Rings are supposed to provide a team with chill and poise. The Bucks were kindergarten recess
I won’t pretend to be any kind of basketball expert, and my brethren here will spend the day breaking down the Milwaukee Bucks coughing up a curd-ridden hairball in the first round to the Miami Heat. But I know a deer caught in headlights look when I see one, and Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer spent all of Game 5 with that look on his face. That’s when he didn’t have both hands wrapped around his throat.
It’s de rigueur these days to let your players play as the clock winds down, and maybe catch a defense a little scrambled. But not when your team has spent the last minutes of regulation in two games — and overtime in this one — throwing the ball around like it was on a detonator, and your star player is terrified of having it because he can’t throw it in Lake Michigan from the free throw line. The Bucks blew two huge leads in the fourth quarter of the last two games to a team they’re supposed to have completely outgunned. This is not a team that can be trusted to run on autopilot with the shot clock turned off.
No wonder their season ended with the ball in the hands of a dimwit like Grayson Allen as he Euro-stepped to nowhere, which also happens to be my favorite Ozzy song.
A screenshot I took of the “Eurostep to nowhere” showing red-outlined time expired before Grayson ever got shot off.
The Bucks can point to the banner in the rafters as proof of what they can be, but it’s a real wonder how they ever got it. Budenholzer watched along with the rest of us as Bam Adebayo was allowed to direct the offense whatever way he wanted as Brook Lopez sagged somewhere near Fon Du Lac. It happened over and over with no adjustment.
When the Bucks got the ball there didn’t appear to be any plan or anything they could call on to get a good shot. They just hoped, the play-calling consisted of, “I don’t fucking want it.” They were waiting for someone else to conjure something. They panicked. The wilted. They choked.
I don’t think they choked. I think Budenholzer got out-coached by an all-time great and I think Jimmy Butler Happened.
Having gone the route just two years ago, the Bucks should still be chock full of the confidence and swagger that comes with knowing you’d done it before and you know what it takes. The Bucks spent the past two games choking on their own boogers. They were frantic, unorganized, and weak, and their coach stood and watched. All summer we’ll hear jokes about the three timeouts he held onto that he can marvel at over the summer. He may get to do so while updating his résumé.
Yes.
