INGLEWOOD, Calif. — To put together a winning formula this season, the Milwaukee Bucks have been forced to make certain concessions.
With an older roster, the Bucks know they need to control the things that they can control and limit the things that may be dictated by youth and athleticism. On offense, that means taking care of the ball and knocking down shots at a high rate. Because of their age and size, the Bucks do not risk crashing the glass because they need to get back and set up their defense. Once they’re back on defense, they have to control the paint and play good enough perimeter defense to force opposing guards and wings to work hard before getting swallowed up by the team’s two shot blockers at the rim.
On Saturday, Milwaukee failed to win its most critical factors and dropped the first game of a four-game road trip to the Los Angeles Clippers, 127-117, at Intuit Dome.
“We didn’t control (the margins) tonight,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “Hell, I think we had four, five rebounds in our hand, and they took it out of our hand. I thought they were the aggressor. The entire night. When you look at the numbers — the margins — that’s what it came down to: the loose balls, the turnovers, the fouls.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo tallied 36 points and 13 rebounds, and Damian Lillard added 29 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists for his second triple-double in as many games, but the Bucks’ stars were outdueled by the Clippers’ duo of James Harden (40 points and nine assists) and Norman Powell (33 points), who took full advantage of Milwaukee’s inability to execute its game plan.
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For three quarters, neither team was getting many stops as the game’s top-four scorers seemed to go bucket for bucket with each other. All four managed to get to the rim for easy looks, draw fouls to get to the free-throw line and hit tough shots. But a disastrous start to the fourth quarter put the Bucks behind by double digits, and they never managed to slow the Clippers down enough to get back into the game.
After taking a lead in the first two minutes of the fourth quarter, the Bucks (25-18) committed five turnovers in the next three and a half minutes and watched their two-point lead quickly become a 12-point deficit.
“Sloppy turnovers,” Rivers said. “Two of those turnovers, they had a guy on the floor on the other end. So, we had five-on-four, and we turned the ball over twice. That should lead to a layup or a 3.”
Rather than taking advantage of Brook Lopez’s contests at the rims, the Bucks squandered two opportunities to build momentum. Instead, they committed turnovers that let the Clippers get back into the game and energize their home crowd.
“I feel like early in the fourth quarter, we wasn’t able to take care of the ball as well,” Antetokounmpo said. “They were able to, whenever we turn the ball over, go the other way and get easy transition, get some 3s, get to the free-throw line.
“They had the momentum, and it was very hard for us to get back to the game. Just gotta do a better job next time we’re in that same position. Just take care of the ball.”
Because the Bucks know opponents will likely have more possessions than them due to the concessions they must make, they have been a low-turnover team. Per Cleaning the Glass, they have the sixth-lowest turnover rate (13.5 percent) in the NBA this season.
On Saturday, the Bucks took care of the ball at an even better rate than normal, with a 12.7 percent turnover rate against the Clippers. But their turnovers occurred at the worst time in the fourth quarter.
As the Clippers went small and turned up their physicality and intensity on the defensive end, including their willingness to trap on defense, the Bucks lost control of the ball far too many times and repeatedly gave away easy points.
“When they go small, they reach, they grab and you gotta play through contact,” Rivers said. “I didn’t think we did a good job of that.”
Even on the possessions where the Bucks managed to get back on defense following a turnover, the Clippers made them pay for their sloppy play and took advantage of the mismatches they had created in transition.
“We allowed them to have a good stretch where we weren’t getting stops and the crowd got into it, and then, they just ramped it up defensively,” Lillard said. “They got a little more physical. They started running guys at the ball, and they were swiping at the ball, and we weren’t sharp enough in those moments, and we just allowed the momentum that they had to help them stretch that lead out.”
Once the Clippers built their lead, the Bucks couldn’t get back into the game because they could not get enough stops. While the spate of fourth-quarter turnovers in quick succession allowed the Clippers to take control, the reason LA could score with such ease throughout the night was because Milwaukee couldn’t stop dribble penetration.
The Clippers outscored the Bucks 58-40 in the paint, and most of those 58 points were a product of a guard or wing getting into a dangerous spot with relatively little resistance on the perimeter.
“That’s called getting beat off the dribble,” Rivers said. “They owned the paint tonight. That was going to be the game. Whichever team got to the paint the most — because we both do the same thing — was going to win the game. I thought we settled. We danced around outside the 3-point line, and they played downhill basketball, especially in the second half.”
The Clippers (26-19, sixth in the West) are the best team among the four opponents on this road trip, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the trip will be easy for a Bucks team that is only 8-11 on the road this season.
“When you’re in a road trip, you gotta get the first one,” Antetokounmpo said. “You gotta feel good. You gotta get the first one, and everything else falls in place. Wasn’t able to get the first one. Now, we have a tough one coming up against Utah. It’s a hard place to play. It doesn’t matter if they’re the best team in the NBA or the worst team in the NBA. It’s very, very hard to play in Utah. Gotta be locked in.”
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(Photo of Khris Middleton and Nicolas Batum: Harry How / Getty Images)
