Bucks trying to learn important lesson
MILWAUKEE -- We knew these playoffs would be a learning experience for the upstart Milwaukee Bucks. After all, after adjusting for playing time the Bucks were just a sliver behind the Boston Celtics as the youngest roster of any team in the playoffs. Seven players on the roster had never logged a second of postseason action, including the four players who lead the Bucks in minutes so far in their first-round series against Chicago: Giannis Antetokounmpo, Michael Carter-Williams, John Henson and Khris Middleton.
In losing the first three games to the Bulls, including Thursday's double-overtime heartbreaker at the Bradley Center, the Bucks have learned plenty. Now, facing elimination, they are just hoping to learn the most valuable lesson of all -- winning.
"You want to learn how to win in the playoffs," said Jared Dudley, who along with Jerryd Bayless has played in more postseason games (26) than anyone else on the Bucks. "You want to learn how your coaches make adjustments and then see it work.
"When you come to a game like this, it's mental. No one has ever come back from 0-3. We're still at home, had a great crowd (Thursday) and had a great chance to win the game, the last two games. I see improvements. The next improvement would be to win. You can only have so many moral victories."
It's been just shy of five years since Milwaukee won a game in the postseason. The Bucks have now dropped nine straight playoff games, last winning on April 30, 2010, over Atlanta. The Bucks haven't won a playoff series since the days of George Karl, Sam Cassell and Glenn Big Dog Robinson, back in 2001 when Milwaukee made it to the seventh game of the Eastern Conference finals. Hopes of getting that far again are pretty much extinguished.
We hear it every time a team goes down 3-0 in an NBA series: No team has ever overcome such a deficit. That's oh-for-110, with the fellow 3-and-0ers Mavericks, Pelicans, Celtics and Raptors already poised to join the Bucks in adding to that record of futility. And, sure, eventually some team will become the first, but you don't get the sense that it's going to be these Bucks. They are too young, too limited offensively and there is too much of a gap between them and the Bulls. But that doesn't mean Milwaukee has nothing to play for.
Milwaukee scored 1.03 points per possession in Game 3, per Basketball-Reference.com, easily its best offensive performance of the season. Still, it's a tepid showing given that the Bucks' series-high .451 effective field goal percentage was still lower than any shooting performance the Bulls have had in the series. Nevertheless, the hot topic around the Bucks is what they can do to corral the two-man blitz of Chicago guards Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose, who have averaged 26.7 and 24.0 points respectively on combined 48 percent shooting. "I knew it would be tough with Butler," Dudley said. "With Rose and all his injuries, you didn't know. I don't think we expected him to play this well and so soon. You've got to tip your cap to him. His confidence has been sky-high.
"But Jimmy Butler, he just plays so hard. He gets lobs, he gets cuts, he gets jumpers, he gets to the free throw line. With Rose, I feel like we have a better chance of slowing him down on pick-and-rolls. We've got to be more aggressive at him."
The Bucks had success in Game 3 with a small lineup that featured Antetokounmpo at power forward. So far in the series, lineups that have featured Antetokounmpo and Henson as Milwaukee's big men have outscored the Bulls by 18 points. It's a look we might see more of.
"It keeps Giannis on the floor, giving him experience and time," Bucks coach Jason Kidd said. "You look at Giannis being able to be a playmaker and even knock down some open shots. With him and John on the floor together, we've had some success."
Antetokounmpo's aggression was a key component for making the lineup work. With the Bulls sticking with two big-man lineups for the most part, Antetokounmpo was able to attack the lane and push the ball down the floor to exploit his speed advantage. After never scoring more than 13 points in 10 career meetings with the Bulls, Antetokounmpo scored 25 points in 51 minutes on Thursday. His 22 field goal attempts were three more than he'd ever taken in a game.
"From the first I tried to stay aggressive as much as possible," Antetokounmpo said. "I think this was the first time in my career I shot so many shots. I told myself that no matter what, I'm going to keep going to the basket, to try to make plays."
The Bucks are hoping for a repeat of Thursday's fan response, when in the face of scores of red-wearing Bulls fans, the Milwaukee faithful made a concerted effort to remind Chicago that it was playing in a road game. When Bulls fans responded in kind, it made for the type of start-to-finish mania unusual for an NBA crowd. It didn't hurt that the game itself was so compelling.
For the 20-year-old Antetokounmpo, who didn't play American college basketball, it was a taste of what postseason basketball has to offer.
"It just filled us with energy," Antetokounmpo said. "On my and-1 basket, I saw the crowd going crazy. It feels great. I think it was one of the best feelings I've ever had."
For the crowd to get that revved up again, the Bucks have to hope that their fans don't buy into the idea that teams down 3-0 are almost sure to lay down in Game 4. While the club is promising to play even harder on Saturday to stave off elimination, the reality is teams that lose the first three games of a series go on to lose the next game about 75 percent of the time. It could come down to simple pride.
"Nobody likes to get swept, so that's part of our mindset," Henson said.
