks have been one of the best defensive teams in the NBA.
Under former coach Mike Budenholzer, the team never finished lower than seventh in defensive rating in seasons in which center Brook Lopez was healthy. Even for the 2021-22 season in which Lopez played in just 13 of a possible 82 games, the Bucks finished 14th in the category.
In Adrian Griffin’s first season in Milwaukee, Milwaukee has seen a dramatic defensive decline. As of Thursday morning, the Bucks are 20th in defensive rating, giving up 116.3 points per 100 possessions.
But while moving on from Budenholzer was the first change the Bucks made this offseason, it was far from the only one they made as the team’s changes to the roster were significant, especially regarding the team’s defensive talent.
A few days before training camp, the Bucks swapped starting point guard Jrue Holiday and starting shooting guard Grayson Allen, along with draft assets, to the Portland Trail Blazers for Damian Lillard. Going from a perennial All-Defensive point guard to Lillard is quite a change, but the Bucks also changed their starting shooting guard with Malik Beasley taking Allen’s place and backup point guard with Cameron Payne taking over for Jevon Carter, who signed a three-year, $20 million contract with the Chicago Bulls.
So, with nearly half the season gone, what do we know about the Bucks’ defense? What does it need to improve moving forward? And, more importantly, how could it improve moving forward? To try to help me better understand the defense, I brought in our analytics expert, Seth Partnow.
Nehm: Hey, Seth! Thanks for joining me on this. As I looked through my phone, I saw that I first sent you a text about collaborating on the Bucks’ defense on Dec. 30.
At that point, Milwaukee was sitting at 24-8 and had just beaten the Cleveland Cavaliers to finish up a 3-1 Christmas road trip. But while the Bucks were winning, we both wanted to take a look under the hood of this defense to see what was really going on this season.
Things have not gone well since our initial conversation. In the new year, the Bucks are 1-4. Per NBA.com, they have surrendered 122.6 points per 100 possessions which is good for 25th in defensive rating in the month of January.
After those five games, Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo has called out the defense three separate times:
Following the Bucks’ fourth loss to the Indiana Pacers this season, a 142-130 drubbing on Jan. 3: “We cannot let a team score 140 points on us and we’re trying to score 142. You cannot be consistent that way.”
Following the Bucks’ 112-108 loss to the Houston Rockets, where they gave up 66 points in the first half: “Defensively, our effort was not there. There was no pride.”
Following the Bucks’ 132-116 loss to the Utah Jazz: “How many points did they score? 130? Gotta get better, man.”
With roughly half-a-season’s worth of evidence and the Bucks’ recent defensive failures in mind, let’s try to diagnose this team’s defense.
While this might seem a bit counterintuitive, let’s start with what might actually be working for the Bucks defense this season and talk about the man in the middle, Brook Lopez.
For the last five years, when the Bucks defense has not functioned at the highest level possible, my comments section has typically filled up with people wondering about Lopez. At best, commenters wonder if the big man is a viable defender in the postseason, while, at worst, it is something akin to wondering if Lopez is washed and completely unplayable for the rest of his career.
So let’s start there. Last season, Lopez finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting behind a strong season protecting the rim and leading one of the league’s best defenses. One season later, has Lopez regressed? Is he one of the Bucks’ core defensive problems this season?
Partnow: As always it’s hard to separate individual impact from team defensive performance.
Starting from the latter, it’s clear the Bucks do not defend the rim as well as a team as they have in years past. According to Cleaning the Glass, the Bucks are 11th in Opponent Rim Attempt Rate (ORAR), which isn’t terrible, but considering they finished first twice, second once and third once in Lopez’s four complete Bucks seasons — they still finished fifth in 2021-22 when he played only 13 games — that represents a decent decline.
It’s tempting to want to ascribe some of the drop to poor transition defense. Which we’ll get to, but the Bucks are 14th in ORAR in the halfcourt, whereas they finished first twice and second twice in the four Maximum Brook seasons.
