From the moment he took over as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, Doc Rivers dictated clear rules to his players on offense. Not a day goes by without the team hearing three simple words.
“Good to great.”
It's not a difficult concept to understand. The Bucks have a variety of talented offensive players. With Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez and Malik Beasley in the starting lineup and Bobby Portis as a backup, the Bucks can make a good impression relatively easily. But in Rivers' view, the Bucks can only reach their next level as a team if they consistently strive to forego good plays in order to produce great plays on offense.
In the biggest moments of Monday's 113-106 comeback victory, the Bucks (41-21) lived by their coach's motto, finding great shots throughout while making stops on the other end and outscoring the Los Angeles Clippers 40-25 fourth quarter to win their sixth straight game coming out of the All-Star break.
And it all started with Damian Lillard.
On Monday, Lillard was the only member of the Bucks' Big 3 to speak. In the initial injury report filed by the Bucks on Sunday afternoon, Khris Middleton was ruled out for his 11th straight game because of the left ankle sprain he suffered on Feb. 6. Giannis Antetokounmpo was injured late on Monday night. Antetokounmpo arrived at his normal warm-up session two hours before the game, but had to abandon it due to left Achilles tendonitis. This made Lillard the Bucks' main creator on offense against the Clippers.
Looking back on his time with the Portland Trail Blazers, Lillard thrived in this role. Thanks to 13 free throw attempts, he scored 41 points on just 22 shots and added four rebounds and four assists. While Lillard found his feet quickly on Monday, the rest of the roster struggled to figure out how to score enough points to compete with one of the best teams in the Western Conference.
Even though the Bucks only had 73 points in three quarters, Lillard stuck with it. With 8:15 left, Lillard dribbled through traffic and finished through contact at the rim to convert a one-possession game and cut the Clippers' lead to three. And then, with 5:16 left, Lillard hit a stepback triple to bring the Bucks back within three and set the stage for most of Monday's game.
Dame's fourth three-pointer keeps us close. pic.twitter.com/AUJTGsR9ow
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) March 5, 2024
After a defensive stop, Lillard brought the ball up and prepared for the next play.
The step-back 3 on the previous possession had given Lillard 37 of the Bucks' 93 points on the night. No one could have blamed him if he called his own number again, but that's not Lillard's decision. Instead, he used his gravity to create a shot for his teammates.
“I guess it's been my typical experience in my career up to this point where I come out, attack, somehow get what I want to get at the start of the game and their attitude is to rush the guys on me or catch or send a double team,” Lillard said. “And it looked familiar. So sometimes I would attack and put pressure on the double team so they didn't think they were just going to take me out of the game.
“And then they would overreact. Sometimes it was a third party who came to the paint shop. And another time I pretended to attack and just make them more aggressive and take them out of the game and then throw it back and try to take advantage of the four-on-three. And that's pretty much all I did. The game slowed down a bit for me because they got aggressive. I know that then you just have to be a decoy and trust the next game.”
For the Bucks, the 15-0 run that turned the game around wasn't just about their offense. After taking a 96-90 lead with 5:33 to go, the Clippers didn't score again for the next three and a half minutes, largely due to the Bucks' zone defense. It certainly helped that the Clippers were on the second night of a back-to-back, but the Bucks kept making the Clippers work offensively in the fourth quarter as the Bucks' zone defense took away the easiest offensive plays and forced the Clippers to give it up try to solve various problems.
After Patrick Beverley's 3-pointer to tie the game, Beverley and Lillard combined on a steal that gave Lillard a tough lay-in and gave the Bucks their first lead since the 3:51 mark of the first quarter.
Dame makes it to 39 PTS to give the Bucks their first lead late in the 4th quarter!
LAC-MIL | Live on NBA TV
📲 https://t.co/TMaNJ6fepC pic.twitter.com/1Q0ftkeKcI– NBA (@NBA) March 5, 2024
It was a great example of turning offense into defense, but the Bucks didn't stop there on defense.
