MILWAUKEE — With Fiserv Forum still buzzing about a go-ahead bucket from Damian Lillard with 9.8 seconds in the fourth quarter, the Milwaukee Bucks starters walked from their bench to the other end of the floor. Getting one last stop against the Cleveland Cavaliers would seal a victory and snap their four-game losing streak.
To start the play, the Cavs’ Isaac Okoro set a screen for Donovan Mitchell. Over the outstretched arm of Bucks center Brook Lopez, Evan Mobley lofted a pass that nearly flew over Mitchell’s head. As Mitchell ran toward half court, he reached out with his right hand and tipped the ball to himself. He caught it inches from the timeline to avoid a potential backcourt violation.
Down by one, Mitchell wasted little time attacking Bucks guard Gary Trent Jr. After two dribbles to settle himself, Mitchell went to his right hand and Trent bodied him on the drive to the basket. As Mitchell looked to stop and dribble behind his back to get back to the middle, Trent poked the ball away. Trent and help defender Giannis Antetokounmpo raced after it, but Mitchell beat them to the ball. With Trent shaded to the sideline, Mitchell dribbled back to the middle and rose up for the game-winning jumper.
DONOVAN MITCHELL RESPONDS 🥶
The @cavs move to 7-0! pic.twitter.com/d0m3rzZfaP
— NBA TV (@NBATV) November 3, 2024
On three separate occasions, the Cavaliers almost committed a turnover. Mitchell managed to save the possession on each occasion, putting himself in a position to win the game.
The play was a perfect 10-second encapsulation of what happened to the Bucks on Saturday night. The Bucks did a lot of things right, but the Cavaliers did more things well and came away with the 114-113 victory, dropping the Bucks’ record to 1-5 and extending their losing streak to five.
After a rough game in Memphis, Damian Lillard was spectacular for the Bucks on Saturday night. He knocked down 10 of his 15 3-point attempts on his way to 41 points, four rebounds and nine assists. Giannis Antetokounmpo was dominant as well, putting up 34 points, grabbing 16 rebounds and dishing nine assists. The Bucks hit seven of their first 11 3-pointers and took a 16-point lead seven minutes into the game, but couldn’t hold on.
“It was one of those games where there’s so many little, tiny things and when you’re struggling, they tend to come back and haunt you,” Rivers said.
The Bucks are 1-5 for the first time since the 2000-01 season. As Rivers reflected on how they got to that place on Saturday night, he cited three separate issues that led them to that point.
The first of those issues happened all the way back in the first quarter.
After a Bobby Portis layup gave the Bucks a 30-14 lead with 5:01 remaining in the first quarter, former Bucks guard Sam Merrill hit a 3 on three consecutive Cavaliers offensive possessions. When Okoro followed that up with a three of his own, the Bucks’ lead shrunk from 16 to 7 in 91 seconds. All three of Merrill’s looks appeared similar.
“I thought Sam Merrill, in a lot of ways, won the game,” Rivers said. “That was a guy that we targeted before the game. We talked. When he comes in, it’s coming in for one reason, and if he’s in the corner, that means he’s not going to be in the corner much longer. They’re going to set picks for him. And we gave him those nine points … I thought that changed the game because I thought they were in the box and that got them back in the game.”
All three triples occurred in roughly the same way with Merrill running around the floor before wrapping around a screen and letting it fly from deep.
First, Merrill stepped behind a dribble handoff from Mobley.
Then, out of a timeout, the Cavaliers sent Merrill around a screen from Mobley, which Merrill used for a pump fake that sent Taurean Prince flying. Merrill reset his feet and knocked down a 3.
Finally, the Cavaliers set an off-ball screen for Merrill, which Prince got caught on, before letting Mobley hand it off to create an extra layer of protection.
Just like Payton Pritchard in Boston, Merrill was highlighted on the scouting report and the Bucks did not take care of business.
“All three of his 3s were when I was guarding them, so that’s something that I gotta take responsibility for,” Prince said after the game. “That definitely got them going and got them kind of in that motion to believe that they could close that lead. So I can admit I kind of slept on him a little bit, but definitely won’t happen again.”
