There is no better topic revolving around the Milwaukee Bucks at the moment than their 3-point defense. Or lack thereof, to be more precise.
After having seen the damage that continues to be inflicted upon them from their opponents, the Bucks have continued to suffer 3-point shooting onslaughts that have brought down their once-elite defense this season.
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There was no better example of that than their recent and frustrating road trip down south where they allowed 20 or more triples to the Toronto Raptors, New Orleans Pelicans and the Charlotte Hornets.
Per NBA.com/stats, the 2020-21 Bucks are the second team in NBA history to allow such a mark to their opponents. Who was that first team, you ask? The 2019-20 Bucks during the seeding games in the bubble.
For the season, the Bucks are allowing 38.4 opponent 3-point attempts, the fourth-worst mark in the league, and their opponents are hitting such shots at a 39 percent clip, which is tied for the fifth-worst mark. While the Bucks are actually allowing fewer 3-point looks than last season (39.3), Bucks opponents are hitting threes at a higher clip this year than any other time in the Budenholzer era.
Of course, the conversation surrounding the Bucks’ 3-point defender under Budenholzer’s reign has been a topic of both curiosity and concern for Bucks fans. Even as Budenholzer and the Bucks have shown more defensive experimentation that compared to last season, Milwaukee is still susceptible to these 3-point field days more than ever before like we saw last weekend.
So with all of that in mind, let’s dive deep into why the Milwaukee Bucks’ 3-point defense has stuck out like a sore thumb so far this 2020-21 season.
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.
Second factor behind slide in Milwaukee Bucks’ 3-point defense – Shooting is up league-wide
While there has been much clamoring about why Bucks opponents have been able to 3-point shots at such a high clip, it hasn’t been an isolated incident by any means.
All 30 teams are shooting a combined 36.8 percent from downtown this year, a full percentage point higher than the 35.8 3-point percentage the league shot for the 2019-20 season.
While it’s still early in the season and that number could certainly stabilize, the entire NBA is experiencing such a high jump in 3-point efficiency while attempting more threes than ever before as evidenced by the league’ 39.5 3-point attempt rate.
Additionally, similar teams such as the Miami Heat and the New Orleans Pelicans that have allowed an astonishing volume of opponent 3-point shots are both surrendering 38.4 percent and 37 percent clips to their opponents this year. Of course, that trails the Bucks at the moment, but the point still stands that there has been some sort of correlation between allowing a high volume of threes to seeing those shots go in.
Considering that we’re working with a growing sample size of games that have either come with very limited or no fans, it’s possible that the ‘shooter’s gym’ quote that former Bucks sharpshooter Kyle Korver gave ahead of the bubble still holds relevance to this year.
Given the fact that the Bucks’ struggles in defending the 3-point line started to surface more regularly in that time, it still carries weight in that regard.
Third factor behind slide in Milwaukee Bucks’ 3-point defense – Opponents hitting open looks
With the league as a whole hitting more 3-pointers and the Bucks conceding deeper looks in mind, they certainly could do a better of limiting open threes to their opponents.
To be fair, the Bucks have made strides in trying to surrender fewer wide-open 3-point looks after allowing the most open looks in the league for the previous two seasons under Budenholzer. What they have traded with fewer looks by allowing 18.9 wide-open 3-point attempts this season, their opponents are hitting 43.9 percent on such shots, the second-worst mark in the league. That’s up from 37.5 percent Bucks opponents shot on wide-open 3-pointers last season.
While where these open shots are coming from is more important than just giving up open looks, it still spells recipe for disaster to give up a high volume of open 3-pointers and makes. That even accounts for some poor shooting luck involved as well.
This is where Bucks players and coaches have talked about the importance of adding more defensive coverages like switching or showing more to opposing ball handlers to not let opposing teams get too comfortable from the 3-point line. Budenholzer certainly touched on that following the Bucks’ loss to the Hornets last Saturday as Andrew Wagner of the Wisconsin State Journal relayed the following:
"“There is lots to work on,” Budenholzer said after Saturday’s loss. “I think we have to be better coming out of the gate at defending the 3-point line in the first quarter. There have been a lot of first quarters where teams have maybe gotten hot from the beginning so we’ve just got to look from start to end, all of us, at how to get better.”"
Milwaukee has certainly grown more comfortable in switching ball screens or bringing the likes of Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis further up the floor to contain players adept at hitting shots from well behind the 3-point line. And like anything, it will take time to get down the time and rhythm of being able to execute different defensive tactics smoothly.
How the Bucks continue to improve their 3-point defense and running their opponents off the arc will be instrumental to their title chances this season. As always, it’ll be up and down affair as the season goes along, but we’ll be tuned into the progress they might make moving forward.