Benny Sieu-Imagn Images
Players, coaches, and how you get individuals to score
Author’s note: this article is part two in a three-part series diagnosing the Milwaukee Bucks offense as the 2024-2025 season winds down. Part one on play type and shot diet is here. Part three (film) will run in the coming days.
With the playoffs in the offing and the Milwaukee Bucks offense stuck in a perpetual stop-start sequence, we decided to dig to understand where things are going awry. Yesterday, I started at the strategic level to get a sense of what it is the team is currently doing. Our takeaways: they’re ineffective in infrequent transition opportunities, have a strong P&R game, are very good at spot-ups while ironically creating them less than expected, iso aplenty, and post-up while being relatively bad at scoring from those positions.
What do all of those factors add up to from a high-level perspective? An offense that is dangerously reliant upon maximizing single possessions to keep pace with opponents. Consider that Milwaukee is all of these things:
- Second-worst in second-chance points a game (11.7)
- Second-worst in points off turnovers (14.9)
- Third-worst in fast break points (13.0)
- Third-worst in points in the paint (43.1)
This is a group that rarely forces turnovers, rarely hits opponents in the open court, rarely gets another crack at the rim on a given trip down the floor, and which is struggling to get the paint to open up. That’s
hard going.
Really hard going. Pressure ratchets up exponentially when trying to break down set defenses who can key up on a player or two to effectively seal the paint. No wonder you watch a given Bucks game and so much of late-game execution emphasizes the heroic over the mechanic.
They give themselves few other choices.
How did we get to this point? Outcomes in sports are shaped by the people involved. Opposing defenses have a role to play, but offense gives your side a chance to take the initiative on each possession. To better understand why we’re seeing this play style, we need to dig into the individual.
The Players
Part of running a good offense is allocating the proper shot diet. As outlined in yesterday’s piece, I definitely think there is feasible work to be done there. To understand a particular shot allocation, though, you’re better served working your way backwards from the roster at hand. Player archetypes, while never completely rigid, set a coaching staff’s array of strategic options. Doc Rivers seems to have honed in on what he thinks his playoff rotation will be (quibbling with minute allocation here or there in a pinch). What has he got? Let’s run through each guy:
Damian Lillard: Guard who is still very good off the bounce but a step slower than his Portland peak. More prone to intense ball pressure and needs teammates who will work hard to free him. Three-point percentage bounced back into the high 30s, still creates a good deal for others, and navigates P&Rs to a high level. Late game option number one.
Giannis Antetokounmpo: Wrecking ball, questionable screen setter, solid P&R roll guy with the right facilitator, taking and making more twos than he ever has. One of very few reliable paint options. Got rid of the ill-advised three-point shots in favor of a midrange game. Creates for others, but not in the drive-at-wall-and-kick-out days of yore. Defers to Dame in late-game situations. Has had his worst % year from the line at .600 on 10.3 attempts a game.
Kyle Kuzma: Chaos agent, both good and bad. Shooting percentages are subpar. A threat to constantly move around the floor and drag his defender with him. There might be some more potential to use him to get ideal matchups off switches/dunker spot guys. Bad creator/ball-handler with any pressure on him.
Brook Lopez: Spacing big doing the thing he’s done since he arrived in Milwaukee. Shooting less often inside 10 feet than almost ever, but very efficient when he does (71.9%). Main screener for Dame. Tactically positioned on offense to reduce how far he has to go to get back on defense.
Bobby Portis: Iso guy, but you knew that already. Drove me nuts for much of the season before seeming to rediscover his potential as a three-point spacer prior to suspension. Have literally no clue how he will play when he returns. Often maddening. Also the best break-glass-in-case-of-cruddy-offense bench option.
Taurean Prince: Excellent three-point percentage, drives occasionally to average effect. Not much of a screener or creator.
AJ Green: Shooter, sometimes screener. That’s about it.
Gary Trent Jr.: Another shooter who occasionally tries to create his shot off misguided dribbling. Clearly a cut below being a guy who can lead units without Dame or Giannis, but offers a little more tactical flexibility. 3P% recovered nicely since a slow start to the season.
Kevin Porter Jr.: Scoring guard through and through who has had moments of great play creating for others. Still something of a question mark about whether he has a place on the floor if the ball isn’t in his hands. How legit is the 3P%? How legit are the very limited PG cameos? Wild card who may have the potential to play a bigger-than-expected role in a playoff rotation (in my eyes).
(Three guys I did not include because I don’t see them getting minutes any time soon are Andre Jackson Jr. (effectively a zero on offense), Jericho Sims (thumb surgery + Bobby’s return = goodbye minutes allocation), and Ryan Rollins (can bring the ball up the floor and drives to mixed results; decent 3P% on low volume).)
Depending on how you quantify the above, that’s ~4.5 shooters out of nine players, two creators, and whatever the hell Bobby/Kuzma/Porter are. Barring major disagreements about what these guys have shown themselves to be, the roster is constructed to play one main way: let the stars create and be ready to take a three. Not the worst idea in the world. The efficient spot up numbers suggest that part two of that formula has not just potential, but proof of concept. Milwaukee’s remaining shot diet also indicates that part one of the formula is getting leaned on
a lot.
