How can the Bucks’ next three rotation players impact winning without talent?
Now that we’ve gone through what the Milwaukee Bucks’ big three can do to raise the team’s ceiling, let’s take an extended look at the next three guys in the rotation:
Bobby Portis — Pick-and-Roll Defence
Bobby Portis is actually one of the more offensively talented basketball players I’ve seen. Not many 6’10” centres can routinely nail hesitation pull-ups or show incredible natural touch on jump hooks like Portis can. For the most part, offence has never been the issue; it’s always been the defence, and if the production on one end is worth the lack thereof on the other.
Bobby has had three seasons out of his nine-year career in which his team outscored the opponent while he shared the court. Some of that can be tied to playing on bad teams, sure. And to his credit, one of those three positive seasons was with the Bucks in 2021/22, where the team was an impressive +9.3 per 100 possessions in Bobby’s minutes. But overall, the numbers don’t lie. Opponents outscored Milwaukee by five to six points in Portis’ minutes over the other three seasons he’s been a Buck per Cleaning the Glass.
Like Lillard, Portis isn’t going to magically turn into a good defender. However, my issue with Bobby has always been his lack of focus and commitment to meeting the minimum “do your job” requirement on that end. To rehash an often-queried question among fans and pundits: what is the best pick-and-roll coverage for Bobby? The most accurate answer is that there isn’t one. He’s too small to affect shots at the rim in a drop, and too slow to slide with guards in a switching scheme in most cases. Thus, the option you are left with is the hedge-and-recover coverage Portis was given last season under two different coaches—which was no coincidence. The reason for this is it protects him by defending the pick-and-roll with five players instead of two, unlike a drop. With that said, Bobby doesn’t just get a free ride. He has a few tasks within this team defence he must perform well.
In a nutshell, the keys to a team executing a hedging pick-and-roll scheme well are as follows:
- point-of-attack defender is up pressuring the ball-handler
- screener’s defender (Bobby) is, for all intents and purposes, hugging the screener as they run up to set the pick
- once the screen is set (crucially, not before, because then you risk the screener “slipping” or “ghosting” the screen), the screener’s defender (Bobby) is occupying the ball handler with hand activity for one to three defensive slides
- the other three defenders are tagging the roller and rotating behind the play
- the screener’s defender (Bobby) turns and sprints back to his man, the roller
- the ball handler’s defender recovers back to the ball handler, while everyone else also recovers back to their man
Put it this way, if a team uses a defensive coverage for the sole purpose of protecting one player, then that player better make sure they’re executing their role within that coverage—Bobby has not done that. Portis often hedges before the screen is set; slides with the ball handler for too long; and jogs back to the roller. Therefore, Portis’ challenge is like Lillard’s: control what you can control. The athleticism is what it is, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be better at the details. As an Australian, I watched Jock Landale—also an undersized centre with subpar athleticism—at the Olympics be about as good as you can be as a hedging big. Granted, it’s not the NBA, but it’s still high-stakes basketball. Landale was switched on, communicating, and his effort was always maxed out. There is zero reason BP can’t emulate that.
Brook Lopez — Attitude/Body Language
Brook Lopez has been the unsung hero in Milwaukee for a long time. He cleans up everyone’s mess on defence; boxes out so others can rebound; and is willing to take a total backseat on offence if it’s in the team’s best interests. Even though Lopez’s game isn’t flashy, he’s getting older, and the stats may not blow you away, he still contributes to winning in a substantial way. According to the same Cleaning the Glass metric used above, the Bucks were nearly six points better than their opponents with Brook on the court last season, even with some of the chaotic lineups that were thrown together! He remains insanely valuable, and I want to make that clear.
But if there was one area for straightforward improvement, it would be for Lopez to improve his body language and attitude, which can go awry on the odd occasion. First, I want to declare that these are anecdotal observations, and I could be completely wrong. I’m obviously just an outsider watching the games, not with the players and coaches in the locker room. With that said, whether it was because he was asked to clean up more mess due to the Jrue-Dame trade, Brook sometimes looked as if his head wasn’t always in it from an effort standpoint last season. In addition, even though the former Stanford Cardinal has famously never committed a foul in his career, there was probably more complaining to the refs than in previous years.
