Milwaukee Bucks: Looking within to iron out early season inconsistencies
It may only be two games into the 2019-20 season, but the Milwaukee Bucks are already forced to iron out some worrying inconsistencies this early into the campaign.
We may only be two games into the Milwaukee Bucks’ 2019-20 campaign, but it’s already been a wild ride.
The Bucks have lived incredibly dangerously through the first 53 minutes into their new regular season, and overcoming a 16-point deficit in their comeback win over the Houston Rockets was essentially negated by a blown 21-point lead in their miserable loss to the Miami Heat that soured their home opener over the weekend.
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As they look to recapture the form they took on for the vast majority of last season, it’s clear that the Bucks have plenty of holes to iron out as they look to strike the collective balance that powered them to a league-leading 60 wins last regular season.
The fact that it took them two games to lose their first game this year where it took them eight contests last season just shows this year’s Bucks team, while dangerous, needs more time to reach last year’s standard.
And when it comes down to it, the Bucks have lacked the fundamentals that have long been prized by head coach Mike Budenholzer since coming to Milwaukee.
Look no further than the wavering discipline the Bucks have played with defensively over their first two games, which has been a glaring weakness so far into their season. The Bucks have often been haphazard in their collective defending as evidenced by the 59 fouls they have committed through their first two contests and both the Heat and the Rockets burned the Bucks from the free throw line as a result (Houston and Miami collectively hit 52 of their 75 free throw attempts).
Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo has been front and center in this regard, given that he has fouled out in both of the Bucks’ opening pair of games to the season.
Considering how central defending with purpose is to his and the team’s identity as a whole, Budenholzer spoke to the frustration of watching his squad stray away from their fundamentals on that side of the ball as Ben Steele of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently examined:
"“I think there are times when our entire team is just getting fouls that we put in the bucket of not being disciplined,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “Not beating people to spots. Not doing fundamental, core defensive things. Reaching.”"
On the other side, it’s easy to chalk up some of the Bucks’ offensive woes down to the cold shooting stretches that have plagued them for four of their eight periods, plus overtime against the Heat, and it’s rightly deserved. With that said, we’ve seen some of the same, familiar habits in the Bucks’ dry spells offensively when opponents dig in to throw them off-keel, and incorporating more movement off the ball has been a necessity for the team in those occasions.
And suffering 10 turnovers, just as the Bucks did over the course of their second half collapse against the Heat last Saturday evening, is indicative of the complacency and rash decision making Milwaukee can make sometimes, Antetokounmpo included.
The return of Bucks basketball and the NBA as a whole has a way of drawing out plenty of wild first impressions as we all seek to draw comparisons from how teams look entering the year versus how we last saw them the previous campaign. And for as irrational as those takes can be in the midst of wild results that may prove to be foolhardy in the long run, certain examinations can pick up on what teams need to work on to iron out early season holes.
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For the Bucks so far, it’s clear that even with all of the positives they showed throughout an undefeated preseason run and a strong training camp, the flaws they have to address are, for the vast majority, within their control. It’s just a question of when they are able to shed those deficiencies that have been the story so far through two games.