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 strain, the result felt inevitable.
But the Bucks fought hard, and thanks to a double-digit third-quarter comeback, they even took the lead into the fourth quarter, where their reserves grew the lead in the first six minutes. With a little less than six minutes remaining, both coaches leaned into their starting units, and the Cavaliers made a final run to regain the lead and pull out a 116-114 win. The Cavaliers’ win pushed their undefeated start to the season to eight games, while the Bucks suffered their sixth straight loss.
After their opening night win against the Philadelphia 76ers, the Bucks are now 1-6 to start the season. History has not been kind to teams that start a season with that record. Since 1970, 150 NBA teams have started 1-6 or worse. Only 12 of those teams made the playoffs, five of which did so with a losing record.
“We will make the playoffs,” Rivers said when informed of this statistic after the game. “I’m not worried about that.”
That is the attitude the team will need for the Bucks to climb out of the hole they have dug for themselves to start this season. Rivers insisted the team is still in a good place despite the team’s disastrous start.
“The team’s very positive. I think they’re upbeat,” Rivers said. “No one wants to lose. We have some tough games coming up, but one win at a time. We win three or four in a row and then the numbers say if you’re 5-6 after that, you have an 80 percent chance to make the playoffs, you know? So that’s where 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 a situation like this. Two years ago, the Los Angeles Lakers made 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 made the Eastern Conference finals started 3-9 before finishing 52-30.
It can be done, but this is definitely not the spot any team wants to be in to start the season.
While Rivers and the Bucks might not want to think about the history for teams in their situation, other statistics should matter an awful lot to them. Through seven games, they are 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 has occurred out of bad luck or happenstance, but rather as the product of struggles on both ends of the floor.
Defensively, the Bucks consistently have difficulty making their opponents uncomfortable at any level. While teams might not want to make their way to the rim when Brook Lopez is patrolling the paint, opponents are still managing to shoot 69 percent at the rim (24th in the NBA) against the Bucks this season by pulling Lopez away from the hoop, outrunning Milwaukee in transition and attacking the rim when Lopez is off the floor.
In fact, per Cleaning the Glass, opponents are shooting above the league average in each area of the floor — rim, mid-range, 3 — against the Bucks this season. Luck is a part of any shooting statistic, but the high shooting percentages also speak to how easy things have felt offensively for opponents.
On offense, the Bucks just aren’t getting enough production from players outside of their pair of superstars. Antetokounmpo is averaging 31 points per game on 63.3 percent shooting (better than last season) and 6.3 assists per game through six games, while Lillard is averaging 27.6 points per game with a 56.0 effective field-goal percentage (both improvements from last season) and 6.7 assists per game in seven games this season.
But rather than stepping up in Khris Middleton’s absence to start the season, the rest of the supporting cast is struggling:
• After an 0-of-3 performance from deep in Cleveland, Gary Trent Jr., a career 38.3 percent 3-point shooter, is now shooting 23.1 percent from 3.
• Lopez is hitting just 28.2 percent from deep, and his shooting numbers to start the season would be his least efficient for a season as a Buck.
• Bobby Portis is averaging only 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 a career-high 1.9 turnovers per game.
“A 1-6 start, it’s ugly,” Lillard said. “But when you look at the big picture, it’s such a long season, 75 games left. And I’ve been part of the teams that have won 16 straight, 14 straight. Sometimes, you just get in a ditch. Sometimes, it can happen in the middle of the season. It can happen toward the end of the season. And I think because it’s happening at the beginning and we got one win and six losses, it just looks different.”
While Lillard is correct in suggesting that a 1-6 stretch in a different part of the season might not garner the same amount of attention, the dawdling start has eliminated much of the margin for error that exists in an NBA regular season.
Last season, the Indiana Pacers were the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference with a 47-35 record. To finish the season with a 47-35 record this season, the Bucks would need to compile a 46-29 record in their final 75 games or, in other words, win 61.3 percent of their final 75 games. For a frame of reference, the Bucks compiled a win percentage of .598 with their 49-33 record last season. They could obviously make a deep playoff run from one of the Play-In spots as the Lakers and Heat did in 2023, but this 1-6 start has put them on a perilous path for the rest of the season.
“But I think because of who we have on our team — Giannis, Khris, myself, Bobby, Brook — like, we’ve got an experienced, talented team, we can get a lot of things done,” Lillard said. “And I think how we’ve shown ourselves in games against the top teams like Cleveland the last two games and against Boston. We know what we’re capable of.
“It’s just a matter of putting it together and we got a lot of games to do it. So I think for that reason we’ve got every reason to keep fighting because we’re going to find our way back and be looking back at this at some point. But you can never be the team to fold. You gotta keep answering the call and keep pushing 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 keep moving forward and deal with the damage they have done to themselves in the first two weeks. That path won’t be easy, however, and they need to dramatically alter what they’ve done thus far.
(Photo of Isaac Okoro and Bobby Portis: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
