DALLAS — For the first time all season, the Milwaukee Bucks are now nine games over .500 at 34-25.
The Bucks have struggled to stack wins consistently this season, but the vibes were high after a 132-117 victory over the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night. With a couple of days before taking on the Hawks in Atlanta on Tuesday, Milwaukee hopes to keep its strong recent momentum on the road.
“We have to be better on the road,” Giannis Antetokounmpo said on Saturday. “We haven’t been good at all on the road this year. This is a big build game. Hopefully we can go to Atlanta and build off this. But in order for you to win something, win a series, or win a championship you have to be able to build good habits and win on the road.”
The concern is warranted as the Bucks have compiled a 13-16 record on the road this season, compared to a 20-9 record at Fiserv Forum.
The story of the greatest players in NBA history. In 100 riveting profiles, top basketball writers justify their selections and uncover the history of the NBA in the process.
The story of the greatest players in NBA history.
Buy
“The conversation within our team has been ‘Let’s take the show on the road,’” Damian Lillard said after the win. “I think we’ve had comeback wins at home, we’ve had wins over good teams at home, big nights at home, and then we have let downs on the road.”
Before the Bucks get their next chance to add a road win to their resume in Atlanta though, let’s play some Bucks Ones for an in-depth look at the micro and macro trends that have affected them in the last few weeks.
One Play: Giannis Antetokounmpo’s “Power”
With 6:56 remaining in the second quarter and the Bucks trailing by nine (then 10 immediately after a Mavs free throw), Antetokounmpo re-entered Saturday’s game. On the next four offensive possessions, the Bucks ran the same play: an empty-side pick-and-roll to force a switch and create a mismatched post touch for Antetokounmpo that Doc Rivers, after the game, called “Power.”
“We’ve been preaching this all year,” Rivers said. “You find a set, you stay on the set, do not go away from it. …That’s a good lesson for us. You don’t need to go to anything else if that’s working and exhaust the options.”
In the first quarter, the Mavericks made it clear they would be doubling Antetokounmpo on every post touch. With a frontcourt decimated by injuries, Dallas didn’t have enough big bodies to make their only true big, Moses Brown, the primary defender on Antetokounmpo. Instead, the Mavs used wing players and switches with an immediate double team.
With that knowledge, Antetokounmpo picked the Mavericks apart on four consecutive possessions.
On the first possession, Antetokounmpo made a one-handed touch pass with his left hand look easy to find Lillard for an open 3 on the right wing.
On the second possession, Mavericks point guard Kyrie Irving left his assignment even earlier to take away the kickout to Lillard. Antetokounmpo read it perfectly, delivering a pass to Brook Lopez for a floater in the paint.
On the third possession, Antetokounmpo waited for the defender from the top to double team before kicking it out to Lillard to start a series of swing passes around the perimeter. On each swing, the Bucks maintained their advantage and ultimately, Taurean Prince scored an easy layup after attacking an out of control closeout and Lopez sealed his man under the basket.
On the fourth possession, Antetokounmpo waited for the defender from the top of the floor to get down to him on the block and then broke the containment to create an advantage for the Bucks where one backside defender would be forced to cover two shooters. Eventually, he targeted Gary Trent Jr. with a look-away pass and Trent knocked down a corner 3.
Antetokounmpo did not score on those four consecutive offensive possessions, but the two-time MVP exerted complete control over everything happening on the floor and was dominant.
Following the game, Rivers told reporters he believes Antetokounmpo enjoys it when he gets to pick apart another team with his passing and the two-time NBA MVP agreed.
“You have to (enjoy it). Either you’re going to get frustrated and fight the double team or you’re just going to try to just bait them as much as you can,” Antetokounmpo said. “We have great players. If you put everybody in the right position and when the double comes, you can pick them apart.
“And you could see that they didn’t want Dame to get the open shot that he got, and they were pre-rotating, not only the small guy and the big guy, so we had wide-open Brook in the front of the rim. Or we had two guys on the weak side, two versus one. So you just had to make the right play and pick them apart, which we did. And we’ve said when a play works, just keep on milking it, keep on running it again until they stop it.”
One Player: Gary Trent Jr.
