Milwaukee Bucks' Sneaky-Good Defense Is Surprising Everyone
The Milwaukee Bucks are dominating an area of the basketball court.
It's been a while since that statement was even imagined, let alone made with confidence. The good Bucks teams in recent years struggled to hit anything above mediocrity, and the bad ones were downright brutal.
Last season, Milwaukee had trouble scoring, defending and, not coincidentally, winning. The team suffered through an NBA-worst 67 losses, finished 29th in defensive efficiency and held the 26th spot on the opposite side.
The Bucks looked awful. Even more troubling was how they seemed to be playing with no real sense of direction.
"There's no staple to what we're doing," O.J. Mayo said in January, per Charles F. Gardner of the Journal Sentinel. "... If you don't have a backbone to what you do, whether it's going to be a defensive thing, an up-tempo thing, a pound-it-in-the-paint thing, a drive-kick thing. We've got to find a staple as a team."
It's hard to make any definitive observations this early into the season, but the Bucks seem to have found their identity. With a roster littered with long-limbed athletes and a new coach in Jason Kidd who earned All-Defensive honors nine times during his 19-year NBA playing career, Milwaukee has started carving its niche as a dominant defense.
As NBA.com's John Schuhmann observed, the Bucks have already used this newfound focus to post head-turning statistics and enjoy more success than they ever did in 2013-14:
No matter the metric used, this defense is suddenly grading out as elite.
The Bucks have surrendered only 94.2 points per 100 possessions, fewer than every team outside of the Houston Rockets. Milwaukee also holds the No. 2 spots in field-goal percentage against (41.7), three-point percentage allowed (29.9) and opponent's shooting percentage inside the restricted area (54.4).
Even missed field-goal attempts are moral victories for the Bucks' opponents. That at least means they traversed the thicket of freakish wingspans responsible for the league's third-most steals (9.3) and sixth-most blocks (6.0).
"The biggest thing we're focused on this year is being able to play defense," Kidd said, per the Journal Sentinel's Todd Rosiak. "... We have to believe that defense comes first and then offense."
The Bucks look like they believe.
This team plays with tremendous passion that when coupled with these players' physical gifts puts opponents in pressure-packed situations. Rather than reading and reacting to an offense, this defense simply attacks.
That strike-first mentality has paid major dividends in terms of live-ball turnovers. This season, there have been 133 players averaging at least 0.8 steals per game or roughly four on each team. The Bucks have seven players clearing that mark, led by interior anchor Larry Sanders.
Plagued by off-court blunders and a scary on-court injury last season, the 25-year-old has returned to his place as a defensive menace in the middle. Despite seeing fewer than 24 minutes a night, he is one of only three players averaging at least 2.0 blocks and 1.5 steals. The other two guys on that list, Anthony Davis and DeAndre Jordan, each average more than 35 minutes per game.
When Sanders hasn't rejected shots, he has altered them. Opponents are shooting only 45.9 percent within six feet of the basket against him, per NBA.com's player tracking data, or 11.9 percent worse than they do on average.
With a 7'6" wingspan, per DraftExpress, the 6'11" Sanders is a difference-making presence around the rim.
But he's only a piece of Milwaukee's intriguing defensive puzzle.
"You can point to a healthy Larry Sanders to protect the paint, a stable of youngsters to pressure opponents with length and athleticism, and a deep roster of healthy players to ensure crisp rotations on the perimeter," Brew Hoop's Steve von Horn wrote on the Bucks' defensive turnaround.
Having a force like Sanders helps, but he's far from being the Bucks' only defensive weapon. In fact, this team has a better defensive rating without him (93.0) than it does when he is playing (95.4). He doesn't even have the team's highest blocks-per-36-minutes average (3.1). That belongs to 6'11" third-year big man John Henson (4.1), who has seen just 12.1 minutes a night.
Kidd, who only (awkwardly) grabbed the coaching reins in July, is still getting a feel for this roster.
He has fielded three different starting lineups so far and only allowed two players to average more than 25 minutes a game: point guard Brandon Knight and rookie forward Jabari Parker. Knight gets after it defensively, but both of these players do their best work on the opposite side.
Yet, it seems like whatever defensive button Kidd decides to press, the coach can do no wrong.
All 11 Milwaukee players to see at least 90 minutes of action this season have an on-court defensive rating under 98. For context, a 98.0 defensive efficiency would have been the league's third best last season.
Sanders' fingerprints are on those numbers, but they are not alone.
"We can't just rely on one guy. We're not billed as a one-man team," Kidd said, per Bucksketball's Jeremy Schmidt. "This is the Milwaukee Bucks. So everybody pitches in."
The Bucks have the bodies to bother teams both inside and out. In the case of sophomore 19-year-old sophomore Giannis Antetokounmpo (and his still-growing frame), he can handle defensive assignments wherever he's needed.
"He's such a skilled player," Sanders said, per Gardner. "He's only just scratching the surface of how good he's going to be. He's just tapping into new abilities and trying on new things. He's really learning about himself and it's amazing to watch."
The Bucks are amazing to watch. They might struggle to score and they may not win a ton of games, but their surprisingly relentless, stingy defense has been something to see. As their young guys develop and Kidd gains a better feel for their skills, this defense could become even more disruptive.
But that's a long-term projection for something that is currently nothing more than a minuscule sample. Remember, the Bucks are only eight games into an 82-game schedule. And only one of those contests has pitted them against an upper-half offense (Chicago Bulls, fifth overall).
The Bucks have to prove they will still be a defensive power when they aren't facing the tanking Philadelphia 76ers, the injury-riddled Oklahoma City Thunder or the oversized Detroit Pistons. That isn't to say Milwaukee cannot pass those tests, only to point out that it has not yet.
This could become a season-long journey near the top, or it may fall apart as the competition stiffens. Either way it's been an enjoyable basketball ride so far for Milwaukee, and those don't come around often enough.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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