The Bucks under Griffin played an idiotic, over aggressive pressuring/scrambling defense and completely disregarded transition defense. The identity of the Bucks under Bud, which lead to perennial elite defenses, was leveraging Brook as a rim protector, Giannis as a roaming help defender, and playing more conservatively outside of that with disciplined transition defense. Griffin came in and immediately scrapped that, had everyone pressuring way too tight and too far out, had guards mindlessly crashing the offense glass, and as a result the Bucks transition D cratered, their paint defense fell off dramatically, and the whole team lost faith in what they were doing on that end.
They were 21st on defense at the time Griffin got fired (1/24), and are 2nd in the league ever since. League average in defense at the rim under Griffin, back to top 5 since he was fired. Post Griffin and under Doc we have significantly lower opponent transition frequency, while also being 7th in half court defense, with league average opponent 3PT%, so not benefiting from outlier bad opponent shooting. They stopped having guards crash the glass and are having them get back in transition now, stopped the pressuring defense and are now blending a more conservative defense with more switching, and it’s been night and day on that end.
The reason for their record under Griffin was relatively good health for significant stretches (especially Middleton, who was really rounding into form and playing the majority of games), a really weak schedule, and Giannis/Dame heroics particularly in crunch time. The results did not reflect the process whatsoever, and what they were doing defensively in particular was not sustainable at all and was going to get picked apart as the schedule toughened up. Griffin got canned before that could happen though, so he benefits from only coaching the weak part of the schedule.
Doc inherited the team when the schedule got much tougher and the team embarked on a brutal western conference road trip, with obviously no training camp and extremely limited time for practices, made even tougher by a series of injuries/absences to key guys (Dame missing several games with an ankle injury, Brook missing several games as his wife had a baby, and then Middleton injuring his ankle on a KD closeout and being out ever since). But the structural changes defensively were apparent pretty much from the beginning, and now that they’re closer to full strength and have had some time to implement more and more wrinkles on both ends, the results are starting to reflect the improved process more and more. And hopefully that continues as Middleton returns in the next game or two.
Which kinda leads to the point about Giannis’ +/-, which IMO is largely lineup driven and a product of Giannis being tasked with leading most of the severely ballhandling/playmaking deficient bench units, which has been made much tougher without Middleton. When Middleton gets back in a game or two, having him as the lead ballhandler in those 2nd units will help dramatically.
Lastly, even beyond the X's and O's stuff, the people management/leadership side of things with Griffin were HORRIBLE. He had no command of the team, did not clearly define roles for the role players, and it was essentially the inmates running the asylum, and the entire team lost faith in him as a coach. Doc has plenty of warts, but came in, immediately set roles for everyone, clearly communicated the expectations, and has the whole team bought in on defense again.