I distinctly remember the Bucks’ nightmare loss against the Memphis zombie crew just before the All-Star break. I know everyone has wiped this calamity from their memories Men-in-Black style, so I am sorry to bring it back up. Brook was lined up against Trey Jemison, a centre who had recently been called up from the G League. Jemison played this game as if his life depended on it, because it kind of did, and you could feel his energy permeate throughout the entire team. Lopez, on the other hand, really played in the exact opposite fashion—at least from my vantage point. He wouldn’t leave the referees alone, showed minimal effort to box out or rebound, didn’t sprint (or the Brook equivalent) into screens, and barely contested Jemison’s shots. It was very unlike Lopez and anecdotally, it looked as if he didn’t want to be there. Maybe he did and was simply having an off game/day—that’s completely plausible.
Lopez’s body language did appear to improve after the All-Star break, and it felt like the upbeat Brook was there mostly the rest of the way. Possibly to do with coaching, who knows? Brook has always been a dependable barometer for this team; when he’s up and playing well, the team is too—they need him. So, you hope with a proper offseason for the front office to build a more balanced roster where Lopez is asked to do slightly less defensively that the big fella’s mental approach is a bit better for the upcoming season.
Gary Trent Jr. —On-Ball Defence
Gary Trent Jr. Joins Milwaukee on a one-year veteran’s minimum deal after spending the last three years in Toronto. He will likely be Milwaukee’s fifth starter, a slot that will seemingly chop and change for the rest of time as we know it. Trent is quite clearly an upgrade on Malik Beasley as an offensive option, with a much more well-rounded offensive arsenal. Fans can expect about 40 percent shooting from deep, a mark Gary has hovered around his entire career. He may even eclipse that number with the amount of open looks he’s likely to get. Offensively, Trent may well be the best fifth starter Milwaukee has had in the Giannis era.
However, the more pressing desire for the Bucks is to get serviceable defence in that spot. Can Trent offer the bucks something closer to what 2021 Wesley Matthews gave them? Well, I can be lazy here and just plug Chelsea Leite of our sister site Raptors HQ, who recently linked up for a Q&A to, in part, give Bucks fans an understanding of the former Duke Blue Devil’s defence:
Let’s start with a big one for Bucks fans: tell us about Trent’s defence. Is he good on-ball? Can he guard ballhandlers and/or bigger wings? How switchable is he?
GTJ’s defence was up and down during his time with Toronto. It started off rocky, got a lot better, and then faded quite a bit. He tends to guard ball handlers and can switch decently well, but often loses energy on that end these days. I will say his on-ball defence has been the thing that often shines through and he can get deflections and steals pretty well.
Trent has a reputation as a gambler on defence, being among the league leaders in steals and deflections during Nick Nurse’s final two years in Toronto. Those dropped off a touch last year; do you think that’s a Trent thing or the product of moving from Nurse’s hyperaggressive defence to what Darko Rajakovic installed?
It’s probably a mix of both. There wasn’t too much emphasis on defence under Darko’s system last year and I think that lack of focus made Trent lose his own defensive focus. Add in that he was trying to sort out his shooting and going from the bench to the starting lineup a lot and I think some confusion in his own role could have been a factor in this. I do think he has natural ability in that because he still did his thing despite more of the intensity and emphasis being on improving the offence last year.
How do you think Trent will fare as a defender in Doc Rivers’ more adaptive defence (i.e. switching everything sometimes, P&R traps one night then drop coverage the next) after he shifted it back from Adrian Griffin’s very Nurse-like scheme?
I have hope for him in those kinds of situations. I also think he is on a mission to prove himself this season and he’s also a very hard worker, so I see him buying in 100 percent to whatever system or plan he’s given. I also think his quick hands and ability to defend on-ball will come in handy, but his defence on the wings never fully stood out to me either. Trent thrived in Nurse’s system because of the aggressive and quickness of it, and how he was able to make sneaky plays at the ball, so if Doc can use that to their advantage again it could be fun.
Clearly, Trent does have some defensive chops, which he has shown intermittently in both Portland and Toronto. But he appears to have also gone stretches of time where the enthusiasm to buy into that role has been notably absent. Does the allure of winning at the highest level motivate him to be more consistent in Milwaukee? That is the burning question heading into this season.
Next, we’ll do a lightning round dissecting what the rest of the Bucks rotation players can do to help the team.