All season long, the Indiana Pacers have been among the NBA’s fastest teams.
In the regular season, they led the league with 123.3 points per game. According to NBA.com, they played at the league’s second-fastest pace. Against the Bucks, the Pacers turned up those numbers even higher, scoring 128.8 points per game in five matchups with Milwaukee.
Playoff games tend to be played at a slower pace than regular-season games, but that doesn’t mean the Pacers are just going to slow down automatically once their postseason begins. If the Bucks want to win their first-round series, they will need to slow down the Pacers.
“We’ve been working on that pace,” Bucks guard Malik Beasley said. “They are the No. 1 team who scores in the first eight seconds, we know that. Most of their points come in transition and also in the paint, so we repped it out multiple times already so far this week, and we’ve still got a couple more days.”
The Bucks struggled mightily with the basics of the Pacers’ fast-breaking attack when the two teams met five times in the season’s first two and a half months. Under Adrian Griffin, the Bucks were a bad transition defense team, and the Pacers happily took advantage of Milwaukee’s primary defensive deficiency with kick-ahead passes to the wings and deep passes thrown over the top of defenders in the middle of the floor.
MarJon Beauchamp will likely not end up playing much against the Pacers, but his effort on the play above mirrored that of veterans Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton, who both loitered in the corners and watched as Obi Toppin ran the other way for a dunk. Beauchamp was the one who needed to lead the charge to get back in transition, but as a team, the Bucks didn’t do the job.
In Bucks coach Doc Rivers’ opinion though, it was not just effort that made them a poor transition defensive team earlier this season.
“There’s certain things that we did offensively that we can do better,” Rivers said when asked how the Bucks can be better in transition against the Pacers. “We have to have great shot discipline against them. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to run. We do. We want to get every easy basket we can get, but when you watch the games, some of the early contested 2s that led to fast breaks for them, you gotta take away. We turned the ball over against them. No matter who’s on the floor, you can’t turn the ball over against them.”
With Giannis Antetokounmpo potentially on the sidelines for part of the series, maintaining shot discipline will be more difficult than usual, as creating shots will be tougher for the Bucks without their best offensive player. They will need to avoid the types of desperate shots and passes that put their defense in compromised positions.
“Obviously a ton of things, turnovers are, obviously, one, quick shots are two, bad shots are three,” Patrick Beverley said when asked how to slow the Pacers down. “You want to shoot a bad shot, make sure it goes out of bounds. You turn the ball over, make sure you turn (it) over out of bounds, not open court for a dunk or get the crowd going and all that.”
Beverley found himself guilty of committing such an offense in the Bucks’ 113-88 loss to the Orlando Magic in the team’s regular-season finale.
With Milwaukee, Beverley has been a solid shooter and made 37 percent of his above-the-break 3-pointers, but the Bucks can do better than a contested catch-and-shoot 3 with eight seconds left on the shot clock. As Beverley adeptly pointed out, a dead-ball turnover would have been better than a 3-pointer that’s short to the rim and helps start a fast break.
“I think it starts with executing on the offensive end,” Khris Middleton said when asked how to slow down the Pacers. “But then also, transition defense. With (Tyrese) Haliburton, he likes to kick the ball ahead, so we all have to get back. We have to have great balance once the shot goes up, whether we’re crashing for offensive rebounds, but also knowing when to get back because he will throw it over your head for dunks and layups.”
As Middleton laid out, it’s even more dramatic than just avoiding quick or bad shots though. There can be times where good shots throw off the team’s floor balance or catch teammates by surprise in the same way as a quick or a bad shot. If that unusual shot doesn’t go in, it can put the Bucks’ defense out of position.
A reverse layup created by attacking a closeout is not a bad shot. But it isn’t the type of shot Brook Lopez normally takes, and the Bucks found themselves in an unusual situation defensively as Lopez and Antetokounmpo were stuck at the rim after the miss. The Bucks had enough people back in transition and should have defended better, but they didn’t handle being in unusual positions well.
The Bucks will also need to avoid the temptation to chase down offensive rebounds. With Antetokounmpo on the sideline, there likely will be a high level of desperation to the Bucks’ offensive efforts, but they can’t let that get the best of them mentally and put themselves out of position as transition defenders.
“The biggest thing that I saw in our games was our discipline on offensive rebounds,” Rivers said about the Bucks’ transition defense. “I mean, we showed guys today. You know, I made it a joke, but Pat Connaughton running from the 3-point line out at the top to get an offensive rebound. And you just saw them going the other way. That can’t happen.”
A lot of things are out of the Bucks’ in this upcoming series. They will be unable to magically heal Antetokounmpo’s and Damian Lillard’s injuries. They cannot guarantee a hot 3-point shooting night for themselves or a cold 3-point shooting night for the Pacers. But they can control what shots they end up taking on offense and the effort and focus they give on the defensive end.
As Kelly Iko and Seth Partnow covered in their analytics preview of this series, the Bucks have been much better at slowing down teams under Rivers, but the Pacers provide a tough test of those improved habits.
“I would love to call Haliburton and say, ‘Hey, slow it down a little bit,” but he’s still going to run, right?” Rivers said. “So we have to do things ourself. Like, we can’t turn the ball over. Our shots have to be the right shots. We have to work the possessions so that we get the shot we want every single time. If that’s the first five seconds, take it. If that’s the last five seconds, get to it instead of rushing it.
“Those are the things we have to do, and we can do those things.”
(Photo of Khris Middleton and Tyrese Haliburton: Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE via Getty Images)
