Doc Rivers was not pleased with the Bucks after their blowout loss against the Heat.
The Milwaukee Bucks made it clear that anything short of a championship at the end of the 2023-24 season would be a catastrophe after they went all-in by acquiring Damian Lillard to be Giannis Antetokounmpo’s co-star. But the Bucks have a plethora of problems right now that head coach Doc Rivers and company must fix before they even entertain the idea of winning it all, as seen in their dreadful 123-97 loss to a Miami Heat team that was without Jimmy Butler and Terry Rozier.
For most of the season, the Bucks have struggled on the defensive end of the floor. This was one of the factors that led to Adrian Griffin’s dismissal from the franchise. Rivers was brought in to try and rectify that situation. It seems to be working, with the Bucks showing noticeable improvements on that side of the ball. But against the Heat, it was their offense that was in disarray, with Rivers only stopping short of saying that he’s seeing a total lack of identity from his team on the hardwood.
“As bad as it looked defensively, I thought our offense was way worse tonight. I thought it started early. We were shooting 51% at halftime and I thought we were just playing awful offense, and I thought that startled our defense,” Rivers said in his postgame presser, per NBA.com.
The Bucks shot 36.8 percent from the field in the second half, and when the team can’t buy buckets in the halfcourt, it leads to a feedback loop on the defensive end which then led them to bleed many easy points to the Heat. Before long, a blowout was upon us.
What Doc Rivers wants to see now from the Bucks is a defined identity that comes with playing an unselfish brand of basketball as well as a hard-nosed style where they’re doing everything possible to outwork their opponents. That simply did not happen on Tuesday, with the Heat running circles around a Bucks team that was coming off one of its biggest wins of the season.
“The ball didn’t move a lot tonight, not the way it’s been moving, and I think right now with our team is we get our personality from the offensive end. We don’t want that. We wanna get our personality from playing hard and doing defensive things,” Rivers added.
The Bucks will try to return to winning ways when they take on the Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday for their final game before the All-Star break.
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