When they signed Gary Trent Jr. two weeks into free agency this past offseason, the Bucks believed they had found their starting shooting guard, an absolute steal for a team that could only hand out minimum contracts heading into the summer.
Trent looked great on opening night against the 76ers, but struggled to maintain that rhythm as he started to deal with back spasms. Because of those spasms, after starting the first seven games of the season, the Bucks moved Trent to the bench for the eighth game. Trent missed the next two games and then played just six minutes in his return in the 11th game of the season.
Since then, the 26-year-old shooting guard has averaged 11.3 points in 25.2 minutes per game on 46.4 percent shooting from the field and 45.1 percent 3-point shooting.
Trent has been more productive since the trade deadline. In the last 10 games, he has put up four of his top seven scoring performances this season, averaging 14.2 points in 27 minutes per game on 46.8 percent shooting from the field and 41.5 percent 3-point shooting.
As Rivers has decided to lean into second units that feature Kyle Kuzma as the lone starter on the floor, Trent has taken on a more varied scoring role. Rather than just firing up catch-and-shoot looks created by Antetokounmpo or Lillard, Trent has been asked to create shots for himself. He has done so with a mid-range jumper that has been lethal over the last three weeks.
Not only has Trent taken on more shot creation responsibility, he has also been asked to close several recent games. With so much success off the bench, would the Bucks be willing to try Trent in the starting lineup?
“Listen, we’re not scared to try something different,” Rivers said on Saturday. “But he has been very good coming off the bench and that has served us well.
“Having bench scoring is huge, especially the way we come in. We come in with shooters off the bench. A lot of teams don’t do that. They have their shooters starting. We have that too, which is good for us. We just have a lot of shooting.”
Speaking of the starting lineup…
One trend: The new starting lineup
Since returning from the All-Star break, the Bucks have used a starting lineup of Lillard, Prince, Kuzma, Antetokounmpo and Lopez.
“I’ve liked our size,” Rivers said, when asked about that starting lineup. “I’ve liked our defense, for sure. I think it’s gone very well. TP has, unfortunately, been struggling with an ankle (injury), so we’re not seeing the real TP right now.
“What we have to find out is if we can guard the guards. We’ll find that out. Right now, we don’t know yet. We haven’t had the right health to evaluate. We think, and right now, we’re putting TP on the guy, we probably should put Kuz on the guy more. That will probably be later. We don’t want to do it right now.”
That lineup has started five of the Bucks’ six games out of the All-Star break. In 144 possessions, that unit has posted an offensive rating of 118.8 (62nd percentile) and a defensive rating of 107.6 (69th percentile), meaning they have outscored opponents by 11.2 points per 100 possessions, according to lineup data from Cleaning the Glass. The sample size is small, so outlier shooting percentages can play a major role in the numbers.
For example, on the defensive end, the Bucks’ starting unit has struggled to use its size and keep opposing ballhandlers out of the paint, which has led to opponents shooting 74.4 percent at the rim (17th percentile) and 54.8 percent on short mid-range attempts (14th percentile). That would typically lead to terrible results for a defense, but opponents are also shooting only 27.5 percent from 3 against that unit (93rd percentile for the defense), which has saved that unit’s defensive rating.
Ultimately, Rivers’ second thought about the starting lineup since the break will probably end up being what ultimately leads the unit to sink or swim. Starting Prince out of position at shooting guard to put together a massive starting lineup can be a positive for the Bucks if they find a way to successfully use their size defensively. It’s great that they can dominate the glass defensively (85.4 percent defensive rebounding rate, 100 percentile), but that doesn’t matter much if they’re not consistently forcing misses and making things difficult for opponents.
That concern over point of attack defense on the perimeter is why it makes sense to wonder if someone like Trent, or potentially another shooting guard like AJ Green, might make more sense than Prince as the Bucks’ starter at shooting guard moving forward. For now, it seems as though Rivers will stick with this current starting lineup to try to garner more data to see if it is viable come playoff time.
Sign up to get The Bounce, the essential NBA newsletter from Zach Harper and The Athletic staff, delivered free to your inbox.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Sam Hodde / Getty Images)
