Milwaukee Bucks in command against Boston Celtics thanks to Mike Budenholzer's in-series adjustments
Watch Celtics @ Bucks Game 5 live on Sky Sports Arena in the early hours of Thursday morning (1am)
Thursday 9 May 2019 04:57, UK
Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer is said to be reluctant to make adjustments but his in-series tweaks have left Milwaukee within one win of the Conference finals, writes Mark Deeks.
Live NBA: Boston @ Milwaukee
Even though they finished the regular season with the best record in the NBA, the Milwaukee Bucks were thought of as being vulnerable in the playoffs.
In part, it was due to their relative lack of significant post-season experience. In part, it likely was due to the lack of brand power; given it is more than 45 years since the franchise's heyday, and having gone past the first round of the playoffs only once in the past 30, no one thinks "Milwaukee Bucks" when they think "NBA powerhouse" and that takes time to change.
In part, it is due to the innate desire to undercut greatness wherever possible. And in part, it was due to some faulty logic.
The oft-cited criticism of this otherwise dominant Bucks team is that they are reluctant to make adjustments. As effective as their standard line-up, rotations and schematics have been in general, the groupthink has built up throughout the season that they would susceptible to certain match-ups, given the supposed inflexibility of their own.
This is an assumption borne out of the history of head coach Mike Budenholzer and the legacy from his time with the Atlanta Hawks. Budenholzer did great things in Atlanta; he took a long-moribund franchise to the 60-win level and a No 1 playoff seed in the 2014-15 season (sounds familiar, no?), managing to get four of his team's starting line-up named to the All-Star game in the process and winning a Coach of the Year award for himself as well.
That same Hawks team, however, was swept 4-0 in the Eastern Conference by LeBron James' Cleveland Cavaliers, and in conjunction with tipping the cap to a then-dominant Cavaliers line-up and acknowledging the talent disparity his sum-of-its-parts Hawks team faced in that series, Budenholzer's inability to find a way to slow an in-his-prime LeBron James, compounded by a slightly lesser Hawks team being again swept by the Cavaliers one round earlier the following season, gave rise to the narrative he is not a coach that is good with adjustments.
It is also an assumption that Budenholzer himself has played up to. In the post-game press conference after the aforementioned November-time Celtics loss, Budenholzer expressly said his coaching staff were "significantly leaning towards just sticking with our principles" rather than making game-by-game adjustments, something he doubled down on after the first game of Milwaukee's current series when he stated "more often than not, adjustments in a series are overrated."
This is an unusual and perhaps disconcerting thing to hear said by the coach of a No 1 seed that just lost a home playoff game by 22 points.
However, the idea Bud cannot adjust is more of an assumption than it has been a reality. Groupthink only has to be pervasive rather than correct, and in their Eastern Conference semi-final series against the Boston Celtics thus far, the Bucks have repudiated that notion pretty well.
Back in November, the Celtics dealt the Bucks their first loss of the regular season, taking advantage of Milwaukee's drop defense to fire up 55 three-pointers, as well as exploit the mid-range pick-and-pop game with their All-Star center Al Horford.
The drop defense - in which center Brook Lopez is held back near the basket when his man goes to the perimeter to set a screen, meaning the player defending the ball handler must defend both positions in his absence - is the mainstay of Milwaukee's half-court defensive scheme.
Lopez is an excellent defender at the basket, with natural timing on his blocked shots and the strength to impede anyone; hanging him back there, rather than allowing ball handlers to attack him and his slow feet on the perimeter, keeps the Bucks' defensive players in the positions they are best equipped to be in.
The hallmark of a Budenholzer defense is that, from there, everyone rotates keenly and covers for each other, thus being able to defend every area, never giving up rim protection while also being able to cover shooters on the perimeter.
The endless length and deterrence of Giannis Antetokounmpo is stationed on the weakside, ready to help across the court whenever needed, so that although Lopez cannot step up and help, someone else will.
The margins are tight; in not switching or blitzing in a league that places a heavy reliance on both in the modern era, Milwaukee run the risk of giving up many good jump-shot looks for opponents if they are not crisp and committed in their rotations, or if they are not communicative enough to call out to each other where the help is needed.
In the November game, the Celtics showed how they might be an awkward match-up for the Bucks' way of playing. The Bucks want teams to take shots from the mid-range area, as indeed many NBA defenses want in this era of heightened awareness of scoring efficiency, yet Boston are the rare team who are happy to do so.
Between Kyrie Irving's (and, to a lesser extent, Gordon Hayward's) work off the dribble, plus the in-between game of Horford, Boston take those shots when they are given them and make enough of them for it to be a viable game plan.
They can also be very adept at exploiting that space and the collapsing defense it brings to kick to three-point shooters, as evidenced by the hefty 55 outside attempts in that game; in Game 1 of this series, with 13-of-31 three-point shooting and a .615 effective field goal percentage as a team borne out of a heavy diet of mid-range shots, alongside some individual brilliance from Irving, the same sort of thing happened again.
Despite his statements to the contrary, then, adjustments were needed. And despite his statements to the contrary, Budenholzer made them.
Game 2 saw the Bucks remove the defensively-minded Sterling Brown from the starting line-up and replace him with the more offensively versatile Nikola Mirotic.
Mirotic is not the individual defensive presence that Brown is, but he is a committed team defender, and his presence in the starting line-up added an extra shooter and scoring balance to an offensive unit that is as tied to the formula as the defense is.
The Bucks look to take corner threes, play little one-on-one basketball, get Giannis attacking in semi-transition (where he is a monster) as often as possible, looking to take advantage of the packed paint that is often the only way to stop the 'Greek Freak' with shooters at all positions, not least of which is Lopez in the corner.
Mirotic for Brown helped with that.
More importantly, the defensive adjustments many feared would never come were made to great effect. In the three contests since that Game 1 blow-out, the Bucks have employed far more defensive switching; the fact that Lopez as an individual is not a great candidate for doing so does not prevent the team from switching at the 1-4 positions, something they have done more of in a bid to contain Irving.
With Kyrie shooting only 19-62 in the three games hence, it has worked.
Milwaukee's offensive game revolves around spacing the floor for Giannis and shooting in the space his long stride, relentless attack and occasional post-up play opens up. It works when the shots are dropping. In Game 1, they did not drop. In every game since, they have done.
By that token, Milwaukee's single-game fortunes hinge on the quality of their outside shooting, perhaps the most sporadic variable in the game of basketball. But then again, this is the modern NBA. Everyone relies on their shooting on any given night.
Given the quality of their (wisely shortened) eight-man playoff rotation and their scoring options at every position, plus the defense that takes so much away, the Bucks are better equipped than the competition to overcome that variance.
It is not for nothing that Celtics head coach Brad Stevens said much the same after his team's Game 1 victory as what Budenholzer did after his team's loss.
Stevens said that in-series adjustments are made out to be "way too big of a deal", adding "you're not going to change the way you play in one day".
He was right, and bar some minor tweaks, Milwaukee didn't. Thus far, no one has made them need to.
Watch Celtics @ Bucks Game 5 live on Sky Sports Arena in the early hours of Thursday morning (1am).
