Bucks are 'optimistic' despite losing six games: 'We'll make the playoffs'

CLEVELAND — When Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers announced that Giannis Antetokounmpo would miss Monday's game against the Cleveland Cavaliers because of a right adductor muscle strain, the outcome seemed inevitable.

But the Bucks fought hard and even went into the fourth quarter thanks to a double-digit comeback in the third quarter, where their reserves extended the lead in the first six minutes. With a little less than six minutes remaining, both coaches got into their starting lineups and the Cavaliers made one final run to regain the lead and claim a 116-114 victory. The Cavaliers' win extended their unbeaten start to the season to eight games, while the Bucks suffered their sixth straight loss.

After their opening win against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Bucks are now 1-6 to start the season. History hasn't been kind to teams that start a season with this record. Since 1970, 150 NBA teams have started 1-6 or worse. Only 12 of these teams made it to the playoffs, five of which suffered defeat.

“We’re going to make the playoffs,” Rivers said when informed of that statistic after the game. “I’m not worried about that.”

That's the attitude the team will need for the Bucks to climb out of the hole they dug for themselves earlier this season. Rivers insisted the team was still in a good position despite the disastrous start.

“The team is very positive. I think they’re optimistic,” Rivers said. “Nobody wants to lose. We have some tough games ahead of us, but one win at a time. We win three or four in a row and the numbers say we have a 5-6 chance of making the playoffs, you know? That's why the numbers are so silly sometimes, especially early in the year. And we don’t pay much attention to them.”

Rivers' assessment is correct in that things can turn around for teams in such a situation. Two years ago, the Los Angeles Lakers reached the Western Conference finals from a spot in the play-in tournament after starting the season 2-10. You can even point to a historical precedent for the Bucks franchise. The 2000-01 team that reached the Eastern Conference finals started 3-9 and finished 52-30.

It's doable, but that's definitely not where a team wants to be at the start of the season.

While Rivers and the Bucks may not want to think about the history of teams in their situation, other statistics should be very important to them. Through seven games, they rank 21st in offensive efficiency (110.7 points per 100 possessions) and 26th in defensive efficiency (119.4 points per 100 possessions). The 1-6 record is not something that came about through bad luck or coincidence, but rather the result of struggles on both sides of the floor.

Defensively, the Bucks have consistently struggled to make their opponents uncomfortable at every level. While teams may not want to get to the rim when Brook Lopez is patrolling the court, opponents this season against the Bucks still manage to shoot 69 percent at the rim (24th in the NBA) by keeping Lopez from the Pull the basket away. He outruns Milwaukee in transition and attacks the rim when Lopez comes off the floor.

According to Cleaning the Glass, opponents are shooting above league average in all areas of the court against the Bucks this season – rim, midrange, 3. Luck is part of every shooting statistic, but the high hit rates also show how easy it felt for the opponents on offense.

On offense, the Bucks simply aren't getting enough production from players outside of their two superstars. Antetokounmpo is averaging 31 points per game on 63.3 percent shooting (better than last season) and 6.3 assists per game in six games, while Lillard is averaging 27.6 points per game with an effective field goal percentage of 56.0 (both improvements from last season) and 6.7 assists per game in seven games this season.

But instead of showing up in Khris Middleton's absence at the start of the season, the rest of the supporting cast is struggling:

• After an 0-of-3 performance from deep for Cleveland, Gary Trent Jr., who shot 38.3 percent from 3-point range in his career, is now shooting 23.1 percent from 3-point range.

• Lopez is shooting just 28.2 percent from distance and his shooting numbers to start the season would be his worst for a season as a Buck.

• Bobby Portis is averaging just 12.4 points per game, his lowest number since his first season with the Bucks. He is shooting 22.2 percent from 3, a career low, and 47.6 percent overall, his lowest as a member of the Bucks, while averaging 1.9 turnovers per game, the highest of his career.

“A 1-6 start is ugly,” Lillard said. “But if you look at the bigger picture, it’s such a long season, there’s still 75 games left. And I was part of the teams that won 16, 14 in a row. Sometimes you just end up in a ditch. Sometimes it can happen in the middle of the season. It can happen towards the end of the season. And I think because it happened in the beginning and we had one win and six losses, it just looks different.”

While Lillard is right to suspect that a 1-6 stretch might not attract the same attention in another part of the season, the sluggish start has left much of the margin for error that exists in an NBA regular season, eliminated.

Last season, the Indiana Pacers were the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference with a record of 47-35. To finish the season with a 47-35 record, the Bucks would need to post a 46-29 record in their last 75 games, or in other words, win 61.3 percent of their last 75 games. For reference, the Bucks posted a winning percentage of .598 with their 49-33 record last season. They could of course advance into the playoffs from one of the play-in spots like the Lakers and Heat did in 2023, but that 1-6 start has put them on a dangerous path for the rest of the season.

“But I think because of who we have on our team — Giannis, Khris, myself, Bobby, Brook — we have an experienced, talented team and we can get a lot of things done,” Lillard said. “And I think the way we performed in games against the top teams like Cleveland in the last two games and against Boston. We know what we are capable of.

“It’s just a matter of putting it together and we have a lot of games to do it. That's why I think we have every reason to keep fighting, because at some point we will find our way back and look back on the matter. But you can never be the team that gives up. You’ve got to keep answering the call and keep moving forward, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

There is no reset button for an NBA season, so all the Bucks can do is move on and deal with the damage they have done to themselves in the first two weeks. However, this path will not be easy and they will have to fundamentally change their current approach.