For seemingly the first time all season, the Milwaukee Bucks are finally staring in the face of adversity. They’re down 3-2 in the Eastern Conference Finals after three losses in a row, and on Saturday night, the series returns to Toronto, where the Raptors have won seven of nine games this postseason.
Long story short, Milwaukee has run into a real problem, and at the center of everything sits the team’s inability to execute in the half court.
The Bucks were the third-best half court offense in the regular season, scoring 1.003 points per half court possession. But in this series, that number has dropped to 0.834 points per half court possession, a number that would have ranked dead last this regular season and each of the last two postseasons.
Milwaukee was able to overcome its half court deficiencies with two excellent transition games to begin the series, outscoring its 1.26 points per play in transition during the regular season, but poor half court performances have sunk the squad in the subsequent three games.
These struggles come despite the Bucks running on 21.3 percent of their possessions in the series, a mark that would tie the 2017 Golden State Warriors for the highest transition frequency in a postseason over the previous four seasons. While getting out and playing with pace is Milwaukee’s bread and butter, however, issues have arisen when Toronto is able to slow them down — here are the Bucks’ offensive numbers categorized by how Toronto finishes an offensive possession.
You can probably guess what the numbers says when you look at Milwaukee’s effective field goal percentage based on how many seconds are remaining on the shot clock when they attempt a shot.
Toronto deserves plenty of credit for these numbers. The Raptors’ half court defense has been committed, first and foremost, to taking away driving lanes and paint opportunities, often crashing multiple guys into the paint on any Giannis Antetokounmpo drive. Watch here as Giannis appears to have an advantage on the decisive rip through move, but is quickly swarmed by four Toronto defenders in the paint.
Toronto is especially keen to help off Eric Bledsoe off ball, throwing his defender into Giannis’ driving lanes and daring Bledsoe to beat them off the catch.
Giannis has often made the correct passes when the defense collapses, but his teammates are shooting a mere 21-for-63 (33.3 percent) from downtown off his potential dimes in the series.
Yet, the swarming defense has impacted the likely MVP’s numbers in the series as well. He is averaging just 23 points per game on 52.8 percent True Shooting. His distribution has taken a hit, as he’s doling out 5.8 assists and 4.6 turnovers per game. Antetokounmpo’s efficiency on playtypes has dipped from the regular season nearly across the board, with particular hits coming on his Isolations and his Post Ups — possessions where he acts as the fulcrum for Milwaukee’s offense.
In addition, he’s shooting a mere 53.1 percent in the paint in the series, a significant drop from the otherworldly 67.6 percent he shot in that area during the regular season. Simply put, Toronto has made half court living hard on the Bucks and their future MVP. The key question facing Mike Budenholzer heading into Game 6 is whether he can make the necessary adjustments to free Giannis and get Milwaukee’s offense back on track.
Bud’s lack of adjustments has been a cause of concern throughout the playoffs, and while he put some critics to rest with his defensive gameplan against Boston, this is different. The Bucks have largely played one style of offense this season because, simply enough, it has worked tremendously well. There has been no reason to adjust on the offensive end before this point.
But as they face elimination, it might be time for a change. And that change should start with using Giannis more as a screener.
This has not been a feature of Milwaukee’s offense this season. Giannis finished just 91 possessions as a roll man all year. But he has the potential to be one of the deadliest roll men in all of basketball, specifically when he sets a side ball screen with an empty strong side corner.
The key here is to set the screen with the ball handler dribbling towards the middle of the floor, isolating Giannis on the empty side. This forces the defense into a decision: try to switch a smaller defender onto him, or play conventional defense and hope he doesn’t throw down a lob. Neither is particularly appetizing.
The Bucks ran 30 plays all season where Giannis received the ball after setting a ball screen with an empty strong side corner. The Greek Freak scored 55 points on these plays for an impossible 1.83 points per possession. When teams attempted to play conventionally, their only hope was Giannis being unable to throw a lob down on their heads.
When they tried to switch a smaller man onto him, he destroyed the opposition.
One of the keys here is making sure the ball handler is a smaller player, and likely not Eric Bledsoe after the Raptors switched Pascal Siakam onto him in Game 5. The Raptors are comfortable switching the interchange between Siakam and Kawhi Leonard defensively, but are less confident in doing so when that defender is Kyle Lowry or Fred VanVleet, the latter of whom logged 37 minutes off the bench in Game 5.
The Bucks just so happen to have a player on their roster who has already mastered this craft. George Hill often engaged in the empty strong side corner ball screen dance with LeBron James in Cleveland last season. More often than not, it worked out beautifully.
Even with James — who draws more strong side zone attention than almost any player in the NBA — as the roll man, you can see the difficulties this action presents for the defense as they try to help behind the play. There isn’t exactly a natural help position, especially if the offense engages in any token action on the weak side.
This is incredibly important against the Raptors, which are making a concerted effort to bring help from anywhere the moment Giannis even sniffs the paint. If the help does come from the weak side corner, it creates a much easier pass that is likely to put the defense into predictable rotations.
While breaking out the empty strong side corner ball screen action will not solve all of Milwaukee’s problems on its own, it should begin to make life easier on Antetokounmpo. Not having to handle the creation burden on every possession while facing a slew of bodies on every drive should allow him to get back into a rhythm and, potentially, help the Bucks force a Game 7 in Milwaukee.
