A little more than a week ago, the Milwaukee Bucks had won their opener — albeit against a defanged Philadelphia 76ers team without the services of Joel Embiid and Paul George — and Damian Lillard had begun the season with a 30-point performance while connecting on six of his 12 3-pointers.
Since then, Lillard has gone 6 for 33 from 3 and the Bucks have lost four straight games. Thursday night felt like something pretty close to rock bottom, when Lillard finished 1 of 12 from the floor for four points in a shocking loss to the shorthanded Memphis Grizzlies. Take a look at his depressing shot chart from the game.
Somehow, the Bucks actually looked worse than the 122-99 score would indicate. Lifeless doesn’t even seem like a strong enough word, but I suppose it will have to do. This does not look like a team that wants to fight. Hell, they don’t even look like they want to play.
“It’s discipline, period,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers said after the loss to Memphis. “At some point there has to be consequences for it. Just too many times they ran behind us today. Over and over again. I mean, bigs running behind us for lobs. That just can’t happen. It’s not like we don’t work on that every day, but we are not working on it well enough, because if we were they wouldn’t be doing it. Again, I keep going back to me. There’s something they’re not hearing that I’m telling them, and I gotta do a better job.”
There is no joy. No ball-sharing. The defense is a bottom-10 unit and only Brook Lopez is even holding that together. They rank 26th in assists per game, tallying just 20 helpers on Thursday, and a handful of those were essentially meaningless in the final minutes of what was already a blowout. Only the 76ers and Utah Jazz have worse team 3-point shooting than Milwaukee’s 30.6% mark.
This is capital-U Ugly, and we’re supposed to believe that whenever Khris Middleton gets back after ankle surgery he’s going to just flip the whole script when he’s clearly in individual decline himself? Don’t bet on it. And don’t bet on Rivers being the answer, either. The Bucks are 20-27 since he took over for the 30-13 Adrian Griffin last season.
Sing as many songs as you want about how the Bucks “looked better” under Rivers than they did under Griffin — who admittedly was doing some weird stuff, particularly with the defense — but 20-27 is what it is. CBS Sports NBA Insider Bill Reiter reported on Thursday that there is a growing confidence around the league that Giannis Antetokounmpo could become available for trade if this thing keeps going south. If what we’ve seen so far is any indication, a sudden turnaround wouldn’t appear too likely.
