How Damian Lillard and Bucks offense went from ‘good to great’ in comeback win over Clippers

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How Damian Lillard and Bucks offense went from ‘good to great’ in comeback win over Clippers

From the moment he took over as head coach of the Milwaukee Bucks, Doc Rivers has dictated a straightforward edict to his players on the offensive end of the floor. Not a day goes by without the team hearing three simple words.

“Good to great.”

It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp. The Bucks have a multitude of talented offensive players. With Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez and Malik Beasley in their starting lineup, as well as Bobby Portis off the bench, the Bucks can create a good look with relative ease. But in Rivers’ mind, the Bucks can only reach their next level as a team if they consistently strive to pass up good looks to create great looks on the offensive end.

In the biggest moments of Monday’s 113-106 comeback victory, the Bucks (41-21) lived their coach’s motto and consistently found great shots as they put together stops on the other end, outscoring the Los Angeles Clippers, 40-25, in the fourth quarter to win their sixth straight game 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 take the floor. On the first injury report the Bucks submitted on Sunday afternoon Middleton was ruled out of his 11th consecutive game because of the left ankle sprain he suffered on Feb. 6. On Monday night, Antetokounmpo was a late scratch. He came out for his normal warm-up two hours before the game but cut it short because of left Achilles tendinitis. That left Lillard as the Bucks’ primary creator on offense.

In a throwback to his time with the Portland Trail Blazers, Lillard thrived in the role. He scored 41 points on only 22 shots, thanks to 13 free-throws attempted and made, and added four rebounds and four assists. While Lillard found his way quickly on Monday, it was a struggle for his teammates as they tried to figure out how to score enough to keep up with one of the best teams in the Western Conference.

Even though the Bucks only had 73 points through three quarters, Lillard stuck with it. With 8:15 left, he dribbled through traffic and finished through contact at the rim to convert an and-one and cut the Clippers’ lead to 3. And with 5:16 remaining, he hit a stepback triple to bring the Bucks within three again and set the stage for the biggest stretch of the game.

After a defensive stop, Lillard brought the ball up and got ready to make the next play.

The stepback 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. Instead, he used his gravity to create a shot for his teammates.

It was my typical experience, I guess, for my career up until this point where I’m coming out, I’m attacking, kind of getting what I want to get early in the game and their adjustment is to run guys at me or trap or send a double team,” Lillard said. “And it was familiar. So, sometimes I attacked it and applied pressure to the double team, so they didn’t think that they were just taking me out of the game.

“And then they would overreact. Sometimes, it would be a third guy coming into the paint. And then other times, I would act like I was going to attack and just make them get more aggressive and pull them out of the play and then throw it back and try to take advantage of the four-on-three. And that was that was pretty much all I did. The game kind of slowed down for me because they got aggressive. I know that that’s when you got to just kind of be a decoy and trust the next play.”

For the Bucks though, the 15-0 run that flipped the game wasn’t only about their offense. After the Clippers took a 96-90 lead with 5:33 remaining, they didn’t score again for the next three and a half minutes and Milwaukee’s zone defense had a lot to do with it. It certainly helped that the Clippers were on the second night of a back-to-back, but the Bucks repeatedly made them work offensively in the fourth quarter as the zone defense took away the easiest offensive actions and forced the Clippers to try to solve different problems.

After Patrick Beverley’s 3-pointer to tie the game, Beverley and Lillard combined on a steal that created a tough lay-in for Lillard to give the Bucks their first lead since the 3:51 mark of the first quarter.

It was a great example of turning offense into defense, but they didn’t stop there defensively.

On the next possession, Milwaukee remained in its zone defense and created another tough look behind two impressive efforts from Brook Lopez and Beverley.

The Clippers have three spectacular isolation players — James Harden, Paul George and Kawhi Leonard — and the zone kept those three players from being able to work in isolation against lesser defenders in the fourth quarter. Yet, individual players still have to make plays in the zone and that is what Lopez did on this play.

As Leonard caught the ball on the right wing covered by AJ Green, Lopez was caught in an impossible position, responsible for both Amir Coffey in the corner and George in the middle of the lane. Leonard’s drive helped the Bucks find more natural individual matchups, but it still left Lopez in the middle alone with Leonard.

While Leonard got Lopez up in the air with a pump fake, Lopez’s strong contest took away an easy midrange jumper and forced Leonard to make a move, which is where Beverley came into the picture. There is little that suggests Beverley should have left Norm Powell on the left wing, but Beverley has spectacular defensive instincts and he made a read on his own. While Beverley didn’t poke the ball away from Leonard, his help forced the All-Star forward to gather for his shot earlier than he wanted and gave Lopez a chance to block a shot.

With a chance to increase the lead on the other end, Lillard once again did his thing. The veteran point guard started the possession by looking for his own shot, but Lillard doing that convinced the Clippers to send extra help his way. That opened up 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’s one person, when he cocks the basketball back in the shooting pocket, I’m not even crashing the glass. I never crash the glass on his. I just walk back on defense because I think it’s going in every time.”

After Coffey missed a corner 3 on the other end, the Bucks got the ball into Lillard’s hands and let him operate.

The Clippers again sent extra help his way and he took his time drawing George and Harden as far away from the basket as possible before bouncing a pass to Lopez. The Bucks big man surveyed the floor and then found Green on the left wing. His feet were set and he caught the ball in rhythm, but Green didn’t try another 3.

Instead, he dumped a pass down to Portis on the block with a mismatch.

“Good to great,” Rivers said about the play. “Good to great. I mean, that was as good to great as you can get.

“Because AJ could have shot that. They were going to close out on him, but to make the next pass — you know, we show it. That’s what we start every film session with since I’ve been here. With good to great, good to great, good to great. And you can’t get a better good to great action than that one right there.

After the midrange jumper 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 buckets. Portis ended 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 received spectacular individual performances from Portis and Lillard, they won without Antetokounmpo and Middleton on Monday by striving to go from good to great.

“Eventually when you just keep trusting in it, it’ll turn around,” Lillard said. “We hit a couple of shots. Bobby had a big-time game. But I would say, I just kept trusting it.

“And down the stretch, AJ hit a big one. (Malik Beasley) hit a big one. Bobby hit a big one. We just started having guys make those big shots and make those big plays because, over the course of the game, they were getting those opportunities instead of me saying, ‘I’m not going to throw it anymore.’ I just kept throwing it and down the stretch. It paid off.”

Ultimately, the Bucks’ recent success isn’t just about Rivers asking his offense to move from good shots to great shots. Or the team playing better defensively with better defined assignments and roles. The Bucks are finding greater success out of the All-Star break because organizationally, they made the decision to try to push from good to great this season.

Just think back to general manager Jon Horst’s opening statement at the press conference announcing the dismissal of Adrian Griffin as head coach.

“We believe that this is a good team right now, and with improvements, we have a chance to be great,” Horst said. “We’re looking for a way to really make this a great team. That’s on me. That’s on the players. That’s on coaching. And we’re going to continue to pursue that effort.”

Good to great. That’s what the rest of the Bucks’ season is about.