Milwaukee Bucks: Looking at how the Bucks perform at different types of offense

Isolation

Once a staple of NBA offenses, isolation has become somewhat of a dirty word among many NBA fans these days. With the advent of advanced metrics, it’s now painfully obvious how inefficient isolation scoring is.

The best team at isolation scoring, the Cleveland Cavaliers, fail to score a single point per possession in iso looks. The Cavs get close at 0.99, but not even LeBron James and Kyrie Irving can make iso looks efficient for their team.

The Bucks, on the other hand, are the absolute worst team in terms of iso scoring. Milwaukee averages an abhorrent 0.74 points per possession in isolation looks, and unfortunately the Bucks ran them more than 15 other NBA teams did last season.

The only Buck to run isolations successfully with any real frequency was Michael Beasley, who scored 1.03 points per possession in his iso looks. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jabari Parker ran the most isos on the Bucks, but neither of them did so very efficiently.

Giannis scored 0.77 points per possession on his looks, while Jabari managed 0.73. Both didn’t score on more than 60 percent of their isolations, and both were as or nearly as likely to turn the ball over as they were to draw a free throw in an isolation look.

Sometimes isolations are unavoidable, like at the end of the shot clock. They’ll never be completely eliminated. Still, the Bucks should strive to limit how often they end up in these one-on-one scoring scenarios.