So if you take the roster and the general idea of what you’re going for, are any of the numbers we’re seeing much of a surprise? I’d argue that, no, everything more or less lines up with expectations. The next question: is there something on the tactical level that could take a middling offense and make enough marginal improvements to matter? To answer that, we have to go to the coaches.
The Coaching
First, let me start this section by noting that Xs and Os are a huge component to an offense. I’ll cover that in part in the film article, but note that any number of minute tweaks could be valid. For now, I’m going to focus on the other major lever a coach can pull: rotations.
Since the ASB, Doc Rivers has used a starting unit of Lillard-Prince-Kuzma-Antetokounmpo-Lopez. That group has played 205 minutes together in that span and has registered a pretty pedestrian but positive net rating of +4.3. The two variations on that lineup with Kuzma out of the picture see AJ Green out there and the offense in the mud (92.5) or Trent with great offense and bad defense (131.8, 118.6, +13.2). Funny enough, a lineup with Lillard, Lopez, Antetokounmpo, plus Green and Trent is one of the stronger groups at +19.4 and a very good 100.0 DRtg. Here are the top six lineups the Bucks have used since the Break:
Take those Sims minutes out and slot Bobby in their place. What are we seeing? First, a lot of Lillard where he is effectively the only creator. Giannis can and does create, but not off the dribble the way Dame is able to. Yet each group is some variation upon
star X makes a play for themselves or tries to find a shooter off a screen and drive. If Lopez is out there he’s helping set screens while Giannis is off somewhere else on the floor. The logical consequence are offensive sets that spend a lot of time seeing if Lillard can spring himself and, failing that, going to Giannis in case he can do something. That the offense holds up at all is, in fact, miraculous and a credit to those guys’ abilities.
Doc’s rotations suggest something of a rigid approach, though, vis-a-vis player types. Incorporating wild cards like Kuzma, Portis, or Porter Jr. would take a more deliberate shift in how the offense is called; when those guys have
moments it usually feels made up on the spot and not the result of a wider plan.
It feels like versatility should be at a premium right now, both in player skillset and the way Rivers designs plays. Get guys on the floor who can do more and scheme up looks accordingly. Easier said than done, I’m aware
Do I have suggestions? Sure!
One, I’m not sold on AJ Green as a rock-solid rotation piece at this time. His shooting percentages from month to month are still fine, but I have doubts about his provenance as a perimeter defender—now, Gary Trent Jr.’s defense isn’t exactly an upgrade, so I’m open to pushback here. But GTJ is a more versatile offensive player, and situations when a guard has to defend an opposing forward in the paint (where Green is effective) are ideally few and far between.
Instead of Green, I’d have liked to see an experiment where Rivers fits both Ryan Rollins and Kevin Porter Jr. in the guard rotation rather than KPJ and Green. Porter isn’t really a point guard. Rollins isn’t
much of one, but is there a rotational future that sees Rollins doing the dirty work in bringing the ball up the floor and initiating simpler sets when Dame is resting while Porter spends time finding his spot as another athletic off-ball scoring option? Porter and Dame have shared the court for a total of 51 minutes so far. That’s a function of Rivers’ choice to slot Porter in as the cover-it-all guard when Dame isn’t on the floor; he’s been rewarded with some great stretches of play to bail the team out. But is that sustainable? And when Lillard sees his already high MPG rise even further in the playoffs, will Porter be relegated to two or three-minute cameos? Feels like there is more there there to be explored.
My other complaint would be, of course, a dearth of Giannis small-ball lineups. I’ve come to accept that their absence is probably not just a coach’s decision—Giannis must really dislike playing as a nominal center. Lineups with Giannis at the five have been run for a total of about 27 minutes since the ASB. Now, per the numbers, a lot of those groups have been dreadful in their short stretches. It is hard to tell whether that is because Giannis center groups are just bad structurally, they haven’t had enough reps to sort out how to work together, or something else. In a playoff pinch where any of Brook Lopez, Bobby Portis, or Kyle Kuzma are being played off the floor, I’d rest a little easier knowing the team feels it has experience pushing Giannis more into the middle of things defensively while having a clue how to gash opponents on offense. Right now, the gamble isn’t even really happening.
One more thing: Giannis seems to have made it a goal to add the elbow jumper to his arsenal. I approve. What I don’t approve of is how cemented the offense gets while waiting for him to get to his spot or moving around him once he’s gotten there. Using Giannis as the fulcrum in the paint is a winning formula, but there isn’t much creative thinking or sets being run around him there to give the team other options. Those post-up numbers above are really just Antetokounmpo and Portis—the efficiency says it is not a winning formula right now.
We’re getting late in the game to throw a lot at the walls, but the continued stunting of the offense is a red flag the coaching staff needs to address. Whether it be changing points of play emphasis, actually drawing up actions that encourage and reward team play, or further lineup tinkering, something has got to give. To keep on keeping on is probably asking for trouble.
Part three will go live either over the weekend or next Monday. In that piece, we’ll take the final step from abstraction to practice, looking at clutch numbers and film from some recent games to illustrate the where's, how's, and why’s of instances where Milwaukee’s offense bogs down.
Thank you for reading, and please share your thoughts and comments below!
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