MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Bucks had 10 extra minutes to beat the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night, but Bucks head coach Doc Rivers didn’t spend much of his postgame news conference on those overtime periods.
Instead, Rivers focused on the final three and a half minutes of the fourth quarter of the Bucks’ 128-124 double overtime loss.
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“First game in a while — it will be a good lesson for us — we didn’t trust the pass tonight,” Rivers said. “A lot of zero-pass shots or one-pass shots. And when we play like that — you know, we get away with it some nights because guys made shots — but we lost our trust.
“And that’s something we haven’t done. Not that concerned by it. We won’t do that very often, but it will scream off the tape and it will be good for us to see.”
After Khris Middleton hit a right-wing 3 to give the Bucks a 101-91 lead with 3 minutes, 26 seconds remaining, the Bucks failed to score again in the fourth quarter.
The Bucks did not turn the ball over during that time. On each possession, they were able to get a shot for one of their three best players. Middleton missed four times, Giannis Antetokounmpo missed twice and Damian Lillard missed once. Each attempt could be described as a good look, considering the career shooting percentages and clutch reputations of all three players, but none of the shots went in and the Bucks let a win slip through their fingers.
“I thought where we hurt them most, the ball was moving. It was like first side, second side, attack, the ball was dictating where the shot was,” Lillard (27 points, eight assists) said. “And I think down the stretch, we all kind of held on to it a little bit more.
“I know I held on to it a little bit more than I probably should have, at times. Same thing with Khris. Same thing with Giannis. We all just kind of wanted to right the ship and (we were) trying to be aggressive and attack, and I think it ended up hurting us in the end.”
To illustrate Lillard’s point, just look at the last bucket the Bucks made in the fourth quarter. On Middleton’s catch-and-shoot 3, Lillard gets the ball across half court relatively quickly and starts an action with Antetokounmpo immediately.
The half-court pace and early ball movement put the Lakers defense in a bad position and forces it into uncomfortable positions that leaves Middleton open for a 3.
Now, here are the Bucks’ next four offensive possessions.
Lillard sets up the Bucks for the same action as the previous possession with good pace, but because the Lakers made a shot on the other end, they were not crossmatched defensively as they had been on the previous possession.
So, instead of attacking Taurean Prince, Antetokounmpo is going at Anthony Davis. Rather than moving the Bucks onto another action — most likely an empty side dribble handoff with Middleton, one of the Bucks’ most successful crunchtime actions over the last five years — after receiving the ball from Lillard, Antetokounmpo attacks Davis one-on-one and misses a contested hook shot.
Following a Lakers’ 3-point miss on the next possession, Middleton pushes the ball in transition. He pulls the ball out, swings it to Lillard and then gets the ball back from the Bucks point guard.
From there, Middleton and Antetokounmpo try a pick-and-roll against the Lakers’ two best defenders. Rather than getting Middleton into a position where he can attack the middle of the floor, Middleton is forced to the sideline where Davis helps contain the dribble and takes away a potential pocket pass to Antetokounmpo on the roll. Eventually, Middleton works in isolation against Reaves and tries a turnaround jumper.
The Bucks went to one of their go-to late-game actions from this season — “V” action, a high double-ball screen look for Lillard — on the next possession, but it didn’t work because Davis kept Lillard from pulling the trigger on his jumper. Middleton manages to save the broken play and gets a shot off, but it wasn’t a great look because he was scrambling after he corralled a loose ball and dribbled it through traffic from one side to the other.
On the other end of the floor, Davis misses an open corner 3, so the Bucks get a stop.
When Lillard crosses half court though, three of his teammates are behind him, so the Lakers set a trap knowing that none of Lillard’s teammates are close enough to the rim to hurt them. Lillard lobs the ball to Middleton, who manages to get a mismatch. For some reason though, rather than letting Middleton operate in isolation on the left side of the floor, Brook Lopez runs to the rim and crowds Middleton. Ultimately, Middleton gets himself a good look at the rim but misses it once again.
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“I think, they’re a team that wants you to play slow and physical,” Middleton (12 points, seven assists) said. “They’re a pretty big, physical team as well. So, I think we could have changed up the pace, played with better pace. I think it could have freed up a little bit more looks, but I think we got good looks, for the most part.
“I think, in the first half, we just got better looks because we were playing with a different pace.”
On the Bucks’ next offensive possession with the Bucks leading by two points, Lillard misses a pull-up 3 off of a high pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo, the first action of the possession. With the game tied one possession later, Middleton misses a stepback jumper in isolation against Reaves. That isolation look came off of a kickout following a pick-and-roll with Lillard and Antetokounmpo. So technically, it was a second-side action, but the pace just wasn’t there for the offense in the final three minutes.
“I think, start of the game, we were moving the ball really well side-to-side, there was a lot of people that was touching the ball before we shot the ball,” Antetokounmpo (29 points, 21 rebounds, 11 assists) said. “I think in the last couple of minutes of the game, it was like one pass, shot, a lot of ISO game. Now, I don’t think it was intentional. I think they did a good job just playing great defense, switching and just having us play one-on-one.
“So, yeah, we didn’t move the ball and also wasn’t able to move them side to side. When you don’t move a team like that side-to-side, it’s hard to score on them.”
With 2.2 seconds remaining and a tied game, the Bucks ran one of their favorite plays. With Middleton inbounding on the sideline, Antetokounmpo back-cuts against Davis and Middleton lofts an alley-oop to the rim, but Antetokounmpo is unable to finish.
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“I don’t know,” Antetokounmpo said when asked what happened on the play. “Khris threw the ball. I went up to get the ball. I really don’t want to get fined, you know, um, but, I went up to get the ball and for some reason, I wasn’t able to get the ball and wasn’t able to end the game.”
Even if Antetokounmpo thought he was fouled on the Bucks’ final offensive possession of regulation, the game should’ve never come down to that. The Bucks could have executed better offensively in the final minutes and won the game with better pace, ball movement and execution. Instead, they got stuck in an offensive rut.
“I think it’s kind of tough in the moment because you get in that situation and we’re a veteran team,” Lillard said. “I’ve been in a situation a ton where it’s a close game, a team has momentum and I’m like, ‘I’m about to pause this s—. I’m about to make something happen and we’re going to get some quality.’ And Giannis has done the same thing. Khris has done the same thing. Beas is a big shotmaker. Bobby is a big shotmaker.
“So I think we kind of just had that mentality and it just came back to hurt us. On the flip side, with the amount of talent that we have on our team and the amount of guys we have that can make that shot, it’s even more of a reason why we should just trust the way we had been playing because it’s going to end up in somebody’s hands that could make a shot, except it probably would have been a higher quality shot.
“So, I think that’s the one thing that that we could have done in that situation.”
Continuing a frustrating habit that has lingered throughout the season, the Bucks followed up a win against one of the Western Conference’s best teams on Sunday with a disappointing loss to a lesser team playing without their superstar on Tuesday. With 10 games remaining in the regular season, the search for consistency and winning habits continues.
(Photo of Austin Reaves and Giannis Antetokounmpo: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)