Nickel: The talented but inconsistent Bucks have shown signs of stress all season. Where is the joy?
“Sometimes there’s a little dark cloud around us for whatever reason.” former Bucks coach Adrian Griffin, November 2023, after a win.
"You can feel it. You can feel it during the game. … One of the officials said it: ‘Man, you can feel that heaviness of your team right now.’" current coach Doc Rivers, last Friday, after one of the Bucks' six losses in seven games.
With just four games to go until the playoffs, the slumping Milwaukee Bucks have a lot to fix. They’ve had their share of injuries with players in and out of the lineup. But there’s one thing that concerns coach Doc Rivers more than anything else: the team psyche.
“It's the mental toughness,” Rivers said. “A ref makes a bad call. OK. Someone grabs you. OK! Like, you got to keep playing through it. And it's my job to get them through that. So maybe that's my biggest job right now.”
It’s impossible to watch the Bucks and not notice the furrowed brows. The downcast gazes. The exasperated glares at the referees. The Bucks make a lot of pleas for calls they don’t get, and protests of calls made against them.
And then there’s the solemnity. Maybe it seems like an odd thing to notice, the fact there’s so few smiles, but this is a team with a Dad Joke teller and a Disney fan. What limited emotion the Bucks do express is turned outward, it seems – at the refs, at the opposing bench, at their own bench, demanding a review – rather than turning inward, sharing and comparing with each other, a united front against the world.
It’s not just one player; its several. It’s not just this stretch of the season, when they've lost four straight, six of seven and seven of 10; its been all season.
This topic went largely unexplored for months until contemplative veteran guard Pat Connaughton brought it up over the weekend. Where is the joy, he asked.
“We're a great team. We have great players. We have a great organization, great staff, great management, great ownership, great fans...” Connaughton said. “… But I think it's been a while since I've seen excitement, I've seen joy, I've seen smiles.”
He’s right, and the opinion here is the answer isn’t as simple as just winning games.
There have been signs and signals all season to show how much stress the Bucks are enduring.
Inconsistency in many areas has hurt the Bucks
The Bucks haven’t had one team strength trait to rely on all year. They could never say their perimeter defense is menacing, or their interior defense is dominant. They could never say the pick and roll is their calling card, or their ball movement toward a play is unstoppable.
The Bucks can always count on individuals such as Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo for dagger performances, but nothing like that as a team. Not the depth of the bench, like they had five years ago. Or the drought-resistant, Let it Fly offense of the Mike Budenholzer coaching era.
That has led to wildly inconsistent basketball, and inconsistency leads to instability, in my opinion, especially after listening to Lillard try to explain his point of view.
“You know, it takes time. I don't know how to explain it,” Lillard said. “Some days it's like, we got it. And then there's days where it's like we kind of lost it a little bit. And then we got it again and we lost it a little bit.
“Sometimes you just go through these things. Everybody's asking questions about this and that and what should Doc do? What should we do? How are we going to change it?
“I feel like these are kind of like the dog days, the hard times of the season when you know the playoffs are approaching. You ask anybody in the league, they'll tell you, these are some of the hardest times over the course of the season. There's no excuse for us but it is not always easy. It's not always simple.”
How overwhelming have the changes been this season?
Likewise, how must the Bucks feel when considering all the corrections they’ve been asked to make this season? Not just the coach and roster changes, which have been dramatic. How about fixing the defense. Drop defense? Or zone? Switch? Under or over? How about making the offense more inclusive, and get enough touches to everyone while allowing the alphas, Giannis and Dame, to go. One month it’s a top of key defensive issue, the next month it's points in the paint allowed. There's always something that needs extra attention.
That has to be, on some level, overwhelming, exhausting.
Rivers observed this immediately when he arrived in Milwaukee in late January to replace Adrian Griffin and hinted at it being a concern right away. It's why he keeps referencing one of his favorite books, by coach Don Shula, with the motto of thinking a little less to play a little faster. Rivers has been imploring the Bucks to do this, but again, he's been with the team only 2½ months.
Bucks have had to play from behind late in games
Here’s another question, although it may be a reach as Jae Crowder thinks it is, so take it with a grain of salt.
But remember when the Bucks overcame a 26-point deficit in November against Portland, Lillard's old team, and won? While thrilling, Antetokounmpo warned that games like those take a toll on the body, as they are a drain physically. (Maybe be mentally, too.)
