OhayoKD wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:The-Power wrote:The numbers also tell us that the Bucks had the best DRTG in the entire league the two seasons before Jrue Holiday arrived.
1. They had Bledsoe then. Now they a gaping whole where the guard defense was.
2.
The Bucks' defense the entire run has been a regular season juggernaut that struggles in the playoffs, and we've seen Holiday excel in the playoffs as a man defender against guards.
That's...not really accurate. Or particularly close
Ah, let me walk that back and clarify what I mean.
First: I'm certainly not looking to suggest that the Bucks' offense was the true strength of the team in the playoffs. Defense has always been their strength.
I'm going to zoom in on the places where the Bucks' defense buckled in the playoffs:
In '18-19, they lost to the Raptors. 4-2 sounds like a close series, but of course that's a tale of 2 series effectively, with Milwaukee winning the first two games and then Toronto winning all the rest after adjusting.
After Toronto's adjustment, they went from having an ORtg of 100.3 in the first two games to an ORtg of 112.3 in the final 4, which was better than they did against Orlando or Philadelphia, neither of whom was an elite defense.
In '19-20, the Bucks got upset by the Heat allowing an ORtg of 115.1, which meant that Miami scored better against them than they did against Boston or LA - granted both excellent defenses.
I'll pause there and note that the post of The-Power I responded to was specifically referencing these two seasons, and so they were front of mind when I made my post.
In '22-23, the Bucks got upset by the Heat again, this time allowing an ORtg of 119.4, which was a much bigger number than Miami achieved in any other series.
I don't think there's any doubt that the Bucks' D disappointed in both Heat upsets, which by itself makes 2 out of 5 seasons where their defense's struggle is absolutely part of the story.
I think many would object to putting the Toronto series there perhaps preferring to blame what happened there solely on the Bucks' offense, but the reality is that the Bucks' DRtg's rise was (slightly) bigger than their ORtg's fall. Maybe one can argue that truly this was all about what was happening on the other end of the floor and it's just noise that implies otherwise...but that argument was easier to make in 2019 than 2023 imho.
So I see 3 times in 5 years where the Bucks' D seems to lose itself in an upset loss.
Now, in another more random sport like baseball, one might argue that stuff like that happens in the playoffs and that if you're going to take any meaning at all from such data, you have to treat the playoffs holistically. If a team on average in the playoffs looks great on defense and just happens to have a few disappointing series, could just be luck.
But these are 7-game basketball series we're talking about, and when a team gets upset frequently - particularly to teams that were much worse than them in the regular season like Miami - the basketball world doesn't take that to be luck.
I'd clearly be unfair if I didn't talk about the other 2 seasons in question where the Bucks' won the title in '21 and lost in a tight series to a higher seed in '22, and in both years I think the defense performed well. In fact, they performed well enough that I thought their days of falling apart on defense in the playoffs were over until '23 hit.
And of course here's where one should point out that Giannis got hurt in that playoff series, and perhaps that shouldn't be seen as "real". I think there's a definite case to be made there and wouldn't be bringing it up if it were the only event like this, but since we have seen it before, I'm hesitant to say that the "struggles" aren't real.
Not to put too fine a point on it: After this last series, the Bucks fired their coach and traded Holiday, so this is certainly something that the organization took seriously, even if it wasn't a thing that made them take defense more seriously. I do think there's an irony a franchise who loses by giving up 119.4 ORtg to the 25th ranked offense in the league by trading their best perimeter defender for another perimeter player who might as well have the tattoo "The best Defense is a good Offense".
