Milwaukee Bucks: 3 takeaways from Game 2 vs. Celtics

1. The coaching advantage is bigger than the talent advantage

Coming into the series, the Milwaukee Bucks were given the talent advantage over the injury-riddled Boston Celtics. Without Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, Marcus Smart and Daniel Theis, the Celtics couldn’t match Giannis Antetokounmpo and company.

But the Celtics were not without their advantages, and they began with Brad Stevens. A top candidate for Coach of the Year, Stevens is regarded as one of the best coaches in the league already. His counterpart, Joe Prunty, is an interim coach struggling to make the broken pieces of the Jason Kidd era fit together.

As Game 2 showed, things are not going well for Prunty.

Prunty’s top priority upon taking over was to fix the defensive scheme, and in some small way he has succeeded in that. The Bucks defended at a higher level after Kidd was fired, with Prunty smoothing away the sharp edges of his predecessor’s hyper-aggressive scheme.

Unfortunately for the Bucks, Prunty hasn’t been able to wipe away the bad defensive instincts, nor has he taken any steps to modernize their offensive system. As the coup de grace, Prunty has seemed to pick up Kidd’s greatest coaching flaw — his maddening and completely baffling substitution patterns.

ESPN Milwaukee reporter Eric Nehm expressed that confusion late in the game Tuesday night:

Not only do these poor and inconsistent substitutions put the Bucks at a disadvantage against their opponents, it has a bleed-over effect on the team’s morale. Noted “Body Language Doctor” Bill Simmons of The Ringer made a sharp point during the game:

Simmons was right to key in on the decision to leave Terry in. Both Jason Kidd and Prunty have leaned on the veteran more than anyone would think reasonable. On the aforementioned play, Terry got turned around and allowed Larkin to step right into a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

This is a problem with very little hope for the Bucks to solve in this series. If Joe Prunty wasn’t going to make strides over the past three months, he’s not going to suddenly become a different caliber of coach over the next three days.

What that means is that the pressure is on this offseason to hire the right coach to guide the Antetokounmpo-era Bucks to their highest heights.

The problem with laying a franchise’s hopes and dreams on a coaching hire is that the league’s best coaches tend not to be available — they tend to be coaching teams to 2-0 series leads, as Brad Stevens is.

The time to delve into the candidates is later, when the Bucks aren’t fighting for their postseason lives. But whether the selection is from the pool of former head coaches milling around for an interview — David Fizdale, Jeff Van Gundy — or from a more unorthodox location — Jerry Stackhouse, Jay Wright, Becky Hammons — the Bucks have to get that selection right.

For now, the team must focus on what it can fix now. Clean the defensive glass, find a better balance in shot selection and maximize its best lineups. The Bucks have done nothing but give the Celtics two home wins; they only have to steal one in Boston to win the series.

Next: Full two-round 2018 NBA Mock Draft

To do so, this team has a lot of work to do in a lot of different areas. Unfortunately, the young Celtics and their wizard-coach don’t seem interested in giving the Bucks the breathing space to accomplish that work.