How the Bucks need to better defend Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo in Game 2

MILWAUKEE — It didn’t take Bucks forward Jae Crowder long to figure out his answer to the question following Tuesday’s practice.

“I would say defense,” Crowder replied, when asked what the Bucks need to focus on most heading into Game 2 on Wednesday. “One hundred-thirty points in a playoff game, I think that’s entirely too much. With the caliber of defensive players that we have, I think we have to clean that side up.”

Since Mike Budenholzer has arrived in Milwaukee, the Bucks have prided themselves on defense and largely lived up to high expectations on that end. In Game 1, they fell well short of their standards defensively, giving up the aforementioned 130 points to one of the league’s worst offensive teams in the regular season. Jimmy Butler put up 35 points, five rebounds and 11 assists. Bam Adebayo added 22 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. And the Heat made 15 of their 25 3-point attempts.

The Bucks just didn’t perform well enough defensively in Game 1.

Things were more difficult for the Bucks defensively once Giannis Antetokounmpo, former Defensive Player of the Year and one of the team’s three All-Defense level players, left the game in the second quarter. And, on their first injury report on Tuesday afternoon, the Bucks listed Antetokounmpo as doubtful for Game 2 with a lower back contusion. So, they may be forced to do it without Antetokounmpo again, but there are plenty of things they can do whether or not their two-time MVP plays.

Let’s take a closer look at what the Bucks need to consider defensively against the Heat’s two best players.

Take away the easy stuff from Butler

The Bucks are no stranger to points in transition.

Antetokounmpo scored nearly 10 points per game in transition this season, but there is a major difference between Antetokounmpo slaloming through defenders on his way to the rim for a slick finger roll or a massive dunk and some of the transition points the Bucks gifted to the Heat in Game 1. As covered after the game, Jimmy Butler leaked out repeatedly in the first half for easy points and Bam Adebayo did the same in the second half following a Brook Lopez 3-point attempt.

“We did a lot of stuff to hurt ourselves, I think, and gave those guys energy and juice,” Crowder said. “I think we did a lot of stuff to start the game to make those guys feel comfortable and I think it gave them the confidence to make shots continuously throughout the game, basically.”

Eliminating those opportunities will be a good way to eliminate roughly 10 points off the top of their 130-point total, but those were far from the only breakdowns that resulted in easy Heat points in Game 1.

Butler is going to be at the center of everything the Heat do offensively throughout this series and the Bucks did a poor job making him work for the points that he scored in Game 1. For example, Butler should never be able to straight line drive to the rim like he did in both of these situations against Crowder.

The Bucks have a bevy of physical wing defenders that are supposed to be able to stay in front of Butler and then not get bullied by him physically as he backs them down or tries to post them up. To get to that second part of possession, Crowder and the Bucks need to take care of the first action.

“Watching the film, it was just overthinking the game,” Crowder said. “I think we gotta defend the ball, take care of the ball, and not worry about second and third actions. We gotta take care of the ball and that’s the main guy. Jimmy had the ball in his hands creating, so we gotta take care of him. I think once you take care of us not thinking as much and us just reacting, we’ll be fine taking care of the straight-line drives.”

Wesley Matthews has been ruled out of Game 2 by the Bucks with a right calf strain, but this play from Matthews against Butler is a perfect example of what Crowder was discussing on Tuesday. On this play, the Heat were going to set a double screen for Butler, but in preparation to take that away from Butler, Matthews overplayed Butler’s right hand and forced him away from the screen.

In overplaying Butler’s right hand and “icing” him away from the screen, Matthews gave up a straight live drive to Butler and decided to foul him to avoid giving up a layup. Such an aggressive defensive play was likely a part of the game plan defensively and, as Crowder suggested, that call was thinking too many steps ahead.

If the Bucks just defended straight-up in the moment, they were actually in a good position to handle the double screen with a relatively straightforward coverage.

Look at the work Ingles had already done on the Martin screen.

By defending Martin physically, Ingles had already forced the first screen to be set a few feet behind the 3-point line. If he stays connected to Martin, Matthews would have had plenty of time and space to go under the screen and get back to Butler because Butler, unlike someone like Steph Curry or Damian Lillard, is not coming off of that screen and pulling up for a 28-foot 3. That isn’t his game.

