Why the Bucks Offense Tends to Struggle

Mike Budenholzer was a longtime assistant for Gregg Popovich (1996-2013). Many of Popovich’s understudies that are now head coaches, such as Quinn Snyder, James Borrego, and Budenholzer himself, emphasize ball movement and playing the “right way” on offense. Their teams get into multiple actions during their offensive possessions to generate easy looks.

In Budenholzer’s tenure in Atlanta, they didn’t have marquee star players. Instead, they played an egalitarian style that mirrored how the Spurs played under Popovich. The Hawks utilized lots of ball movement, cutting, and off-ball action. Unfortunately, they ran into a prime LeBron James every season in the Eastern Conference who ended their playoff runs for those Hawks teams.

Up to the end of his Hawks’ tenure, ball movement was a key principle of Budenholzer’s philosophy. In the Hawks’ prime seasons (2013-2016), they were at least top six in passes made, top two in assists per game, and top ten in hockey assists during the regular season. A similar trend kept up in the playoffs.

A Difference in Style

There’s a stark contrast between how his Hawks team played versus Budenholzer’s Bucks team. When he arrived in Milwaukee, they’ve been a consistent bottom ten team in passes made per game. The Bucks do have solid assist numbers, but their hockey assists numbers have been low. Their poor passing numbers signal that they aren’t getting into possessions where players drive and kick and swing the ball around the court to get a clean look. In this year’s playoffs, the Bucks rank LAST in passes made per game. The year before, they were fifth to last.

What we can draw from this because the Bucks don’t move the ball well as a team. They’re relying on their primary players to create and make shots. When they kick the ball out, the Bucks’ tertiary players aren’t making enough threes to generate sustainable offense. While Budenholzer may want the Bucks to move the ball more, the Bucks might not have the right personnel to play that style of basketball.

The Bucks go through shooting slumps in the playoffs quite a bit. Some criticism has to fall on the Bucks players for not making shots, but they don’t have great shooters. Look at their closing lineup of Giannis, Jrue Holiday, Khris Middleton, Pat Connaughton, and PJ Tucker. Only Middleton is an accurate knockdown shooter. For the rest of those guys, defenses will live with giving a late contest and let them get up threes.

Because the Bucks don’t have shooters, it’s hard for them to get into sequences where the ball is zipping across the court. Once they get an advantage, the defense can take it away by helping off a poor shooter and allowing them to take a shot.

This trend also passes the eye test. The Bucks’ offense lacks flow and continuity from action to action. A lot of the shots they put up feels difficult, and running against the shot clock.

Ekam Nagra from Ball Don’t Stop elaborates on their stagnancy, specifically through the lens of Giannis Antetokoumpo.

When Giannis gets his points, his scoring gravity doesn’t always translate to easy opportunities for his teammates, which is what Nagra is saying. Think of the James Harden clip where he waves off the help, and Giannis settles for a turnaround jumper. There’s no advantage created. Instead, Giannis is riding his shot-making ability, which isn’t polished.

When Nagra talks about getting downhill, he’s talking about the Giannis drives where he backs up and charges at the rim. He’s focused on trying to get to the rim and not where the help is coming from. When he cannot get a shot up, he tends to resort to these slow jump passes where he’s hanging in the air looking for an emergency pass. In the NBA, those milliseconds wasted gives teams time to recover.

In theory, when Giannis drives and teams build the wall, there should be a teammate open since the defense is committing so much help to him, but his teammates don’t get clean looks off his drives. That’s because Giannis draws out his attacks too long by euro-stepping, jumping in the air to pass, and getting stuck in his spin moves, which allows the defense to scramble and get back to their man.

The issue for Giannis isn’t that he doesn’t have a jump shot. He scored most of his 42 on pure athleticism while the defense was well aware he would be taken the shot. It’s his lack of feel when his main option gets taken away on particular possessions. He doesn’t see the backline of help all the time and takes too long to make decisions. When he attacks the rim, there’s no plan.

It’s not all on Giannis, however. Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton aren’t guys who can break down their man and get to the rim. Middleton is a tough shot maker. He will create slight separation with a stepback or with his height and shoot over you. He can get the Bucks a shot off when there’s a time crunch, but he isn’t going to get a teammate an open look consistently. When his shot doesn’t fall at a high rate, the Bucks’ offense struggles.

To give Holiday credit, he is the most natural playmaker out of their three best players. However, Holiday has a similar issue where he’s a guard that’s going to bully his defender, but he doesn’t always draw help. He uses his strength to draw contact and muscle his way to the rim. The issue with that type of scoring is similar to what plagues Giannis: his drives get drawn out too long, and the defense can recover. The Bucks looked to get him involved more in Game 2, but he wasn’t able to capitalize offensively.

Comparison to the Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook OKC Team

While Kevin Durant and Giannis Antetokoumpo are different types of players, both teams shared the same issue of a lack of passing and poor shooting around them as a focal point. The Thunder relied on Durant to operate in tight spaces since they played a lot of nonshooters. Their lineups consisted of Enes Kanter or Steven Adams next to a non-shooting guard in Andre Roberson and Russell Westbrook, who would take threes, but the defense would allow him to shoot.

Durant decided to leave the Thunder in large part to the Warriors having better offensive talent. On the All the Smoke Podcast, Durant talked about how “the Warriors were so intriguing, because…[he] didn’t play with a lot of skill guys [in OKC].” The Warriors, on the other hand, had ball handlers and shooters galore who could play off-ball.

Similar to OKC, the Bucks of the past three seasons lack high-level shooting to complement Giannis’s drives. As a result, teams can crowd the paint on Giannis and can afford to late close out the Bucks shooters. Additionally, Giannis isn’t a high-level passer, so his lack of playmaking is only exasperated. As a result, the Bucks get tougher looks, and Giannis can’t always score on his own. That’s why the Bucks offense feels stuck in the mud.

Is there a solution for the Bucks?

It’s hard to imagine the Bucks getting significantly better offensively. They’ve already maxed out this team in terms of cap space. It’ll take a drastic move to shake things up, but even that would be hard to orchestrate since they just acquired Holiday and gave up most of their draft capital.

Looking at the Bucks’ numbers, they do get a decent amount of assists per game. The issue is that’s all they get. Their offense goes one pass and then a shot goes up. There’s no hockey assists, which are typically the easier looks a team can create.

Holiday and Middleton’s lack of blow by ability isn’t something that can be developed at this stage of their careers. They are what they are at this point. Giannis is the only one who has time to improve, but it’ll be hard to maximize his abilities without the proper shooting around him.

Giannis is still young at 26 years old. However, he started playing basketball at an older age, which means he still has years to improve his understanding of the game. Hopefully, he will reach the point where the decision-making between scoring and passing comes naturally. When he gets there, he has the potential to be one of the most unstoppable players in history.

There isn’t a clear pathway to improving the roster. Their established core guys aren’t great at distributing the ball. So, for now, they’ll have to rely on their shot-making to carry them through the playoffs. What they do have going for them is an elite defense. They have a shot in every playoff series because of their individual offensive talent. Once they unlock a more team oriented style, the Bucks will be a consistent championship contender.

For now, they’ll have to wait for Giannis to gain that experience for them to take the next step as an organization.

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