MILWAUKEE — On Friday, Brook Lopez was back where he belonged.
With a four-point lead and 27 seconds remaining against the New York Knicks, Lopez, the Milwaukee Bucks center, found himself underneath the Knicks’ basket, frantically waving his arms and barking out orders to prepare his teammates for a crucial defensive possession.
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Mitchell Robinson, Lopez’s assignment on the play, was the closest player to inbounder Jalen Brunson, the game’s leading scorer. But Robinson was standing in the right corner of the floor, 20 feet away from the basket, so Lopez paid him little attention. His lone focus was protecting the hoop.
With Lopez focused on the rim, Brunson inbounded to Robinson, who whipped a pass to the top of the key to forward Julius Randle.
The Knicks All-NBA forward quickly went to work, attacking Giannis Antetokounmpo off the bounce. Antetokounmpo turned Randle a couple of times on the drive, but on each turn, Randle put his shoulder into Antetokounmpo in an effort to create space. As he made one final turn over his right shoulder, Randle elevated for a floater with his left hand and Antetokounmpo started to fall to the floor.
As the ball floated toward the square painted onto the backboard, Lopez elevated from underneath the rim and swatted the shot off the side of the backboard with his right hand.
After the block, Lopez attempted to catch the ball with his left hand and drew a foul on Knicks wing Josh Hart, essentially sealing the Bucks a 110-105 win with his eighth rejection of the game.
“Oh, man, he was awesome,” Bucks coach Adrian Griffin said of Lopez, before making a surprising admission. “Sometimes as coaches, we’re too smart for our own selves and so a couple players came to me — I won’t disclose (them) — but they wanted Brook deeper in the drop and I was smart enough to listen to ‘em and it paid off tonight.”
For the first four games of the regular season, Griffin tried something different with Lopez, last season’s runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year.
Rather than keep Lopez in deep drop coverage in pick-and-rolls, which helped Lopez collect a league-leading 193 blocks last season, Griffin asked Lopez to play further away from the rim. Instead of having Lopez sit back by the rim and force opposing players to finish over the top of the 7-foot, 280-pound big man, Griffin wanted Lopez to be a part of the Bucks’ effort to apply greater pressure on the ball and force more turnovers.
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And the Bucks were successful in forcing more turnovers in the first four games, producing the league’s 11th-highest turnover rate through four games after finishing last in the category last season. But the overall quality of the Bucks’ defense decreased significantly. After being one of the league’s best defenses for the last five seasons under former coach Mike Budenholzer, the Bucks entered Friday’s slate of games with the league’s second-worst defensive rating, per NBA.com.
For the last five years, the Bucks’ greatest defensive strength was their rim protection with Lopez and Antetokounmpo. who finished with 22 points, eight rebounds, six assists and a block Friday, swatting shots and generally discouraging teams from even attempting to finish at the rim. Through the first four games, opponents were making 80.9 percent of their attempts at the rim against the Bucks, the league’s worst rim-protecting figure, per Cleaning the Glass.
In Friday’s game though, with Lopez back in the drop at the players’ behest, the Bucks’ defense returned to form, holding the Knicks to 105 points as New York made only 57.1 percent of its attempts at the rim.
With the game on the line, Lopez was ready and waiting for the Knicks as they tried to attack the rack.
But it wasn’t just in the game’s closing moments, Lopez was waiting at the rim for the Knicks all game, recording eight or more blocks in a game for the fifth time in his career.
When Jae Crowder tried to apply pressure up the floor and got beat on a backcut, Lopez was there.
When Pat Connaughton chased Josh Hart around a dribble handoff and then Hart used a spin move to get past him, Lopez was there.
“That’s what he does,” Khris Middleton said. “He’s one of the best in the business doing that. He protects the paint. He’s our anchor down low where he’s communicating everything to us, letting us know where we need to go, where to shift, where to stay home to shooters because he’s going to do a great job playing cat-and-mouse with that pick-and-roll or that ballhandler coming down for a contested floater, dropoffs, all of that.”
