Milwaukee Bucks: Interior defense collapse proves costly in Game 1

The Milwaukee Bucks have been the best defensive team in the paint this season, which cost them in their Game 1 NBA playoffs loss to the Miami Heat.

Monday night saw the No.1 seed Milwaukee Bucks open their Eastern Conference semi-final matchup in the NBA playoffs with the Miami Heat. For anybody who has watched the Heat play this season, especially in Orlando, you’ll know that we were going to be in for an exhilarating series here. And Game 1 was just that.

There was plenty going on in this one, and if this game was a benchmark for the rest of this series then it’s going to be a special one. The Bucks haven’t looked themselves through their time in Orlando and that’s pretty worrying. But, when you have Giannis Antetokounmpo on your team, surrounded by the depth that he is, then all form goes out the window. The Heat, however, had different ideas, and the area of the game that effectively gave them the basis to go on and clinch this opening game was a surprising one.

The Milwaukee Bucks have the best interior defense in the entire NBA this season, allowing just 38.7 points in the paint per game, while the Heat rank 28th in scoring in the paint, with 43.9 points per game coming in that area. So you’ve got the best defense inside against one of the worst offenses inside. That doesn’t seem like a great thing considering the task that the Heat was coming up against in Giannis and the Bucks. But, that narrative didn’t seem to matter to head coach Erik Spoelstra and his team.

Jimmy Butler made the difference for the Heat

This game was far from a high-scoring affair, apart from the opening quarter where the Bucks dropped 40 points and looked like they might take over. But it really didn’t need to be. The Heat did well doubling Antetokounmpo and retreating towards the perimeter, which was effective enough to limit the Bucks down the stretch, and we saw resilience from the Heat on the offensive end, spearheaded by Jimmy Butler.

Butler scored 40 points on 65.0 percent shooting, as well as going 12-of-13 from the free throw line. It was Jimmy’s night and he took it to another level, which was the real focal point. For the Bucks, their inability to stop the Heat in the lane was troubling and effectively saw the Heat get that separation and steal Game 1.

It wasn’t anything crazy, as Miami totaled 42 points inside (even less than their regular season average), but it was the intensity that they were coming at the Bucks with is what was concerning if you’re a Bucks fan. This is a group that contains the likes of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez, and a smaller Heat team was bullying them at times.

It’s not an astonishing cause for concern in terms of the Bucks getting back into this NBA playoffs series but it’s an area they should be better at when you’re playing the caliber of games you’re playing at the moment. This Heat team possesses such a tricky offense, and everything they do comes from going inside. They have the players to finish at the rim with Butler and Bam Adebayo and they also have the creators in Butler and Goran Dragic to be able to find better looks when attracting help defense from Milwaukee inside.

You can’t afford to allow the Heat to have clean paths inside when they’re an offense as good as they are. You’re also not going to be able to make up for it on the other end. The Heat themselves allow just 44.1 points in the paint this season, but they allowed only 24 on Monday. For a team that has Antetokounmpo, along with a number of great finishers, that’s just not something you can do when you’re crumbling at times on the opposite end of the floor.

The 3-ball was falling for the Bucks as they went 16-of-35 from beyond the arc, and it’s something they’ll continue to rely heavily on during this series, but defensively is the area they need to be themselves at.

The Bucks dropped their opening game in their first-round clash in the NBA playoffs with the Orlando Magic. That was always going to be a fluke. However, dropping any game to a dangerous side like the Miami Heat is far from a fluke and will have a big effect on this series going forward. Game 2 becomes even bigger for the Milwaukee Bucks as they look to shut down this explosive Heat side in the NBA playoffs.