Once he navigated that first screen, Matthews and Antetokounmpo would have needed to figure out what they were going to do on the second screen, but at least they would have forced Butler to get to a second action. By deciding to “ice” Butler away from those two screens, the Bucks just gave up a layup with little resistance.

“You have to compete first, whether you’re doing it the scouting report way or our way,” Crowder said. “You just have to compete at a high level. Miami is a great team at just competing, bringing that from start to finish, so I think we have to match that and elevate our game in the competition area. And then, from there, Xs and Os will take care of themselves. I just feel like we didn’t compete at a high level.”

Look at how they defended a similar set a few minutes later in the first quarter:

There were extenuating circumstances on this play as this was shortly after Antetokounmpo’s fall, so he was clearly favoring his back, but the Bucks simply didn’t compete hard enough on that play. They didn’t give up a straight-line drive, so that was a positive, but the switch Antetokounmpo gave up was too easy and Portis and Lopez did not make it difficult enough on Butler as he came off the second “screen” from Adebayo.

Now, watch this possession from Game 1 against the Heat in 2021.

Did Antetokounmpo and Lopez defend that exactly how they drew it up? Probably not. It wasn’t perfect technically, but Butler was uncomfortable and unable to throw a pocket pass to Adebayo because he was getting trapped on the baseline by two 7-footers. And the Bucks didn’t quit after turning Butler away the first time.

Again, are those rotations perfect? Absolutely not. It’s messy and the Bucks’ help defenders are scrambling a little bit to make sure they don’t give up an easy look, but the Heat are not comfortable in any way. And it’s largely because the Bucks are competing harder than Miami on that possession. Too often on Sunday, that was not the case.

How close to get to Adebayo

The screenshot below is Brook Lopez guarding Bam Adebayo while the Heat center tried to initiate the Heat offensive attack on the first possession of Game 1 on Sunday:

When the Bucks play the Heat, this scene plays out regularly as the Bucks have shown little interest in sticking close to Adebayo when he gets outside of a five-foot radius of the rim. And the image will always be jarring because an offensive player with the ball in his hands is typically not “ignored” to such an extent with the ball in his hands.

Because it is so unusual, it is an easy topic of conversation in any playoff game the Bucks lose, but it’s no different than what they did to Adebayo in their first round meeting in the 2021 NBA playoffs. That isn’t to say the strategy is correct this time around, but this is a screenshot from the Heat’s fourth offensive possession of Game 3 in 2021:

In that series, the Bucks regularly let Lopez aggressively sag off of Adebayo to protect the rim and keep the Heat from getting easy looks there. And it worked against both Adebayo individually and the Heat as a collective unit. During the regular season, Adebayo took 45 percent of his shots at the rim, but that percentage dropped all the way down to 32 percent against the Bucks in the first round in 2021. The Heat’s shot frequency as a team followed a similar trend.

As the Bucks tried to comeback in the fourth quarter, Adebayo made three of his five short mid-range attempts and successfully contributed to holding the Bucks off in the final few minutes. Those shots falling made it more difficult to see any wisdom behind such a strategy, but the strategy kept Adebayo from the rim and altered his shot profile even more dramatically than it did during the 2021 first round matchup.

Watching the Bucks so brazenly sag off of one of the Heat’s best players will draw questions if the Bucks lose again, but the math behind the decision is relatively simple:

• Adebayo hit 47 percent of his short mid-range attempts during the regular season, per Cleaning the Glass.
• Those shots are all worth two points.
• 2 x .47 = .94 points per possession. (Note: The league’s worst offense scored 1.084 points per possession.)

Adebayo’s misses can obviously turn into offensive rebounds, but the Heat turned only one of Adebayo’s misses into an offensive rebound in Game 1 on Sunday. Even if Adebayo hits 50 percent of those mid-range jumpers like he did in Game 1, that is still only an offensive rating of 100 points per 100 possessions. On Sunday, the Heat scored 128.7 points per 100 possessions. Adebayo jumpers were the least of their concerns.

While Adebayo jumpers might look easy, they just aren’t likely to be an overwhelmingly efficient form of offense for Miami. However, questions about the strategy will grow louder if the Bucks drop Game 2.

(Photo of Khris Middleton and Jimmy Butler: Stacy Revere/Getty Images)