This season, the Milwaukee Bucks played nine games without Giannis Antetokounmpo.
In those games, they posted a 4-5 record. In two of those nine, Damian Lillard played, but Khris Middleton did not. In one of those nine, Middleton played, but Lillard did not. In the six games without Antetokounmpo, but with Lillard and Middleton, the Bucks went 2-4.
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This will likely be the reality for the Bucks when they tip off Game 1 of their first-round series against the Indiana Pacers Sunday. While Bucks president Peter Feigin said that Antetokounmpo “definitely will not be back for Sunday” on a Milwaukee radio show on Thursday, the Bucks on Saturday listed Antetokounmpo as doubtful on the first injury report they submitted for Game 1.
Even with Antetokounmpo’s status technically up in the air, the Bucks have spent the last week preparing for life without him on Sunday.
“I don’t think it’s difficult because I think when you bring him back, you get better, so we gotta prep as we are right now,” Lillard said following the Bucks’ loss to the Magic last Sunday. “And I think the beauty of that is we know that it’s enough. We’ve beat really good teams how we are right now. And I’ve been on teams that won that didn’t have a Giannis, and didn’t have a Khris Middleton, and didn’t have a Brook Lopez or a Bobby Portis or…
“It’s the best team I’ve been on. So we’re capable. We can win games. And when we get (Antetokounmpo) back, we’ll be even better. So I think that’s that’s how I’m looking at it. I’m not looking at it like ‘Aw man. We can’t…’ We’ve shown it and I’ve been there before.”
Lillard’s assessment is correct. Even with Antetokounmpo on the sideline, there are still five NBA champions (Middleton, Lopez, Portis, Pat Connaughton, Thanasis Antetokounmpo) on the roster alongside Lillard, plus a group of veterans desperate to win their first ring and a handful of young players. The Bucks have enough on the roster to beat the Pacers in the first round, but they will need to gel, play to their fullest capabilities and be a team greater than the sum of its parts.
So, back to those six games that the Bucks played with Lillard and Middleton running the offense and Antetokounmpo on the sidelines …
If the Bucks are to have a chance of winning without Antetokounmpo, they will need to play the way they did in their best moments and avoid the long stretches of when they were at their worst. During the season, the difference between their best and their worst was astounding.
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When the Bucks met the Phoenix Suns on Mar. 17, they came away with a 140-128 win, one of nine games this season in which they scored 140 points. They tied an NBA record by hitting 18 3-pointers in the first half and took an 82-60 lead into the locker room at halftime. Lillard ended the night with 31 points, five rebounds and 16 assists, while Middleton added 22 points and seven assists. All game long, the Bucks moved the ball from side-to-side and regularly got to multiple actions in a single possession.
The Suns did not exhibit playoff-level defense here, but the Bucks played with purpose throughout the possession.
Lillard saw Jusuf Nurkić at the level on the first action, a pick-and-roll with Lopez, and tossed it to Jae Crowder, who saw Nurkić out of position and skipped it to Lopez. Knowing that Nurkić was trailing behind him, Lopez took the ball over to the opposite side for a dribble handoff. When Devin Booker denied Malik Beasley, Lopez kept moving to Middleton in the corner. Middleton managed to turn the corner on Kevin Durant and got deep into the paint before kicking it out to Lopez for a wide-open catch-and-shoot 3.
Good offense requires all five players to participate. That possession required Lillard and Middleton making the right passes to begin and end the sequence, but it also required Lopez to set screens to get both players open and an aggressive play to move the ball from one side of the floor to the other.
“I’m just trying to do whatever’s necessary to win. Who knows what it might be one game versus the next, one possession versus the next,” Lopez said. “I’m just going to try to be my best possible me. From the get go, I know night in, night out, my job is going to be setting good screens, getting Dame open, getting Khris open, running the floor, being big in the paint.”
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Lillard and Middleton can be great isolation players, but if the Bucks are to be successful in the postseason without Antetokounmpo, they need to keep the ball moving with the pass or the dribble and force the Pacers to defend multiple actions each possession.
“We just can’t get stuck. That’s even with Giannis,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “When we get stuck, we have proven over years that we’re not great offensively. But when that ball is now there and we move it there and we get to the second side — or get to the second action, may be even a better way of saying that — we’ve proven that we’re really good. So we have to do that.”
When they don’t play with purpose offensively, it can get ugly, especially with Antetokounmpo on the bench.
While the Bucks managed to score 140 points without Antetokounmpo against the Suns, they also had two of their worst performances of the season with Antetokounmpo on the sideline. On Jan. 17, the Bucks suffered their worst loss of the campaign, a 135-95 beatdown to the Cleveland Cavaliers, in which Lillard ended the night with 17 points on 7-of-20 shooting and Middleton finished with two points on 1-of-10 shooting. In the season finale, the Bucks lost 133-88 to the Orlando Magic, their lowest scoring game of the season. Lillard scored 16 points on 2-of-14 shooting in Orlando, while Middleton put up 17 points on 6-of-15 shooting.
Those two games featured too many moments of the type of basketball the Bucks need to avoid.
Rather than moving from action to action against the Cavaliers, Lillard and Middleton spent much of the first quarter attacking defenders and attempting to draw fouls early in possessions. With that not working, the Bucks had a number of live-ball turnovers, which allowed the Cavaliers to run out to a massive early lead.
In Orlando, Lillard and Middleton fell into the same bad habits in the second quarter. The ball stopped moving and both players kept trying to attack ace Magic forward defender Jonathan Isaac one-on-one on switches.
Even after getting turned away by Isaac on the first part of the possession, Lillard tried it again once he got the ball back from Middleton. It didn’t go much better.
There will be times where Lillard and Middleton will need to score in isolation situations. There will be times where attempting to score in isolation is the right decision. But both players need to avoid doing too much of it to make sure the offense keeps moving, their teammates remain involved and they continue to give themselves advantages over defenders.
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“If we’ve got an open shot, take it, shoot it, fire it, Dame, Khris. But the odds are (Pacers coach Rick) Carlisle isn’t going to let us get open shots on the first action,” Connaughton said. “So, (we need to) make sure we get it to a second action and use our basketball IQ to understand what that second action is going to be used for. Obviously, we want to be aggressive off it, we want to score off it, but if you can get it to a third action, that’s even harder to defend.”
Without Antetokounmpo, the Bucks’ performance will most likely fall somewhere between the best and worst moments of the Lillard- and Middleton-led offense. In those situations, they will need to remember to find a second action.
“I think, for us, making sure that we are strategic and deliberate with our movements of who is in what spot and then understanding how to read the game on who’s in what spot,” Connaughton said. “If you have a pick-and-roll with Dame and Brook, and Brook rolls and Dame hits the next side, is it Khris in that corner? Or is Khris on the other side, on the strong side, where you fake it to the corner and go back to the other side, and it becomes a little bit of a stagger (dribble handoff) away?
“Being a little bit better with those things and more intentional is what we have worked on this week.”
Since the Bucks lost to the Magic displaying some of their worst offensive habits without Antetokounmpo, they’ve worked on avoiding that type of thing against the Pacers. They’ve had a week to drill it. The time has come to see if they’ve learned their lesson.
(Photo of Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton: Melissa Tamez / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
