As their home opener loss on Saturday demonstrated, the Milwaukee Bucks still need to learn how to roll with the punches if they’re to win it all this year.
One of the hallmarks of the still relatively young Mike Budenholzer era for the Milwaukee Bucks is that the team has been so successful that instances of adversity have been few and far between.
There’s one obvious and incredibly notable exception that comes to mind, that of course being the final four games of the 2018-19 Eastern Conference Finals against the Toronto Raptors.
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Outside of that, the Bucks have had off nights now and then, and they’ve lost some games, but overall it’s not inaccurate to paint the Budenholzer reign as mostly smooth sailing so far.
It seems counterintuitive to frame that as anything other than a dream scenario, particularly for a franchise that dealt with adversity multiple times a week for a couple of decades before this recent resurgence, but there’s increasing cause to at least pay closer attention to what happens when this Bucks team does find itself having to fight through resistance.
The latest such example arrived on Saturday evening, when in spite of finding themselves down by 21 points early in the third quarter, the Miami Heat opted against simply rolling over and allowing Milwaukee to coast to victory.
The Heat’s own play certainly improved over the course of the second half, most notably when Kelly Olynyk got red-hot from deep in the fourth quarter, but their initial rally didn’t involve any groundbreaking play. The Bucks simply got complacent, more than a little sloppy, and found their opponents steadily eating into their lead.
That’s not uncommon for any NBA team, and doesn’t need to lead to a calamitous collapse, and yet the Bucks looked completely incapable of resetting themselves, even when they were fortunate to get a fresh start and a new lifeline in the form of overtime.
The wait went on for one Buck, any Buck, to calm things down and re-introduce an element of composure. That call was never answered, though, with the star trio of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton, and Eric Bledsoe looking completely out of control and out of sorts for large periods of the second half.
Just two games into the new season, with the unsavory end to last year’s campaign still so fresh in the mind, there’s a natural inclination to draw comparisons to the Raptors series. I’d expect plenty of that narrative to accompany any Bucks loss in the first couple of months of the season, if it even stops there.
That narrative doesn’t neatly fold on to this game, at least not in its entirety, for a couple of reasons. On that occasion, the Raptors imposed their will on the Bucks, throwing them off their game. What the Heat did on Saturday isn’t close to deserving of that caliber of credit.
Additionally, while missing shots may be a commonality between Saturday’s loss and how the Bucks were doomed to their fate back in May, Milwaukee’s execution remained at a much higher level against Toronto than it did against Miami. One case is evidence of missing shots you normally make, the other is a case of desperately trying to force a repeat of what worked so well in the first half.
Where drawing the comparison between the series loss to Toronto and the home opener defeat to Miami is instructive, though, is in considering the arc.
In that regard, the strong start to get into a position of real command around the midpoint, only to then crumble when the opponent offers a response is close to a mirror image.
Maybe it’s attributable to rarely finding themselves in such a position, but the Bucks do not cope well with being punched in the mouth.
As was demonstrated on Thursday against the Rockets, and many times last season, they can rally back from a slow start to still come out on top as victors in the end. But it’s when they assume an early lead, only to see it disappear that confidence appears to erode completely and the problems really begin.
That’s a different kind of test of mettle and resilience, and it isn’t one the Bucks are well equipped to pass at the moment. In that regard, perhaps a loss such as this one to the Heat coming so early in the season can be used as a learning moment that addresses that particular fragility, leaving Milwaukee better prepared for similar scenarios in the future.
Put simply, though, significant momentum swings are part and parcel of life in the NBA, and even if the occasion is rare, the Bucks will have to grow more comfortable with finding themselves on the wrong end of them from time to time.
If the Bucks can learn to roll with those punches, regrouping on the fly will become much more manageable. At the moment, that remains a clear work in progress, though.