Starting this early. The Celtics are on a back-to-back and had to play an OT game yesterday. However, that might be the only thing that could prevent the Bucks from getting blown off the court tonight. The Bucks have had 72 hours of rest and the Celtics are coming off a really tough game.
That said, I still think the Bucks are going to get blown out tonight.
If you have a subscription to the Athletic, there is a really, really good article about the Bucks defense today. Basically, Dame sucks and their transition defense is trending towards being one of the worst in NBA history. We can all see that, and much of that is just effort and communication. That's not necessarily on Griffin,.
To put numbers to it, Milwaukee is 30th in opponent transition percentage. The gap between the Bucks and the second-worst team is identical to the distance between the 29th and league average.
Much of the rest of the article is mostly saying that Adrian Griffin is an idiot (in a nice way, but backed up with data). The thing I hadn't considered is that while Griffin has put Lopez back into drop, he's still having Portis and Giannis try to chase guys aggressively on the perimeter. This has had a lot of trickle down effects, the most concerning of which is that Portis and Giannis aren't back to get defensive rebounds, and the Bucks have given up a lot of second shots because of it. The ultimate problem is that Griffin wants to run this defense to generate turnovers, but the Bucks are still terrible at it because they don't have the personnel to execute it. Yet Griffin has stubbornly stuck with it.
Thus far though, Griffin’s decision to use more aggressive tactics with Antetokounmpo and Portis at the point of attack this season has not led to subsequent increases in turnover production as the Bucks find themselves last in the NBA in turnover percentage, forcing turnovers on only 11.8 percent of opponent possessions.
I'd say the take-home is that Adrian Griffin is in way over his head. The Bucks next 6 games after Boston are vs. Warriors, vs. Kings, at Cavs, at Pistons, at Pistons, vs. Cavs. They should sleepwalk into going 5-1 in that stretch. If they somehow lose 4-5 games in this stretch, it wouldn't be that much of a shock to see Griffin gone. I don't think it's going to happen, but it isn't off the table.
