MILWAUKEE — More than an hour after the Milwaukee Bucks lost their fourth straight game, a dispiriting 122-109 defeat to the New York Knicks on Sunday in which they were outscored 72-48 in the second half, Giannis Antetokounmpo sat alone at his locker in a quiet, near-empty locker room in Fiserv Forum contemplating the Bucks’ slide.
Most nights, Antetokounmpo tends to be one of the last players out of the locker room as Pat Connaughton will be getting ready a few lockers away or Giannis’ brother, Thanasis Antetokounmpo, will be chatting with him in Greek. On Sunday, Giannis and Thanasis were the last two players out. There was little conversation between them.
When Giannis Antetokounmpo eventually spoke with the media, he addressed the Bucks’ spirit amid their struggles. While answering a question about his team being unable to find and play with joy in their recent play, he found himself asking, and acting out, a series of rhetorical questions.
“When was the last time Malik did…” Antetokounmpo asked before acting out teammate Malik Beasley’s trademark 3-point shimmy celebration.
“When was the last time Pat hit a 3 and did…” Antetokounmpo asked before signaling a 3 and wiping it across his chest as Connaughton does after hitting a big shot from deep.
“When was the last time Jae hit a 3, went back and he swags back like…” Antetokounmpo asked as he pretended to backpedal down the floor like Jae Crowder.
“When was the last time I dunked on somebody and went ‘Ahhhhhh!,’” Antetokounmpo asked as he pretended to yell at an imaginary, sold-out home crowd after a huge dunk.
“It’s almost like we’re going through the motions,” Antetokounmpo said. “We gotta find our joy back.”
Joy has been difficult for the Bucks to come by recently, as they have lost six of their last seven games and find themselves in their longest losing streak of this season. The Bucks (47-31) are still second in the Eastern Conference standings, as a number of the other teams in the middle of the East playoff picture have struggled as well. But the Knicks and Orlando Magic are a single game behind Milwaukee.
As they approach the regular season’s final week, the Bucks are playing some of their worst basketball, but they have not stopped trying to right the ship before the postseason and working toward their end goal of an NBA championship.
On Saturday, according to sources briefed on the meeting, Bucks coach Doc Rivers held a film session with the team’s top nine veteran rotation players in Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, Beasley, Bobby Portis, Patrick Beverley, Connaughton and Crowder. During that session, each player was given a chance to speak his mind and explain what they have been seeing from their own perspective, as well as how they believe the team needs to operate selflessly as a unit moving forward.
“It’s only the start of these tough and necessary conversations,” one source described the session.
Against the Knicks on Sunday, though, the Bucks were unable to put that conversation toward a win. The game started off well as the Bucks built a double-digit lead in the first half, but things quickly deteriorated.
With 6:12 left in the second quarter, Middleton left the game after receiving a hard shot to the face from Donte DiVincenzo following a miss at the rim by the Knicks guard. While not intentional, as he was landing, DiVincenzo’s fist appeared to strike Middleton’s face. Middleton immediately started to bleed from his mouth as he sat on the floor under the Knicks basket.
“Khris was great to begin to the game; he was absolutely fantastic,” Rivers said after the game. “You just feel bad for him. The guy can’t catch a break. I mean, what are the odds you go into a game, ‘OK, tonight, it will be my tooth gets knocked out.’
“He’s having one of those seasons right now, but that’s OK because it can all turn for him. I thought he came with great spirit tonight, too, so just tough luck.“
Middleton did not return, leaving the arena immediately after exiting the game for an emergency trip to a dentist, according to Rivers.
Losing Middleton was unfortunate, as Sunday was the first time the Bucks had their big three of Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Middleton on the floor together to start a game in more than a week and just the eighth time they started a game together under Rivers this season. In reality, it is closer to just six games, as Middleton has left two of those games early — with a left ankle sprain vs. the Phoenix Suns on Feb. 6 and Sunday night against the Knicks — due to injury.
If the Bucks are going to find a way to make a deep playoff run, they will need a healthy roster, but they also have to build better chemistry between their three best offensive players.
“We started getting a two-man thing working and working and working, but it was just me and Giannis out there,” Lillard said of the Bucks’ offensive flow under Rivers. “We gotta be able to have things working when it’s me, Khris and Giannis out there, and that’s all part of a process.
“You can’t just put it out there and say, ‘Do it,’ and it just flows smooth. We got a new coach coming in and there’s things that he wants to be done and he wants it to be done a certain way.”
Without Middleton in the second half, the Bucks offense started to stall and revert to too much isolation play, a regular problem this season. After assisting on 17 of their 20 first-half baskets, the Bucks stopped moving the ball and their offense stalled. In the first six minutes of the second half, the Bucks scored six points and saw an 11-point halftime lead disappear, and the Knicks quickly rattled off 20 points to take a 70-67 lead with 6:03 remaining in the third quarter. The Knicks did not relinquish the lead, remaining comfortably in control for the final quarter and a half on their way to a 13-point win.
Despite their recent struggles, though, the Bucks’ team leaders continue to share positivity, and their internal belief in the ability to contend for a championship this season has not wavered.
“I mean, as crazy as it might sound, I feel good,” Lillard said. “Obviously, I hate how the last two weeks or so, however long it’s been, has gone. It’s uncomfortable and it’s frustrating to lose games that we should win and then have a game like tonight where we start off playing well and then have a bad third quarter and get those guys believing and then they take over the game. But when I look around the locker room, I just feel good about it.
“I see Giannis, Khris, Bobby and Brook and Jae and Pat, Beas. When I look around, I just have a true belief in what we have, our experience, how long we’ve been around. And I know that sometimes it gets dark. This league is a tough league. Sometimes you have hard times. And I think that’s what it is for us. And when this kind of stuff happens, everybody’s going to say how bad it is. And ‘This is the problem.’ (or) ‘They gotta do this; they gotta do that.’ But when you just keep fighting in these situations, you never know when it’s going to turn.
“That’s why you gotta stay together, you gotta keep believing. And these are the moments where you find out who’s a real one and who’s not, because everybody’s going to be saying negative stuff and how wrong it is and how bad it is, and you can fold or not fold. That’s what we’re going to learn about ourselves going into the playoffs, based on the experience that we having right now.”
While positivity and a strong belief are good to possess and maintain, the Bucks will have to turn things around quickly because the Boston Celtics, the NBA’s best team, are coming to town on Tuesday, and the Bucks only have one week remaining in the regular season to prepare themselves for the postseason.
(Photo of Damian Lillard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Doc Rivers: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)
First appeared on theathletic.com