The Lakers and Bucks may be the top seed in their respective conferences, but neither has achieved an important victory so far this season. Both had the chance to do so in a heavyweight showdown on national television, and it was the current Lakers champion who came out on top, 113 to 106, giving them their second consecutive victory against Milwaukee since last season.
And just like last season’s battle, LeBron James was the star of the show with 34 points, eight assists and six rebounds. He may have led, but Kentavious Caldwell-Pope also did his part in the heavy lifting by hitting seven out of ten three-point attempts to take the Lakers to victory. The Bucks, in turn, came out from behind the arch just as they did on Monday in Brooklyn, making just nine of their 28 3’s, and despite the 67 points of their trio of stars, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday, their characters just failed to recover enough to take the Bucks to victory.
The Lakers have now recovered the No. 1 seed from the Western Conference with a record of 12-4. The Bucks, now with 9 wins and 6 losses, falls to third position in the East. With Brooklyn coming together and Boston and Philadelphia growing, Milwaukee will have to resolve these problems against the top teams quickly if it wants to repeat itself in the regular season qualifying for the conference.
Old LeBron is here at last
There isn’t exactly a plan to stop LeBron, but at least the defenses could cling to the fact that he was largely not a sniper. Dive into the screens, sink the ball when a smaller player is trying to cook, the basic methodology basically boiled down to “well, he can make 3, but he won’t miss dunks.” Unfortunately for the NBA defenses, he is no longer missing the 3’s. In 16 games, James is now 39.6 percent behind the hoop. If it weren’t for the last foul, he would be 40% off the season.
This is a marker that he hit only once in his career, during the 2012/13 season with the Miami Heat. He did this in 3.3 attempts per game. He’s doubling that this season to 6.6. James’ newfound emphasis on the long ball is not exactly new. His volume has steadily increased over the years, and he is also comfortable over long distances. But everything is happening this season in a way that should terrify your opponents. The last reasonable method of defending him is no longer viable, and if his shot remains, he will be able to hold Father Time for a while longer.
All the Lakers cast participate in the fun
It would be one thing if LeBron were the only Laker in a lucky streak. The defenses could then justify killing everyone else. But Laker’s role players shot as well as LeBron. The Lakers reached the 40 percent mark as a team on Thursday. Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope are both over 50 percent. Kyle Kuzma hovered around 40 throughout the season. Of the 14 players who took possession of the Lakers this season, eight entered Thursday above the league average of 35.8 percent last season.
This may just be a random variation. It can be an advantage to play without fans. But if that is the case, the rest of the league would theoretically decrease as much when they return. Last year’s Lakers were one of the worst pitching teams in the NBA. Now they are one of the best and have not sacrificed anything defensively or in terms of handling the ball to get there. The title champions are even better than when they won.
Bad luck Bucks, or bad D Bud?
The Bucks have played with four relatively healthy opponents this season. They lost to all of them, but there was a common denominator for those losses. See how your opponents shot in those games from behind the bow.
Celtics: 18 out of 40 (45 percent)
Jazz: 25 of 53 (47.2 percent)
Networks: 15 of 31 (48.4 percent)
Lakers: 19 of 37 (51.4 percent)
The question here is how much of it is random and how much is bad decision making by Milwaukee. The Bucks play the NBA’s most aggressive drop scheme. It is designed to protect the ink at all costs. This cost, against good teams, is easy to 3 points, but these numbers are extreme even in these circumstances. To some extent, this is just bad luck. No team should ever be expected to shoot as well as those four shot a sustained sample.
But Bucks is being naive if it doesn’t recognize what it is giving up when playing this way. The Heat exposed system failures in last season’s playoffs. Every good team is doing this now. Milwaukee made some adjustments. They are changing more than ever, but still not enough. If the Bucks plan to defeat the Lakers or any of those teams when needed, they need to be a little more flexible defensively.
My kingdom for George Hill
The Milwaukee bench hit 7 out of 19 in this game. They were 5 out of 14 on Monday against the Nets. This is an extremely worrying trend for a team whose owners, historically speaking, have struggled to score in the playoffs. They have been doing better this season (leading the NBA in offensive efficiency by entering this game, actually), but the lack of any form of reliable scoring on the bench has become a major problem against good teams.
The Bucks made significant investments in reserves after Bogdan Bogdanovic’s trade fell. DJ Augustin won $ 21 million in three years, but he scored only a third of his 2 points. Bobby Portis returned to Earth after a hot start. If this continues, the Bucks will become overly dependent on Giannis, Holiday and Middleton to score. If one of them has a bad night, as Middleton did when shooting 6 out of 15 against the Lakers, beating the best NBA teams offensively becomes almost impossible.