Additionally, opponent rim efficiency has ticked up a few points this season as well.
But looking at on/off numbers and more advanced, tracking-based rim protection measures, it’s hard to lay any of this at the feet of Lopez.
Among players with at least 1,000 defensive possessions played, Lopez has contested the second-highest percentage of opponent rim attempts, and among the subset of those players with a reasonable number of contests he has allowed the 12th lowest FG percentage. The result is that on my rim protection “Points Saved” metric, he has provided the third most total value and sixth highest per possession value as a rim protector.
Further, on/off splits per Cleaning the Glass have him in the 95th percentile of the league in terms of lower opponent rim attempt rate with him on the floor and 94th percentile in opponent rim accuracy as compared to when he’s off the floor.
Over his time in Milwaukee, he has consistently put up elite numbers in both measures and has continued to do so this year. This suggests to me that even though the actual on-court numbers aren’t quite as impressive as they have been years past — 74th percentile in opponent rim accuracy and 84th percentile in rim attempt rate with him on the floor — that has more to do with the context around him than Lopez himself.
This is an area where the sharp reduction in the team’s point of attack defensive ability shows up most clearly.
In the past, you and I have talked and written about how a conservative drop scheme operates as sort of a hammer and anvil, where the ball pressure at the point of attack almost forces ballhandlers into the Lopez anvil. Suffice it to say Lillard is not Holiday in that regard. Nor for that matter is Beasley the equivalent of Allen in this regard, though the difference between the two is much smaller than between the point guards.
Nehm: We’ll get to the point-of-attack defense shortly, but first, I want to linger on another defensive tenet that is typically seen as part of the responsibility of the biggest players on the floor.
During Budenholzer’s tenure in Milwaukee, the Bucks were an elite defensive rebounding team.
Def Reb RateNBA Rank
2018-19
22.9%
3rd
2019-20
20.9%
1st
2020-21
23.0%
3rd
2021-22
23.9%
2nd
2022-23
24.3%
3rd
2023-24
27.5%
14th
That has not been the case this season, despite returning primarily to drop coverage in pick-and-rolls after a four-game experiment with more aggressive defensive tactics.
GO DEEPER
Bucks’ new (old) defense puts Brook Lopez back where he belongs — protecting the rim
When you look at the Bucks’ defensive rebounding problem this season, what sticks out to you?
Partnow: Primarily, this is a knock-on effect of the point of attack defense. More guys getting downhill means more attempts at the rim, and misses at the rim are gathered by the offense at a much higher rate than jump shots, especially those that come from above the free throw line.
An interesting data point you’ve asked me to track all year has been the frequency with which opponents ended up with the ball after Lopez’s blocks as compared to previous years.
Prior to this year, opponents recovered a little more than one-third of their attempts blocked by Lopez whether via a live ball offensive rebound or a loose ball rebound occurring because of the ball either going out of bounds off of Milwaukee or via a loose ball foul. This year, that number has skyrocketed to nearly 47 percent, swinging from much better in previous seasons than league average, which is around 42 percent, to much worse.
Your original hypothesis was that because Lopez is having to fly in from further away on so many more of his rim contests, he was having a harder time keeping the ball in bounds, but that isn’t the case.
So far this year, almost 19 percent of Lopez’s blocks have resulted in team rebounds going either way, a number in line with previous seasons. But the proportion of his blocks that have ended up as live ball offensive rebounds has gone from 24.2 percent over his previous Bucks career to 39.1 percent this season. Again, this is a big swing from very good to very bad relative to league average of just under 29 percent of blocks resulting in live ball offensive rebounds.
To me, this tells a story of a defense getting broken down much more readily, so that there is less frequently a player in position to “help the helper” by boxing out when Lopez rotates to a driver than has previously been the case.
Nehm: Just look at this possession from the Bucks’ Christmas Day loss against the New York Knicks.
