Late-game execution matters. How do the Bucks fare?
Author’s note: this is the final article in a three-part series taking a look at the 2024–25 Milwaukee Bucks’ offense. Part one dealt with the team’s shot selection, part two looked at players and coaches, and part three will examine clutch stats and film. Thank you for reading!
I’ve spilled a lot of digital ink over the past week about Milwaukee’s offense. This capstone piece is long (again), but hopefully worthwhile as the synthesis of all we’ve talked about. Today, we’ll look at the clutch values and film to suss out how the Bucks offense works in practice. Without further ado…
The Clutch
If you’ve spent any time digging into Milwaukee’s numbers out of curiosity’s sake, you’d notice that they are terrible in the “clutch”. As a reminder, “clutch” games/minutes are counted as those where a game is within five points with five minutes to go. Their 96.5 ORtg in the clutch is dead last in the entire NBA. Yet they’ve managed to go 18-15 in clutch games thanks to a league-leading 96.8 DRtg in those same minutes.
Those values have improved since the All-Star Break, with the ORtg marginally climbing up to 97.4 and the DRtg dropping to 75.7. Still, the team is just 7-4 in impacted games even with stifling defense. Scoring remains a struggle made worse by the fact that Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard are on the floor while possessions go to waste—often in their hands.
Between those two guys, the obvious concern is the 14.8% Lillard is shooting from three in those crucial minutes (on 27 attempts). That goes along with his 32.1% from the floor overall. His ability to hit free throws late helps balance things a little, but the fact that opponents can regularly dial up the pressure on Lillard and even deny him the ball entirely on certain ATOs with the game on the line is a problem. For all the reasons Dame was brought to Milwaukee, excellence late was very near the top of the list. We’ve barely seen it.
It is not just him, though. While the final five minutes of a game cannot always be easily extrapolated out to the remaining 43—intensity raises, coaches become far more involved on a play-to-play basis, etc.—they’re instructive as a microcosm. These crucial possessions largely encapsulate the elements that plague Milwaukee’s offense generally as recent outings show.
The Film
The original impetus for this exercise was the loss to the Warriors last week. Its fourth quarter in particular was a dreadful spectacle. Taurean Prince hit a three with 5:20 to go to bring the score to within five, 91-96. Those would be the last points from the field the Bucks would score that game. How?
Let’s look at all seven Milwaukee misses with the game on the line.
4:40—A lineup of Lillard, Trent Jr., Prince, Kuzma, and Lopez is on the floor with the middle three spacing on the perimeter. The action on this play only starts with :12 on the shot clock, and is a relatively simple, but also effective, screen by Lopez for Lillard near half court. Lopez’s defender overhelps on Lillard, Dame gets Brook the ball in three-point position, and Brook does the wise thing as two defender run to him: gives it back to Dame who misses a partially-covered deep three.
3:17—Giannis is back on the floor and opts to isolate on Draymond Green for some reason. Draymond has been having an excellent individual defensive game up until this point. If you pause with 3:20 on the clock you’ll see all five Warrior defenders looking right at Giannis with three in the paint and a fourth at the elbow. Giannis does not look up, cannot get past Green, and picks up his dribble for a bad floater miss. Kuzma moves at the last second, but is boxed out with ease and the play ends.
2:38—The first action looks like a Giannis-Dame P&R opportunity, although Giannis sets himself up to screen Dame right into the teeth of Draymond on the sideline for some reason. Dame is forced to backtrack on the move to mid-court, drives, and finds Trent for a three just above the break. Miss.
1:52—Just a… really hard shot? Kuzma moves to set an off-ball screen for Trent, Prince is stationary in the opposite corner from Dame, there’s a split second where Giannis is completely uncovered in the key, but Lillard does not see it through Gary Payton II’s defense. A very tough fading isolation look with time running out where not a single Buck is in position to hope to contest a rebound.
1:29—Our first ATO. The idea here isn’t all that bad either. Dame gets the ball at the three-point line, Giannis flares like he’s going to screen, but is really just dragging Draymond out of the paint entirely. Lillard beats Payton off the dribble and is driving at the rim. Then it gets hairy. Kuzma is in the dunker’s spot and, if Dame makes the right play, can be passed to and probably get up an uncovered shot from a foot out. Instead, Lillard euros left into coverage and tries a tough reverse layup with his right hand. Miss.
0:48—Actual ball movement this time on the perimeter, although Golden State does an excellent job scrambling. Starts with Dame who kicks to Trent which draws two scrambling defenders. Trent goes to Kuzma and the pass is a little off target which gives the Warriors a chance to rebalance. Kuzma goes to Prince in the corner. Prince lets his defender fly by on a contest, sets his feet, and takes a three. Miss.
0:12—Game is over. Insult to injury, Dame is able to beat Payton off the dribble again and misses a layup at the rim. Bucks lose.
If I have my count right, that’s four isos of various kinds and three spot-ups. Some of the looks were even decent and would have changed the complexion of things had they actually gone in. Basketball is simple like that.
But the other sense you get is that when things get tight, the Bucks offense gets dull. There was a single true screen set for Lillard in all of those plays; the rest was largely him making things happen off the dribble. Credit to him: he beat his man enough times that it wasn’t a bad strategy. You’d think there is a better way, though. P&R went completely out the window with Giannis uninvolved in events entirely besides an ill-timed floater against Draymond against the run of team play. When Lillard is bottled up by his man defender the only out suddenly becomes his making the hardest possible shots to keep things going.
