Milwaukee Bucks: Grades from 97-79 loss to Miami Heat

In an early start on Sunday, the Milwaukee Bucks produced their worst shooting display of the season and were comfortably beaten by the Miami Heat.

Let’s get the obvious excuse out of the way to begin with, as it doesn’t really apply to the Milwaukee Bucks on this occasion.

The Bucks have been notoriously slow starters in early games over the last few years, and a 12pm CT tip time against the Miami Heat in South Beach was always going to have the potential to trip them up.

Although the Bucks produced their worst offensive display of the season, their start wasn’t all that bad, though. In fact, Milwaukee led after the first quarter and they held that lead into half time too.

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In other words, as the Bucks fell to the Heat by 18 points, it wasn’t the rare early start that hurt them but a variety of much more familiar problems instead. Blaming the early start would only be glossing over much deeper rooted issues.

Milwaukee’s offense has produced positive results throughout much of the year, but that has often come as a result of sheer will and talent on the part of the players, as there’s rarely much of a discernible flow to the Bucks’ work on that end.

On Sunday, some key individuals failed to fire at their usual rate, and unsurprisingly that meant the Bucks as a team came up short.

How did the players perform individually? Let’s take a closer look.