Merrill, who the Bucks traded to the Memphis Grizzlies in 2022 to acquire Grayson Allen, making an impact off the bench was a stark reminder of what the Bucks have been missing, outside of opening night in Philadelphia, from their reserves thus far this season.
As anyone regularly watching the Bucks knows they have started the season without Khris Middleton following offseason procedures on both ankles. The Bucks miss his production in the starting lineup, but the effect of his absence is felt to a much greater extent when the Bucks turn to their bench.
Rivers staggers Antetokounmpo and Lillard in his rotation to make sure one of the Bucks’ stars is always on the floor to help out bench-heavy units, but that has not helped all that much. Most of the players coming off the bench for the Bucks were signed to be role players that play off of the creation of one of the Bucks’ three stars while typically getting the opportunity to play with two of the stars. With only one star on the floor with four bench players, those units have struggled.
“Our bench, we gotta figure that out,” Rivers said. “That’s on (the coaching staff). We have not found the correct rotation yet and we have to. I do like going small a little bit, like we did in the third, but we didn’t really have the right guys. We don’t have the right guys to do that.
“Obviously, the small lineup is more designed with Khris. But we don’t have Khris, but I still thought it gave us some punch, some speed. But there’s some negatives to that too, that we saw. So we’re just going to keep searching for that.”
On top of that, the one bench player that the Bucks count on to score or create for himself, Bobby Portis, has struggled to start the season. He is currently shooting 47.6 percent from the field, which would be his lowest field goal percentage in five seasons with the Bucks. He’s 25 percent from the 3-point line, also his lowest as a Buck, as well as averaging 2.0 turnovers per game, his highest in Milwaukee.
In the final two minutes of the third quarter, Portis committed two turnovers that helped the Cavaliers flip their three-point deficit into a three-point lead heading into the final quarter.
But ultimately, what concerned Rivers most was a sequence on defense late in the game.
With 1:40 remaining, Mobley attacked the rim and both Antetokounmpo and Lopez went up to contest his shot. Their contest left Jarrett Allen at the rim to grab an offensive rebound and no one else on the Bucks’ roster gave him an extra hit to keep him away from the offensive glass. On the reload, Mitchell took a stepback 3 and the Bucks got outhustled again.
“I tell you this, what I keep saying is … it’s not just the defensive rebounds, it’s the long rebounds that are bouncing on the floor,” Rivers said. “It just seems like we’re not quick enough to get on them. They come up Memphis the other night. Every one that bounced on the floor, their guards or their small forwards got. Tonight, the same thing. And that’s a concern.”
Entering the game with a four-game losing streak, the Bucks should have been the more desperate team. They should have been the team diving on the floor. Instead, a Cavaliers role player trying to help his team remain undefeated on the second night of a back-to-back outhustled the Bucks in one of the game’s biggest moments.
On Saturday despite watching their two superstar players score 75 combined points, the Bucks’ inability to make those little plays accumulated into a big thing — all of which led to another loss. Without Middleton, the Bucks’ margin for error is incredibly slim. As a team, they have not been able to consistently make enough plays. That is why they have the same record as the Detroit Pistons.
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“We just gotta go out there and do it, together though,” Antetokounmpo said after Saturday’s loss. “I don’t think one guy will do it. I don’t think two guys will do it. I think within the whole team, everybody’s gotta come together and do it.
“Like tonight, we scored 75 points combined, me and Dame, it’s not enough. It’s not enough. Against Boston, we scored 65 points. It’s not enough. We gotta come all together. We gotta trust one another. We gotta put the ball and put the responsibilities to our teammates and make the game easier for them. They gotta get more easy looks. We gotta create for them. They gotta feel good about themselves.”
Antetokounmpo then went one-by-one through the rotation and broke down what the Bucks need from each player, but ended with an important message.
“All of those things, when I look my teammates in their eyes, they’re willing to do it and you just gotta trust,” Antetokounmpo said. “You gotta trust that it’s going to come.”
It had better because the Bucks have been looking for their second win for more than a week. Adding more losses this early in the season will make it difficult to track down teams at the top of the Eastern Conference such as the Cavaliers and Boston Celtics, who have spent the first week of the season stacking up wins by doing a lot of the “little, tiny things” right.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
