3 things to watch as Milwaukee Bucks return home against Indiana Pacers

Can the Milwaukee Bucks avoid another hot shooting performance?

One of the primary themes of the Bucks’ recent four-game road trip was their opponents’ relatively hot shooting performances from 3-point range. Save for the game against the Knicks (34.7 percent on 49 attempts), the Bucks’ opponents all shot above 41 percent from 3 with the worst being the game against the Heat, where they connected on nearly 47 percent of their 3-point attempts.

Across the four games of the road trip, the Bucks allowed the fourth-most corner 3s (12.3), and their opponents connected on over 51 percent of those corner 3-point looks, per NBA.com/stats. They also allowed the most above the break 3s (34.5) and teams shot over 38 percent on those attempts.

The above the break attempts are par for the course with the Bucks as they’ve allowed the most above-the-break 3-point attempts this season (32.4) but teams had only shot 33 percent on them.

The idea of 3-point defense is hard to measure as there is little correlation for how much a single player can affect a shooter and the idea that a team “leaves the right shooters open” or “close out more aggressively on the right shooters” is a bit of a myth.

Keeping that idea in mind, the Bucks were only allowing 8.8 corner 3s per game before the four-game road trip, which is around the middle of the pack. Teams shot under 32 percent on those corner 3-point attempts, so there was bound to be a bit of regression there, especially when they allowed four more corner 3s per game during the road trip.

You aren’t going to be able to contain everything, so giving up the above-the-break 3 as opposed to corner 3s is the right idea (as well as limiting shots at the rim), but they gave up both at a high rate.

The Bucks will need to do a better job at containing the number of corner 3s they allow to help contain the recent string of hot shooting nights against them.