Milwaukee Bucks: 3 factors behind slide in 3-point defense

First factor behind slide in Milwaukee Bucks’ 3-point defense – Opponents hitting higher clip of deep threes

To understand the Bucks’ 3-point defense is where they allow such looks to their opponents.

Over the Budenholzer era, the Bucks have led the league in allowing the most opponent 3-pointers taken from the above the break spots and that is no different this season. Bucks opponents are averaging 31.1 3-point attempts so far this season, per NBA.com/stats.

Where Milwaukee’s opponents efficiency hovered a little over 35 percent in both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, they’re making the Bucks pay at a higher clip this campaign by sinking 38.2 percent on such shots. That’s the fifth-highest mark in all of the league.

The irony, of course, is that the Bucks’ offensive system, even with the addition of the dunker spot this year, is predicated on spacing the floor from the same spots that the Bucks’ defense allows to their opponents. In fact, the Bucks have hit the third-highest percentage (39.8 percent) on above the break 3-point attempts this season.

Again, these have been the constants for the Bucks under Budenholzer as they have worked to create a system built on pace and space offensively and suffocating the paint to their opponents. And as the Bucks have kept up their stout interior defense, the bet that they have made in allowing their opponents to let it fly from well behind the arc has often backfired this season.

One side angle of allowing such long shots means for the Bucks to chase longer rebounds. With the slip they’ve suffered in cleaning up on the defensive glass, that has led to the Bucks allowing 35 second chance 3-point makes to their opponents on the year, per pbpstats.com. That’s the most allowed by any team at this stage.

With all of this in mind, perhaps there’s a bigger reason for such a sharp shooting uptick.