3 Biggest concerns from Bucks' first 3 games and how to fix them

2. 3-point defensive effort

Coming into this season, a lot was made about the new defensive scheme the Milwaukee Bucks would implement and how they wanted to be more versatile. So far, it hasn't worked. The Bucks currently have the eighth-worst defensive rating at 115.9, and that is with four teams below them having played two games as of writing.

The 3-point defense has not been good in their two defeats with the Bulls hitting 21 threes on 44.7 percent shooting serving as a primary example. Brooklyn hit 16 threes on 35.6 percent shooting from deep.

That isn't helped by the Bucks' lack of threes, hitting 13 on 32.5 percent and 10 on 30.3 percent in those games. Against the Sixers, they did hit 16 on 43.2 percent, so is that an outlier or just two bad shooting nights for Milwaukee?

Looking back to the defense, there is just a clear lack of effort to close out on threes, allowing players to be open. Against Brooklyn, Dennis Schröder hit five, Cam Johnson and Noah Clowney buried three each and Cam Thomas hit two.

This goes hand-in-hand with the rebounding of just effort but also raises some questions. How are teams getting up so many threes and hitting them, but also, how are opponents grabbing so many offensive rebounds?

One obvious way again to fix this is to work out the rotation more by getting some higher-energy guys in, like Andre Jackson Jr., to hustle and make opponents work harder to get shots off from deep. Or the change might be a defensive scheme issue, but that is slightly concerning considering the talk of the offseason and the additions of players to fit the scheme.

For it to have failed to work against two teams that potentially won't make the Play-In Tournament in the Eastern Conference is troubling.