Well, the Bucks have played in 78 games so far; in 32 of them, the Bucks have trailed after three quarters. Their record in those games? 6-26. Obviously, the deficits range quite a bit and were not as dramatic as 26 points. But Milwaukee's overall record is 47-31, and 26 of those losses were games in which the Bucks were trying to come back in the fourth.
It certainly affects rotations; can it affect the focus? The energy output? Take Milwaukee’s loss to New York on Sunday at Fiserv Forum. The Knicks are good, a playoff-bound team too, but look at the third- and fourth-quarter turnovers by Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez et al. These are not careless players. They’re the stalwarts of the 2021 NBA championship.
How many times have they been asked to mount fourth-quarter comebacks and is that in any way draining? Just looking for a possible explanation, not an excuse.
“Every game is going to be different, so I don't know if it's a trend," Crowder said. "Sometimes you're going to be down after three quarters and you still have to win the game. We have enough talent, especially at home; doesn't matter the opponent, doesn't matter the situation. If you're down one or two going into the fourth quarter, it's basketball, so that's not weighing on us mentally, I don't think."
Questions about Bucks' effort have been unheard of in the past
Mental and physical mistakes are uncharacteristic for the Bucks, but questions of effort have been unheard of – until this year. Early in the year, it was about their defense. On Friday in a loss to Toronto, it got so bad that Rivers sat a couple starters in favor of Bobby Portis and rookie Andre Jackson Jr., who made a couple of defensive stops and several aggressive plays.
"You know, I'm gonna say this. Jackson stood out for a lot of reasons,” Rivers said. “Not because he was the best athlete; he stood out because he was just playing so darn hard. And that shouldn't stand out. But that stood out. And that tells you – that told me – something about us. And something that I have to do better.
"I stayed with the group that was playing hard, and that was the message. I said it at halftime: ‘I'm playing whoever plays the hardest, and that group deserves to play on the floor.’ “
Have all these issues sapped the joy out of the game for Bucks?
These signs of duress are just what we’ve been able to observe, but there are limitations in that, and that's by design. Every team also has its private issues and challenges, demons and distractions, behind the scenes that never get exposed but that factor into players' performances, personalities, successes and slumps.
But it’s no wonder that the Bucks look like they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.
Antetokounmpo made his best effort to fire up himself, his team, the crowd in addition to all the other work he had to do on the court Sunday night against the Knicks. He agrees with Connaughton wholeheartedly; where's the Malik Beasley three-point shimmy? The Jae Crowder slide?
But when New York started surging ahead, and Donte DiVincenzo hit another three on the Knicks' crucial run, even Giannis expressed displeasure on the court. Antetokounmpo explained he wants to win. He hates losing. Fair enough.
Joy can not be faked.
The sad thing to witness was Milwaukee looking helpless within minutes of that fourth quarter against the Knicks. And that was what Connaughton alluded to, and what Rivers is trying to guard against.
“We got to be a little more loose. We got to be a little more free,” Connaughton said.
Connaughton said the appropriate attention to detail and respect to the opponents should be balanced out with discipline, but a missed shot should be met with a shrug and a fight for another good shot, and not, Connaughton said, heads dropping in defeat or players tensing up.
“I think it's a balance, right?" he said. "You can't be a free-for-all. You can't just be off the walls, laughing, joking, not paying attention. But there is an element of excitement that the Milwaukee Bucks and this team over the last six years now has brought to the city, to each other, to the organization – the world. We've brought a lot of joy.
"What type of energy are you bringing to the getting better? Are you bringing the energy that, ‘Oh, we got to do this’ and you tense up really fast?
“It's something that Giannis has noticed; it's something that we've all kind of noticed and it's not at anyone's fault, right? But there's still things we got to get better at. But I think the approach and the energy that we bring to getting better could have a little bit more … a little more joy.”
But it's been a long season. On Nov. 1, the Bucks lost to Toronto and then-coach Adrian Griffin's open door policy led to player meetings to discuss their concerns. Five months later, just a few days ago, Rivers held a meeting with the rotation players, trying to work though everything.
It's heavy being a Milwaukee Buck this season, whether winning or losing.
"Adversity builds character; we have to embrace it," Crowder said. "We can't shy away from the fact that we just lost six of the last seven. It's tough days, but at the same time, this is how you build team character. If we come out of this thing on the other side, we'll be a better group going into the playoffs."
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: A heaviness has been hanging on the inconsistent Bucks all season
