LOS ANGELES — Everyone likes Adrian Griffin, no one wants to speak ill of a man who coached a team to a 30-13 record. Which is why nobody around the Bucks wants to say the quiet part out loud, but it’s become impossible to ignore:
The Milwaukee Bucks look much better under Doc Rivers. They quickly have evolved into Boston’s biggest threat in the East.
“I think we were turning the corner and playing our best basketball right now…" Damian Lillard said after he and Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 20 of the 23 Bucks’ points in the fourth quarter of a win over the Clippers Sunday. “I think we’ve still been a much better team than we have been since probably the start the season. Just from how it feels out there and I think some of the things that we’re doing.
“But anytime you go into the playoffs you want to be playing your best basketball, you want to be comfortable, to as your best version of yourself, and I don’t think we’ve been that yet this season. I can feel and see our team becoming that and I think it’s happening at the right time.”
Since the All-Star break, the Bucks are 7-2, with a top-seven offense and defense in the league and a +8 net rating. They simply look more professional, more organized in what they are trying to accomplish, and a team playing to the strengths of its roster.
Defensively, Rivers has improved their lackluster transition defense and has them in more comfortable drop coverage. On offense, the Bucks have gone to running some of Lillard’s favorite sets from Portland — the kind of thing assistant coach Terry Stotts was expected to install under Griffin before Stotts quit in the preseason. Then there’s the fact they are simply running more Lillard/Antetokounmpo pick-and-roll sets with shooting spacing the floor around them.
“I think it’s getting much better…" Lillard said of the on-court connection between him and Antetokounmpo. “You put two guys together who have always been as a decision maker, always had the ball in their hands for years and years and years, it’s gonna take time for us to learn how to play with each other and learn to play off one another.”
More than simply playing off each other, the duo is learning how to get the other players on the court — Brook Lopez, Malik Beasley, and eventually a hopefully healthy Khris Middleton, among others — involved.
This is the vision of Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo in pick and roll. Clippers put two on the ball, Giannis rolls and finishes. Next time down the Clippers show help on the roll, kick to Crowder for an open 3. Moving in the right direction. pic.twitter.com/wrFgllaNDz
— Steve Jones Jr. (@stevejones20) March 10, 2024
“It’s getting better and better, they’re trusting it, different options out of it…" Rivers said, referencing a key late-game 3 by Lopez against the Clippers. “If you put two great players together, it’s gonna take a third player on the other team at some point to help. We kept Brook lifted, we kept saying at some point someone’s gonna leave Brook and they finally did and Brook made the shot.”
Rivers has tried to accelerate the chemistry between Lillard and Antetokounmpo both in practice and by calling their numbers during games.
“The team sometimes they’ll laugh at shootaround when Doc will put us on one side of the floor put everybody else on the other side of the floor and be like, ‘Alright, Giannis set the screen, throw it back, now dribble it back the Dame, Dame throw it back.’ We just kind of going back and forth with each other for like 15 seconds and then he’s like, ‘Alright, somebody shoot’ and then we shoot and then everybody started laughing because he’s like, ‘Y’all have to play off each other. You got to play together.’”
The Bucks ran a lot of Lillard and Antetokounmpo pick-and-rolls in a loss to the Lakers last Friday.
“I think it was the most actions they’ve been in the entire year. I think it was about 1.4 [points per possession], I mean, so every number was great…" Rivers said of that game. “It was the best that they did it organically, it was very few ATOs, it was straight on the floor and they did it…
“I think what they learned, and the team learned, is [Lillard and Antetokounmpo] scored half those points, but the other half was the other guys were scoring out of those actions. And I think that’s the point we’re trying to make.”
Part of what makes this duo work is that, as big a threat as Lillard is with the ball in his hands, Antetokounmpo getting the ball at the free throw line on a short roll may be scarier. It’s not just that he’s going to dunk on any defender late on his rotation — although he will — it’s that he’s become a gifted and willing passer over time.
“Shoot, you get Giannis in a short roll with no one in front of him, and then someone has to take him, with the way he passes the ball,” Rivers said, shaking his head. “That’s why the Dame pick and rolls are so great, because whoever’s in the pick and roll you have to have someone in front of Dame, so that allows the short roll for Giannis. And then that happens a couple of times, then the guy turns his body to the side and then then Dame turns the corner. So that’s the reason it’s so good.”
For the Bucks to make a serious run in the East will require a healthy Middleton, something we have seen little of this season (he’s
missed 22 games but has been slowed in far more than that). Rivers said Middleton is practicing and close to a return, but there is no official date (although he was listed as only “questionable” for Sacramento, meaning he could play). Middleton — an All-Star and Olympian — can run actions on the weak side while the defense is preoccupied with Antetokounmpo and Lillard, which will mean easy buckets. Plus, Middleton is long and a solid defender.
Before the season tipped off, the conventional wisdom was that the East was Boston, Milwaukee, and everyone else chasing from a few steps behind. Boston has lived up to their part.
Milwaukee is just starting to, and it may be peaking at just the right time.