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Following Wednesday’s game in Toronto, Antetokounmpo told reporters that if the Bucks wanted to improve moving forward, the Bucks — both coaches and players — needed to have tough conversations with each other to figure out their path forward. On Thursday, following the Bucks’ practice in Milwaukee, Griffin told reporters that he met with some of the veterans on the roster to discuss the start of the season. On Friday, Griffin went back to the defensive system that helped the Bucks win a championship in 2021 and makes it easier for Lopez to be productive on the defensive end.
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“Listen, we have some phenomenal players who have won before I even stepped in this building,” Griffin said. “And, you know, as a player, it helps me to relate to the players too. Because I know the players are in the trenches and they see things sometimes. We watch it sometimes on film, but they live it and so that helps me. My playing experience helps me kind of relate to and understand where they’re coming from.
“And the players are not always correct with their assessment, but I think it is wise to at least listen to them. And if it makes sense, we incorporate it, but we’re all pulling for the same thing, and that’s to win.”
As Griffin suggested, these situations won’t always end with this result. There will be times when players make suggestions and the coaching staff disagrees and takes the team in a different direction. But this time around, Griffin heard his players out and decided to switch back to the defensive approach that makes his team most comfortable and gets the best out of one of the team’s most talented defenders.
“Obviously I was very appreciative of that,” Lopez said. “I think we have a lot of guys that are very coachable and to have a head coach who’s willing to listen in that regard and talk those things out, that’s great. There’s obviously going to be a lot of that this season.
“Going with the great things that coach Griffin brings to the table, our coaching staff brings to the table, and then the things a lot of experienced guys on this team are used to or know from being in this league for so long,” added Lopez, it’s going to be a lot of give and take, feeling things out and that’s going to make us such a great team in April, May, June than we are even right now.”
And the Bucks still have a long way to go to perfect their approach moving forward.
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While Lopez was spectacular at the rim on Friday, Brunson put up 45 points, feasting on the shots that the drop defense encourages opponents to take. After the game, Griffin joked about his poor timing in choosing to go back to drop coverage against a team with players adept at using floaters and midrange jumpers, such as Brunson and Immanuel Quickley, to take advantage of it. But the Bucks will need to improve their execution in the drop if this is going to be their main look defensively moving forward.
Even with limited practice time, though, Lopez told reporters that he thought the players on the the team new to the team’s old way of doing things defensively picked it up quickly on Friday night. After the game, Damian Lillard, who finished with 30 points, four rebounds and four assists, told reporters that he felt comfortable in the new (old) coverage because of Lopez’s ability to quarterback the defense.
“I actually liked it because it’s just to the point,” Lillard said. “When he’s in a drop, you know what coverage you’re going to be in much earlier.”
Here is Lillard explaining the difference with Lopez in drop coverage on a first-quarter defensive possession:
Lillard’s defense was not perfect, but he corralled Brunson to one side of the floor by listening to Lopez’s commands and he contested the shot. That is far more manageable for the Bucks than watching Lillard and Lopez try to trap or blitz a ballhandler in a pick-and-roll out near the 3-point line.
“So I noticed a difference right away,” Lillard continued. “You can tell that he’s comfortable calling the game that way. He knows how to navigate being in the paint. He’s behind everything, so he can see. I just heard him talking a lot more tonight because he’s kind of back there seeing everything. So, for us guys who play a lot on the perimeter, especially defensively, hearing a guy back there communicating, you hear his voice, directing traffic, it’s extremely helpful.”
The Bucks have been far from perfect this season, but after going through an embarrassing performance in Toronto, Griffin leaned on his players and the team came together with a new plan for Friday’s game. If the Bucks are going to continue to improve this season, it is exactly the type of thing they will need to do repeatedly throughout the season.
(Photo of Jalen Brunson and Brook Lopez: Benny Sieu / USA Today)
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