The Bucks did a great job forcing the Knicks to work all the way to the end of the shot clock by switching multiple times, but those switches left them compromised in attempting to grab a defensive rebound after Lopez forced a miss at the rim. And Isaiah Hartenstein took full advantage as Antetokounmpo could only stand on the 3-point line and watch as the Bucks gave up a dunk.
And ultimately, possessions like this make me arrive at a similar conclusion to you. When I look through Milwaukee’s defensive problems this season, structure feels like the primary problem. And that shines through when taking a look at the Bucks’ issues on the defensive glass as well.
Earlier this season, I asked Detroit Pistons coach Monty Williams about how Giannis terrorizes teams at the rim, despite not catching a whole lot of lobs or posting up like players that have done that exact same thing in the past. And while the question revolved around Antetokounmpo’s offensive play, it actually turned into an astute observation about the Bucks’ defense in the previous five seasons from the coach that competed against the Bucks in the 2021 NBA Finals.
“For one, he’s got a guard-type of handle and wiggle that most guys seven-feet tall don’t have, but a lot of it is their ability to force the kind of misses that allow for him to get the rebound and take off,” Williams said. “They don’t give up a ton of 3s because they drop, so they force 2s.
“That is a shorter rebound and he gets it, so now he’s taking off. And sometimes, in that defense, there’s a cross-match, so a guard ends up on Giannis when he gets the ball. Because the guy that’s boxing out Giannis, he’s already been pushed under the basket (by Giannis) and now he’s taking off. So, then, if you don’t have three guys back, you’re in trouble.”
While that might have described things in previous seasons, Antetokounmpo is no longer in the same places on the floor defensively.
Detractors of Budenholzer’s defense bemoaned sticking Antetokounmpo in drop defense on pick-and-rolls rather than a more aggressive switch, blitz or trap over the years, but keeping Antetokounmpo in drop coverage kept him close to the rim and allowed him to grab rebounds at an incredibly high rate.
And while Griffin moved Lopez back into drop coverage this season after the first four games, Antetokounmpo has been asked to execute vastly different things defensively this season. Last season, per Second Spectrum, Antetokounmpo played drop or other conservative schemes about four times as often as he switched onto the ballhandler in the pick-and-roll. This season, it’s about even between switching and drop.
Lopez is not elite at grabbing defensive rebounds. He never has been, but he has always been great at setting up his teammates for defensive rebounds and helping his team be great on the defensive glass. He did it exceptionally well under Budenholzer, but it has been a feature of his play throughout his entire career.
GO DEEPER
Brook Lopez is making an impact on defensive boards for Bucks
But this season, largely because he’s spending a much larger portion of his time away from the rim, Antetokounmpo’s defensive rebound rate has cratered.
DefRPGDef REB Rate
2018-19
10.3
26.4%
2019-20
11.4
30.0%
2020-21
9.4
25.9%
2021-22
9.6
25.9%
2022-23
9.6
26.4%
2023-24
8.8
22.9%
Bobby Portis’ defensive rebounding rate has plummeted as well, from 25.3 percent last season to just 20.4 percent this season, which makes sense considering that he has also been asked to play far more aggressively on defense.
And that isn’t to say one approach is better than the other. There are plenty of aggressive defensive teams that are successful, just as the Bucks were incredibly successful as a conservative defense for the last five seasons, but there will always be trade-offs.
Thus far though, Griffin’s decision to use more aggressive tactics with Antetokounmpo and Portis at the point of attack this season has not led to subsequent increases in turnover production as the Bucks find themselves last in the NBA in turnover percentage, forcing turnovers on only 11.8 percent of opponent possessions.
Seth, when you look at what Milwaukee is doing at the point of attack, what have you seen?
Partnow: For starters, this team does not have the personnel to guard well at the point of attack. Of the non-bigs, only Andre Jackson Jr. has suggested the ability to be above average in this regard. Even when Jae Crowder returns, he is several years beyond the point where counting on him to reliably stay in front of capable ballhandlers and creators is a reasonable expectation.
