Milwaukee Bucks: Roundtable ahead of Toronto Raptors Conference Finals series

Defensively, do you think the Bucks’ best chance of success is more likely to be built around slowing down Kawhi Leonard or shutting down his already inconsistent supporting cast?

RC: As incredible as Leonard is, he can’t outscore the entire Bucks team over a full seven-game series. The Bucks have just too many weapons on offense, especially with a healthy Brogdon and Mirotic (who didn’t play against the Raptors in the regular season). Take Game 7, for example. Leonard had 41 points but took 39 shots. Milwaukee will take that every game. Leonard will get his buckets, but if the Bucks keep him isolated and force Siakam, Gasol and Lowry to be the ones that beat them, this could be a short series.

DL: The Bucks are going to have to make Toronto’s other players beat them in this series.

We saw, last round, that the Raptors struggled to get any consistent production out of anyone beyond Kawhi Leonard. As a result, they were forced to slow the pace down to a halt in order to maximize Leonard’s impact on the game. Everything they did on offense, particularly in the final minutes of a game, went through him. Whenever others were called upon, they weren’t nearly as good, and Toronto struggled to score at all in those possessions.

Superstars, playing at the level that Kawhi Leonard is playing at now, are going to put up incredible numbers either way. The key for the Milwaukee defense is to make sure that the other danger men on their team, like Siakam, Gasol, and Lowry, aren’t playing lights out too. If you shut them down, Kawhi could score 50 a night and the Raptors still wouldn’t have enough offense to win.

DB: Kawhi Leonard is going to get his numbers no matter how hard the Bucks try to stop him. With that in mind, the Bucks’ best chance of success is to stop his supporting cast from getting anything going. Bledsoe has done very well on Lowry the entire season and the Bucks defense as an ensemble should be able to smother Pascal Siakam. The fatigue from carrying his team on a nightly basis will eventually catch up to Kawhi Leonard. Budenholzer has a varied cast of characters to throw Kawhi’s way, and they will also have time to rest in between shifts of defending the Raptor’s All-Star due to the depth of the Bucks’ team.

RK: I realize that the Bucks have been the best team in the league this season, but they are still incapable of doing the impossible. Kawhi Leonard has been arguably the best player so far in these playoffs, and is showing he has a case to be considered as the best player in the entire league. However, like Robby said, Kawhi cannot single handedly win this series for the Raptors, so trying to shut down his lesser teammates makes for a scheme that has a higher chance of success.

SR: Khris Middleton has had as much success defending Kawhi Leonard this season as any other player in the league. With that, it’s probably not worth tweaking season-long defensive schemes and principles just to target stopping one player. The Bucks have proven to be malleable in their ability to pretty easily change from a drop defense to a switching defense, so they already have options to throw at the Raptors. If the Raptors take a couple games early in the series with Kawhi Leonard or the supporting cast really standing out, then i think more aggressive adjustments would need to be pondered by the coaches, who are much smarter than I am.

Will there be times where strategies such as double teams and traps could have their place as an option every so often? Sure, especially within the general construct of the schemes that each Bucks player has been comfortable with now for over 90 games. However, I think the Bucks are the superior team and it’s on the Raptors to adjust how they play to stop Giannis Antetokounmpo and the far better supporting cast that he carries with him.

LW: Is it cheating to say both? I don’t want the Bucks to leave shooters open as Danny Green, Lowry, and others can make you pay. Especially Green. However, if the Bucks can stay home on the shooters of Toronto, bringing help from other places could be effective. I would like to see Kawhi be forced to be a playmaker as it is not his strong suit, in my opinion. In general, staying home on shooters and defending Kawhi one on one will be effective at times just because Khris is such a good defender. He will gain a lot of respect in this series on that end.

However, Kawhi is too good to be held down the entire time and showing help and making Kawhi do what he isn’t comfortable doing (playmaking) will be important. The Bucks just have to be smart about where the help comes from and not leave spots like the strong side corner open for knockdown shooters.

BR: I honestly don’t know if the Raptors supporting cast needs much help being shut down as is with what we saw in the second round, so I think the focus should be trying to limit Kawhi and make the rest of the team beat you. Khris Middleton actually did a pretty good job defending him in the regular season, so I think that’s who you throw at him. He’s got the size and defensive skill set to make things as difficult as possible for Kawhi. While Leonard will in all likelihood still get his, if Middleton and the Bucks can limit his efficiency and force him to become more of a facilitator, the Raptors’ supporting cast will have a difficult time picking up the slack.

JT: Is it possible for me to say that doing a little bit of both may end up bearing out in the series, like Leander?

Along with Giannis and Kevin Durant before he got hurt, Kawhi Leonard returning to his MVP form throughout the playoffs has been one of the biggest storylines so far, after plenty of maintenance throughout the year and whatever we want to call his breakup with the San Antonio Spurs last season. At the same time, though, the Raptors’ success has been so dependent on the play of Leonard and it’s unraveled the team’s overall balance a bit as their playoff run has gone on, even with injuries like the one to Siakam considered.

There are certainly methods to make Kawhi uncomfortable, in ways that the Bucks did throughout their season series with the Raptors and they have a number of suitable options defensively to do that, whether that’s Khris Middleton, Malcolm Brogdon, occasionally Giannis or even more. Barring some miraculous change, I don’t think there are drastic efforts that need to be done to limit the Raptors’ supporting cast as they have done so to themselves at this point in the playoff run, so finding different strategies to knock off or slow down the run Leonard has been on will be huge throughout the series.