While Bucks Focus on Positive, Pressure Builds to Stabilize Struggles

Milwaukee unraveled after halftime and dropped its third straight game as its short championship window gets smaller.

Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo reacts during the second half against the Boston Celtics. / Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images

Optimism, even at 1–3.

“I thought we played relatively well,” Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. 

Satisfaction, even at 1–3.

“I think, for the most part, we played good basketball,” Giannis Antetokounmpo said.

Confidence moving forward, even at 1–3.

“I thought we did a good job in the first half of being connected,” Bobby Portis said.

Bill Parcells, the Hall of Fame NFL coach, had a saying: You are what your record says you are. The Bucks? They ain’t buying it. A 119–108 loss to the Boston Celtics on Monday dropped Milwaukee to, you guessed it, 1–3. But after back-to-back losses to the Chicago Bulls (huh?) and Brooklyn Nets (yikes), Milwaukee showed fight against Boston, taking a three-point lead into halftime before getting buried under an avalanche of three-pointers in the second half.

“I don’t like moral victories,” Rivers said. “But I thought [for three quarters] that’s what we can be.”

Fine. For three quarters—2½, if we want to get really specific—the Bucks looked the part of a peer. Damian Lillard got it rolling in the first half. Antetokounmpo, too. Milwaukee’s defense held everyone not named Payton Pritchard in check. The Bucks’ supersized frontcourt pounded the Celtics on the glass.

In the third, everything unraveled. The game was tied with five minutes to play in the quarter. By the end of it, Boston led by eight. The Celtics made seven threes in the third quarter. The Bucks? Zero. 

“A team like this, they feed off of that,” Lillard said. “They get a stop, they get a steal, they get out, they run, they hit threes and that’s the game that they want to play.”

Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum dribbles down the court defended by Antetokounmpo. / Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images

That is how Boston wants to play. The Celtics took 47 threes against Milwaukee, a staggering number that was actually down from the 51 they entered the game averaging. Everyone in Joe Mazzulla’s rotation is a threat from beyond the arc. Before the game, Rivers emphasized Pritchard’s potential to go off. “I literally circled his name,” Rivers said. In the first half, Pritchard connected on seven of his first 10 shots (including 5-of-8 threes) to keep the Celtics close. 

The Bucks? They are still figuring it out. After Sunday’s loss to lowly Brooklyn, Antetokounmpo said the team lacked an identity. Rivers bemoaned the lack of ball movement. Lillard was frustrated by the undisciplined starts. “How are we going to win the game?” Antetokounmpo asked reporters Sunday. “Are we going to defend for 48 minutes? Are we going to move the ball for 48 minutes? Are we going to attack? We’ve got to find an identity. We don’t have that right now.”

Identity issues are common for new teams. Perfectly reasonable for, say, last season’s Bucks, which acquired Lillard before the season and fired coach Adrian Griffin midway through. This version has some issues—chronically injured guard Khris Middleton is still out and Milwaukee is breaking in a new defense—but they had a full training camp together and the core of the team returned intact.

Watching the Bucks, you want to believe they will get it right. Lillard is still a walking bucket. Antetokounmpo is a terror in the open floor. The point-of-attack defense—dreadful against Chicago and Brooklyn—was considerably better Monday. Milwaukee shot 8-of-31 from three-point range against Boston but missed a bunch of open looks, shots Middleton will likely make whenever he gets back on the floor. 

“On most nights, we feel really good about those shots,” Rivers said. “We’ll tell our guys, You got to keep making those passes, because they were great passes to our shooters and they just didn’t fall tonight. So you live with that.”

Lillard drives with the basketball defended by Boston Celtics forward Jaylen Brown. / Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images

Said Lillard, “I think when it’s going well, it looks like we believe. And I think we’re a team overall that does believe, but I think the best teams, when it’s good, when it’s not good, when you’re down, when you up, they trust to continue to do the right thing on both sides of the ball.”

There is urgency in Milwaukee. Perhaps more than anywhere else in the league. Lillard, Middleton and Brook Lopez are on the other side of 30. In December, Antetokounmpo will join them. Realistically, the Bucks, this version at least, are looking at a two-year window to win another championship. And the team that slapped them around in the third quarter did it without its starting center, Kristaps Porzingis, on the floor.

Things need to come together. Quickly. Inside the Bucks’ locker room Monday, the focus was on the positive. On the first-half defense, the early connectivity on offense, the ability, at least for stretches, to compete with the best team in the NBA. They saw reasons to believe the early-season stumbles will be overcome.

“Even if we suck, even if we are very, very bad, it’s the fourth game of the season,” Antetokounmpo said. “You have to be optimistic. This is the job that we are in. But at the end of the day, we have a great team. I believe we’re going to keep on playing better, keep on learning our mistakes.”