Again, part of the deal Milwaukee signed up for is that Lillard will be your guy at the end of games. Between the plays being schemed up around him and his own decision-making as desperation/exasperation sets in, though, its resulting in a total of zero points in over five minutes of actual game time played. The Warriors defended well. The Bucks did little to counteract them.
Go back and watch any number of close Bucks finishes and you’re very likely to see much of the same. Here are a few choice possessions from that (close) win over the Kings this past weekend and a win over the Pacers in the recent past to help illustrate the point that, even when victorious, it can be like pulling teeth:
Bucks v. Pacers – March 15th, 2025
3:34—Giannis gets the ball at the elbow and backs down, but is too long in recognizing a double that means Dame is free. Three other Bucks stack on top of each other on the weak side. Kicks out late, Haliburton can cover a deep three. Miss.
2:18—Lillard tries to drive to the hoop and is cut off at the key. Outside of Lopez in the paint, nobody is actually positioned in a way to make a defense take them into real account once Lillard is in the thick of it. Pass out and pass back to Lillard results in a tough jumper.
1:17—Dame beats his guy off the dribble, but Siakam comes over to stop the drive. Kuzma is late recognizing and doesn’t get to the dunker spot. Lillard opts for the very difficult moving stepback angled to the hoop.
0:43—Simple ATO and not a bad one. Inbounds and pass back to the inbounder for an open three. Kuzma is, of course, the worst of the shooters on the floor.
0:31—Drive by Dame draws a second defender and he immediately finds Porter Jr. for a wide-open dagger three (which he misses so badly that the team gets a rebound to seal it anyways).
Bucks @ Kings – March 22nd, 2025
4:10—The team would win this one off the strength of their start to the quarter. Once we get to “clutch” time, though, it gets rocky. Kuzma kicks us off down one and drives at his defender in transition. He doesn’t expect to suddenly be open and blows the close look.
3:40—An actual good play! Giannis draws the double, Kuzma heads into the paint to draw GTJ’s defender. Giannis throws over the defense to AJ Green who passes to Trent in the corner. Make.
2:28—Missing Dame here. Gary is the ball handler, Kuzma and his defender obstruct the lane he attacks so a step back to no avail is the choice made.
1:46—Clip doesn’t capture how poor this possession was. Spent a lot of time with the ball in Giannis’s hands to make something happen. It goes to Lopez who doesn’t have an idea what to do with time running out, so he turnaround fades from two?
1:05 and 1:01—Miracle sequence here. Starts with an ATO (and a hair-raising inbounds) to Giannis who drives. Gets open but hangs in the air long enough for Keegan Murray to block him. Falling Giannis collects the ball and dumps it to Trent in the corner for a swish. Bucks win.
The Conclusion
Here are my takeaways about the 2024–25 Bucks offense:
- The shot diet needs tweaking—more spot ups and figuring out how to be slightly more effective in transition are the realistic short-term goals that won’t rock the boat with such little runway left.
- The offense is very bad with the game on the line. Numbers match the film, showing little creative action from individuals or the team as a whole. Should the team remain moribund here, the odds of their sinking in a playoff environment where games are tight as a rule goes up. Now, they won a title off the back of a super-elite defense, but the title team went 7-2 in clutch games with a 119.1 ORtg and 89.3 DRtg. This group cannot hold a candle to that.
- I have no idea how Rivers will fit Bobby back into the lineup and whose minutes will suffer as a result. Is there a world where Portis sees his minutes reduced from his pre-suspension averages? Or does he gobble up Kuz playing time? And is that a bad thing? Portis has been pretty one-dimensional this season, but maybe that one-dimension is what the Bucks need? There are concerns.
- They’re nearly out of time to mess with lineups. I’d hate to think of this as a missed opportunity to expand offensive options because of a preference to force a Dame/Porter Jr. point guard rotation.
Individual statistics will give you a false impression of this team’s potential. Great three-point shooters and two stars who score loads should be enough to make this a top-10 group. If you watch, though, those two gears are less interconnected than you’d expect. Dame-Giannis P&Rs are effective in the aggregate without being overwhelming; a problem given how often it is run at the expense of creating for others. To make matters worse, Kuzma belongs to neither group and is thus a 33 minute wild card who neither punishes defenses from deep nor really creates for others. Right now, Milwaukee is a large group of stationary shooters, two guys doing a lot of activity by themselves, and two to three rotation pieces with open questions about fit in a wider scheme (IMO, Kuzma, Portis, Porter). None of this works together to sustain looks late, either. Quite the opposite, in fact.
This team will not make a fix or two and rocket into one of the elite scoring groups in the NBA, yet the possibility of a more cohesive approach emerging and benefitting all isn’t impossible. I’m not asking them to re-invent basketball. A team that looks like it has a gameplan that runs deeper than two players would suffice for me. Only then can they elevate themselves from at-large also-rans to a unit who can even threaten other teams in the playoffs.
The leap from abstraction to reality is, as we’re finding out, a long one. Unless they attempt it, though, they’re a ticking postseason time bomb and not a very interesting one at that.