On the next possession, the Bucks stuck to their zone defense and ensured another tough outing behind two impressive tries from Brook Lopez and Beverley.
The Clippers have three spectacular isolation players – James Harden, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard – and the zone prevented those three players from working in isolation against weaker defenders in the fourth quarter. However, individuals still need to make plays in the zone, and that's exactly what Lopez did on this play.
When Leonard caught the ball on the right wing covered by AJ Green, Lopez found himself in an impossible position, accounting for both Amir Coffey in the corner and Paul George in the middle of the lane. Leonard's push helped the Bucks find more natural one-on-one matchups, but Lopez was still left alone with Leonard in the middle.
While Leonard pumped Lopez into the air, Lopez's strong fight took away an easy mid-range jumper and forced Leonard to make a move, which is where Beverley came into play. There is little to suggest that Beverley should have left Norm Powell on the left wing, but Beverley has spectacular defensive instincts and has done well in his own right. While Beverley didn't push the ball away from Leonard, his help forced the Clippers' All-Star forward to gather for his shot earlier than desired and gave Lopez a chance to block a shot.
With a chance to extend the lead on the other end, Lillard did his thing again. The veteran point guard started the possession looking for his own shot, but Lillard convinced the Clippers to send him extra help. That opened up the opportunity for second-year guard AJ Green for a 31-foot 3-point attempt.
“I know it’s going in,” Portis said after the game. “If there is a person who throws the basketball back into the shooting bag, I don't even break the glass. I never broke the glass on him. I just go back to defense because I think it goes in every time.”
After Amir Coffey missed a corner 3 on the other side, the Bucks got the ball into Lillard's hands and had him operated on.
The Clippers again sent Lillard extra help and he took his time pulling George and Harden as far away from the basket as possible before making a pass to Lopez. The Bucks big man eyed the floor and then found Green on the left wing. His feet were planted and he caught the ball in rhythm, but Green didn't attempt another three-pointer.
Instead, he threw a pass to Portis on the block with a mismatch.
“Good to great,” Rivers said of the play. “Good to great. I mean, this was as good to great as it gets.
“Because AJ could have shot that. They wanted to get out of his way, but to make the next pass – you know, we show it. This is how we start every film session since I've been here. With good to great, good to great, good to great. And there’s no better good to great action than this.”
After the mid-range jump over Coffey, Clippers coach Ty Lue called a timeout, but it didn't matter. After the timeout, the Bucks leaned on Portis a few more times and the big man delivered a few more throws. Ultimately, Portis finished the night with 28 points and 16 rebounds, which was the first 25-point, 15-rebound performance for a player coming off the bench in the NBA this season.
But while the Bucks had spectacular individual performances from Portis and Lillard, the Bucks won Monday without Antetokounmpo and Middleton, struggling to go from good to great.
“If you just keep trusting, eventually the situation will change,” Lillard said. “We fired a few shots. Bobby had a great game. But I would say I just continued to trust it.
“And at the end AJ hit a big one. (Malik Beasley) scored a big one. Bobby scored a big hit. We just started having guys make those big throws and big plays because they were getting those chances as the game went on, instead of me saying, “I'm not going to throw anymore.” I just kept throwing it and down the stretch. It paid off.”
Ultimately, the Bucks' recent success isn't just about Rivers challenging his offense to go from good shots to great shots. Or the team that plays better defensively and defines tasks and roles more clearly. The Bucks are coming out of the All-Star break with greater success because, organizationally, they decided to go from good to great this season.
Just think back to general manager Jon Horst's opening statement at the press conference where he announced the firing of Adrian Griffin as head coach.
“We believe this is a good team right now and with improvement we have a chance to be great,” Horst said. “We’re looking for a way to really make this a great team. That's up to me. That's up to the players. That’s because of the coaching. And we will continue these efforts.”
Good to great. That's what the rest of the Bucks' season is about.