But I don’t think the downgrade in defensive personnel is sufficient for the level of decline we’ve seen. From the outside, it’s a bit difficult to separate poor scheme from poor execution of that scheme.
I lean more toward execution in that general disorganization illustrated by the woeful transition defense numbers that almost certainly affect point of attack defense as well. The best way to contain a ballhandler on a closeout is to not actually have to close out.
To put numbers to it, Milwaukee is 30th in opponent transition percentage. The gap between the Bucks and the second-worst team is identical to the distance between the 29th and league average.
For a team as offensively potent as the Bucks, their offense should be something that puts them in positions to play good defense as opposed to a hindrance in that goal.
Observationally, Milwaukee has been inconsistent both about speed and diligence of getting back on defense and with regard to properly matching up. The result is both that elevated rate of transition play, but also frequent cross-matches and other bits of confusion.
So instead of saying the defense is poorly schemed, I’d suggest the problem is the Bucks’ consistent failure to give themselves the ability to play with solidity and organization within a scheme as opposed to being in scramble or recovery mode quite so frequently.
This isn’t to say the scheme at the point of attack is good, bad or otherwise. Rather it’s hard to evaluate the scheme if opponents are so easily able to discombobulate the defense before it even sets. You and I have both noticed the frequency with which opponents have generated transition and other early offense even after possessions on which the Bucks score, usually among the most advantageous defensive situations.
Like this recent play against the Pacers.
My intuition is that even with better execution, the scheme doesn’t fit the personnel. This roster is very unlikely to be a turnover generation machine. Maybe better execution does create an extra opponent miscue or two, but I don’t think that benefit is worth the cost in terms of the scoring efficiency, foul drawing and offensive rebounding increases which result from increased aggression without the sort of ball-hawking players required.
Nehm: Overall, the scheme doesn’t seem to fit well with the personnel. And that leaves quite a bit to be desired defensively. When you take a closer look at the numbers, is there anything that stands out to you in regard to how many drives or blow-bys the Bucks are giving up in the half court?
Partnow: I want to be a little judicious with how best to statistically describe the change in point-of-attack defense.
The number of drives given up and the proportion of those drives which end in blow-bys is something you can measure, but “drives equal bad defense” doesn’t really hold. That said, the Bucks went from forcing/allowing the eighth most half-court drives per 100 possessions a year ago to allowing the most this year and they have gone from being the stingiest team in terms of giving up blow-by drives a year ago (by far) to the eighth-highest this season, with the rate of blow-bys increasing by nearly 50 percent. Combined, those changes indicate to me a team that is not containing the ball nearly as effectively as they did a year ago.
Again, how much of this is scheme versus talent? Hard to say, as the context of how drives occur can have a large impact on the rate of blow-bys considering that drives which occur via attacking a closeout result in blow-bys a little over half the time, while all other drives result in blow-bys about one time in six. Again, getting us back to the issues facing a team that routinely puts itself in situations which require them to scramble.
Nehm: That’s fair. And honestly, the thing that has been most eye-opening about what the Bucks are doing this season defensively is how much they may be able to control by just executing simple things.
All season long, Milwaukee has really struggled to contain opposing teams in transition. And while taking care of their problems in transition will not solve everything for the Bucks defensively, they would have a much stronger base if they just took care of business in transition. But yet, through 37 games, they have not been able to execute what should be the base of what they do defensively and that has kept us from getting a true read on what the Bucks can actually do on that end.
If the Bucks are going to be title contenders, they are going to need to get better on the defensive end. They may not need to be one of the league’s best defenses as they were throughout Budenholzer’s time in Milwaukee, but they will need to get much better at executing the simple things defensively and bring themselves far closer to being an average defense if they want to contend for a title this season.
(Photo: Gary Dineen / NBAE via Getty Images)
Source link : https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5193543/2024/01/11/milwaukee-bucks-defense-analysis/
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Publish date : 2024-01-11 08:00:00
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