MILWAUKEE – It all happened so quickly.
With 11 minutes, 17 seconds remaining in Tuesday’s Game 2 against the Indiana Pacers, Pat Connaughton made a free throw to cut the Milwaukee Bucks’ deficit to four points. A little more than five minutes later, the Bucks saw Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton grab an offensive rebound and score a 3-pointer to give his team a 23-point lead.
There was still 5:55 left, but Haliburton’s 3 capped a 23-4 Pacers run that served as a fitting exclamation point to the Pacers’ response to Milwaukee’s Game 1 victory. After watching the Bucks comfortably win the series opener without two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Pacers evened the series with a 125-108 victory in Game 2 on Tuesday.
The Pacers won precisely the way the Bucks feared they could before the series started.
“I thought it was more our offense versus their defense than the other way around,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said Tuesday night. “They took breaks because of our offense. I thought their pressure made us come out of sets. I thought we struggled executing on the offensive end, and I thought that carried over to the defensive end.
Since taking over as head coach in late January, Rivers has not shied away from publicly discussing his team’s strengths and weaknesses. Rivers has been upfront about having an older team that isn’t particularly athletic and honestly his team would much rather be fighting in the mud than competing in a track and field meet with a young team.
With that in mind, Rivers spent much of the week of practice leading up to his team’s first-round game against the Pacers preaching to his players the importance of “shooting discipline.”
“Our shots have to be the right ones,” he said last Tuesday, after the Bucks’ first playoff practice.
Rivers went on to explain that the Bucks needed to have the right players to take the right shots at the right time if they wanted to beat the Pacers. This meant the Bucks had to play to the physicality of the Pacers and place their players in the right spots on the court. That didn’t just mean getting shots from Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton in their favorite spots, but also putting the rest of the team in the right positions to get back on defense.
Without Antetokounmpo, their athletic 7-footer who erases tactical errors and physical missteps, the Bucks would have to control the circumstances of the match as much as possible. While they did so in Game 1 and part of Game 2, the Bucks lost their discipline in the fourth quarter.
As the Pacers increased their intensity on defense with a full-court press to start the fourth, the Bucks looked for ways to counter that pressure. For Lillard, who again carried the Bucks offensively with 34 points and five assists, that meant taking steps to break down TJ McConnell in transition and get to the rim.
Lillard couldn’t finish at the rim, and the Bucks were out of transition position:
With his momentum carrying him beyond the baseline, Lillard was the player furthest from the Pacers’ basket. Patrick Beverley and Khris Middleton were stuck in the corners when Lillard missed, giving the Pacers a head start to run the other direction. Lopez, the Bucks’ only real deterrent on the roster with Antetokounmpo on the sidelines, was still working to get to his spot on the court on offense, and he started the Pacers’ transition possession at the free throw line instead of ‘beyond the free throw line. 3 point line. Ultimately, the Pacers got an easy look at the rim as Jae Crowder attempted to defend the fast break himself.
Two possessions later, the Bucks tried to pass the ball to Lopez in the post. This backfired when the Bucks once again lost their balance on the floor.
With Lopez unable to complete his acrobatic attempt, the Bucks’ rim protector and slowest player was further from the Pacers’ hoop than the other nine players on the court. Beverley and Middleton were stuck in the corners again and Crowder and Lillard were left to defend alone in transition:
The Pacers didn’t score immediately, but the 3-on-2 disadvantage early in the possession allowed Pascal Siakam (37 points, six assists) to move into deep position and catch the ball with both feet in the paint, which led to an easy score. The Pacers’ lead had grown to double digits.
Getting into the paint and trying to finish at the rim is not a bad thing. With Antetokounmpo sidelined, the Bucks need to find ways to hit the paint. But not finishing at the rim puts the Bucks in horrible defensive positions.
“It wasn’t great,” Rivers said of the Bucks’ misses at the rim early in the fourth quarter. “I mean, they have to be good shots. If you twist and turn, we should move the ball.
“I can’t wait to watch the tape, because I thought there were times where we could have moved the ball better, but there were times where their pressure got to us and we need to do a better job over there.”
As AthleticismAnalytics guru Seth Partnow often reminds people on X that missed layups lead to transition buckets much more often missed 3s. and this problem was exacerbated in this match. The Bucks don’t have the speed to contain the Pacers when the conditions are equal. They certainly don’t have it when the Pacers have an advantage.
And while the misses during the 23-4 fourth-quarter run stand out the most, issues with floor balance and shot discipline were evident throughout the second half.
It wasn’t a bad shot from Bobby Portis. He did a great job of faking a dribble handoff and getting to the rim, but when the Bucks missed a close look around the rim, the Pacers made them pay.
“They put the pressure on,” Lillard said. “They started to protect themselves and deny a little harder. And I just think we weren’t as organized as we needed to be when they were defending that way.
“Against a team like this that wants to get the ball out and run, get up and shoot quickly, they play at an extremely high tempo, I just thought the areas that we struggled in offensively really hurt our defense and allowed them to just go out and play the way they feel comfortable and the way they want to play. And I think that showed when they took the plunge and took the lead.
Before Tuesday’s game, Rivers told reporters that Antetokounmpo took some shots Tuesday and “was on the floor a lot, so he’s getting close,” but that doesn’t mean Antetokounmpo will be ready to play Friday for the Game 3. If Antetokounmpo can’t play, the Bucks will need to bring the focus they brought in Game 1 when they took the right shots and played at their own pace.
Winning in the playoffs is difficult. It’s even more difficult when the two-time MVP is on the sidelines. If the Bucks want to win Game 3, they will need to play with a renewed focus on good shooting and increased intensity to match the physicality and pace Indiana brought to Game 2.
“It’s 1-1,” Rivers said after the game. “We’d like to be up 2-0, but it’s 1-1, so we go to Indiana and win a game or two.”
Required reading
Located: Pacers’ Pascal Siakam proves too much for Bucks: ‘He just won’t let himself be shaken’
News: Haliburton says fan hurled racist slurs at younger brother in Milwaukee
Tuesday’s playoff takeaways: The Mavericks and Pacers join the fight; The Suns’ Big 3 in a bottle
(Photo by Pascal Siakam) Stacy Revere/Getty Images