After Giannis Antetokounmpo went down with a right calf strain that will sideline him for weeks early in Wednesday\u2019s game, the Milwaukee Bucks completed a huge comeback and came away with a surprise victory over the Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n
Since that win, they have come up short in their last two games \u2014 a 116-101 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday in Milwaukee and a 124-112 loss on the road to the Pistons on Saturday \u2014 and only been able to put together two good halves. On Friday night, the Bucks recovered from a disastrous first half, but it wasn\u2019t enough to pull out a win. On Saturday night, they fell apart in the second half vs. the Pistons after limiting their mistakes on both ends of the floor in the first half.<\/p>\n
Playing without their best player is undeniably difficult, especially when so much of their game plan was built around Antetokounmpo, but the Bucks weren\u2019t looking for excuses following Saturday night\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not the biggest moral victory type of person, honestly,\u201d Kyle Kuzma said. \u201cI think it\u2019s amazing that in the second half, we can do good. It\u2019s amazing that we can do pretty good for two and a half quarters here, but it\u2019s 48 minutes. You can only have so many moral victories until you gotta go black and white.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bucks have lost 10 of their last 12 games and are now 10-15, which has them 11th in the Eastern Conference. The struggles of the Chicago Bulls (9-13) have kept Milwaukee only one game out of the play-in, but the Bucks are just as close (four games) to the Atlanta Hawks (14-11) in ninth as they are to the Indiana Pacers (5-18) in 13th.<\/p>\n
Antetokounmpo has missed all or part of eight of those 12 games, but the Bucks still believe they should have performed better over the last three weeks and desperately want to use the next 10 days\u00a0\u2014 their next three games are on Dec. 11, 14, and 18 \u2014 to re-focus their efforts and establish an identity that can ensure they win games, whether Antetokounmpo plays or not.<\/p>\n
And as Antetokounmpo\u2019s reported frustrations on Wednesday made clear, the Bucks\u2019 superstar forward and the rest of the organization believe the team needs to perform better.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just need to find our identity and how we want to play, like our play style,\u201d Kuzma said after Saturday\u2019s loss. \u201cI think with (Antetokounmpo) out, it\u2019s way drastically different. You want to have four shooters around him at all times. With him out, it\u2019s about trying to figure out what works the best with this group now.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s coming at a perfect time. Having a lot of time to just \u2018woosah\u2019 a little bit, watch some tape and get some practice time and understand what (are) our next steps. How do we need to play?\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, the Bucks posted a 105.5 offensive rating and a 129.4 defensive rating outside of garbage time. Both are worse than the league-wide ranking for the 30th team in both categories, per Cleaning the Glass. While those numbers come with a small sample size, the Bucks have had similar struggles over the length of the season without Antetokounmpo on the floor. In non-Antetokounmpo lineups, Milwaukee has posted a 107.9 offensive rating and 120.0 defensive rating.<\/p>\n
While the Bucks have struggled on both offense and defense without Antetokounmpo, their head coach seems to believe it is going to be more important for them to improve on one end of the floor than the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe gotta figure out a way of putting a 48-minute game together,\u201d Doc Rivers said after Saturday\u2019s loss. \u201cScoring is going to be hard for us. We understand that, and that\u2019s why our defense has to be better.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, it is tough to say whether or not the Bucks have the personnel to become markedly better on the defensive end. Even with Antetokounmpo, the Bucks struggled to defend without fouling on the perimeter because of their lack of size on the wing. Now, with Antetokounmpo out and AJ Green also sidelined with a left shoulder contusion, the Bucks have even less size among their regulars.<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, Rivers inserted reserve big man Jericho Sims to help solve that issue, but that didn\u2019t really work as the Bucks continued to struggle defensively. They also didn\u2019t improve all that much on the defensive glass, grabbing just 64.4 percent of available defensive rebounds, which would be worse than the 30th-ranked defensive rebounding rate for the season, according to Cleaning the Glass.<\/p>\n
In fact, the Bucks\u2019 numbers have taken a major hit with Sims this season. According to the on\/off stats at Cleaning the Glass, the Bucks have been 24.9 points per 100 possessions worse (14.5 on offense, 10.4 on defense) with Sims on the floor this season.<\/p>\n
Following Saturday\u2019s game, Rivers told reporters that the Bucks would be taking two days off to recover from the packed schedule they\u2019ve faced at the start of the season before putting in two big practice days on Tuesday and Wednesday before Thursday\u2019s game agains the Boston Celtics. This week\u2019s reset may give the coaching staff and players an opportunity to work through new combinations and tactics that can attempt to squeeze the most out of their shorthanded roster.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it was last year, but my team (in Indiana), we were 10-15 at the beginning of the year last year and made our way to the finals,\u201d Bucks big man Myles Turner said after Friday night\u2019s game. \u201cSo, it\u2019s never a question of believe on my end. It\u2019s just the collective buy-in and figuring out what that role clarity means.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bucks will not end up playing all that much in the first few weeks of Antetokounmpo\u2019s absence, but the team knows it needs to perform much better than it has so far (1-7 in eight games) without Antetokounmpo. It is imperative for the Bucks to find a way to win more games without him in order to avoid falling too far behind in the standings by the time their All-NBA forward can get back on the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s a very pivotal time for us,\u201d Kuzma said. \u201cIt\u2019s sink or swim. We have to treat it like that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Giannis Antetokounmpo went down with a right calf strain that will sideline him for weeks early in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[360,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-336924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}