MILWAUKEE — Some nights in the NBA, it seems like the other team just can’t miss a shot. It doesn’t matter what the defense does or how well they contest each jumper, their opponent’s shots keep falling. The Chicago Bulls hit 21 3-pointers on Friday in the Milwaukee Bucks’ 2024-25 season home opener, and yet, the players in the Bucks locker room didn’t think the Bulls had a special shooting night.
“I think there are definitely nights where you just say, ‘They had a night.’ I don’t think tonight was one of those nights,” Lillard said after the Bucks’ 133-122 loss. “They did make a lot of shots, but I thought we helped them.”
While the Bulls haven’t made 21 3-pointers in a game since Feb. 10, 2021, Lillard blamed the Bucks’ lack of defensive intensity, focus and execution for Chicago’s spectacular shooting night.
“We came into the game knowing they want to shoot more 3s,” Lillard said. “They got this guy, this guy, this guy and this guy that can shoot. And we closed short. We didn’t help each other. We didn’t rotate sometimes. A couple of times, guys going downhill, we see the back of their jersey, we know that it’s a big popping that can shoot, we’re supposed to late switch and we kept chasing the guy and they throw it back. There’s no way a big is going to get back to that.”
Because the instances were so prevalent, finding the moments and situations Lillard described took little more than a cursory glance at Friday night’s game film.
Here is an example: Bulls guard Josh Giddey gets downhill and past Taurean Prince in the first quarter and Prince continues to chase Giddey rather than peel off for a switch to Nikola Vučević to take away the open 3-point look:
On this possession, the Bucks failed to control Coby White’s initial push in transition, which allowed the Bulls to break down the Bucks’ defense and put them into rotation, which they didn’t handle well enough, allowing an open 3-point look for Julian Phillips.
This is an example of Bobby Portis “closing short,” or not running all the way out to the 3-point line, against Bulls big man Jalen Smith in the second quarter.
Here is Giannis Antetokounmpo doing the same thing with Vučević in semi-transition a few minutes later.
In the second half, the Bulls got a little more creative and used Zach LaVine as a screener to free up Vučević for a 3-pointer in semi-transition.
The Bulls used this same action a few more times in the second half and got other players 3-point attempts with it as well.
All nine players who played regular rotation minutes on Friday showed up at least once in those five clips, so no one player can feel as though they were exempt from the Bucks’ inept defensive effort.
Newcomer Taurean Prince admitted he was not good enough at the point of attack.
“Start with myself. Gotta be better on the ball,” Prince said. “There was a lot of times where Giddey was getting downhill and penetrating our defense and causing bigs to come over and causing rotation on the backside, so I put a lot of that on myself, especially the first half and in the third quarter.
“So I’ll take accountability for that. I think if I guard the ball a lot better, a lot of stuff doesn’t happen. A lot of the spurts where they were rolling, I think those would have been held to a minimum. So it always starts on the ball, so I’ll take this one.”
The Bucks coaching staff has hammered the importance of point-of-attack defense into the minds of players this preseason and it wasn’t good enough on Friday night. Potentially more worrisome, Prince agreed with Lillard’s assessment about the team’s level of focus and intensity heading into the home opener.
“I just feel like defensively, our IQ has to go up, our effort has to rise to a level and can’t lower, due to the team or someone who we think we can beat, who we feel we are better than,” Prince said. “At the end of the day, you still gotta lace them up and go play. It’s hard to win games in this league and if you give a team a chance, they’ll take advantage of it. I think that’s what we did tonight. We just gotta be a lot better, man. Like I said, including myself. Very disappointed in myself. But it’s only … game two. Lotta room to get better.”
On many occasions last season, the Bucks showed they do not have the youth and athleticism to turn up their defensive intensity and lock another team down to turn the tide against a team that’s shooting well. Milwaukee’s personnel has improved this season, but the Bucks still aren’t young or particularly athletic.
If the Bucks want to be a top-10 defense this season, as Rivers has stated throughout the preseason, they will only be able to do so if they enter each game with the proper defensive focus and intensity. In this period of championship contention that started in 2018, Milwaukee had the defensive talent and overwhelming athleticism to flip a switch and lock its opponent down. That is no longer one of the team’s defining traits.
To put together a good defensive performance, the Bucks have to focus and execute on their defensive approach every single night from opening tip to the final buzzer. Against the 76ers in the season opener in Philadelphia, they did so. Their defensive performance suggested a higher ceiling on that end this season. Two nights later on their home floor, the Bucks, as Prince mentioned, seemed to think they could get that same type of performance without taking their opponent seriously. If they don’t bring the requisite energy and mental focus, opponents will make them pay. On Friday, the Bulls did.
It should not have taken a beatdown from the Bulls in the home opener for the Bucks to realize this, but the team’s best hope for a top-10 defense will require them to learn that lesson.
(Photo of Bobby Portis and Jalen Smith: Michael McLoone / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
