For the majority of the 2019-20 National Basketball Association, the Milwaukee Bucks have been the most dominant team in the entire league. Heck, they won 53 of their first 62 games and looked completely unstoppable. However, things have changed over the last three games, as Milwaukee was beaten 113-103 to the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday, 140-131 to the Phoenix Suns on Sunday and then 109-95 to the Denver Nuggets on Monday. Here are five reasons why the Bucks are in a slump.
1) Any Western Conference road trip is tough. There is no doubt that teams from the Eastern Conference find it challenging playing in the West. That has been the case for the Bucks who were outscored 362-329 on their three game trip. However the nine point loss to the Suns was one of the biggest upsets of the season as Phoenix only had a record of 25 wins and 38 losses heading into their home game against the Bucks.
2) Bucks are not the same without Giannis Antetokounmpo–The Bucks were without the Greek Freak in their losses to the Suns and Nuggets due to a knee injury and are clearly weak defensively without him. In the loss to the Suns, the Bucks gave up 77 first half points, while in the game against the Nuggets, the Bucks had 17 turnovers and eight steals compared to 12 turnovers and 11 steals for Denver.
3) Bucks need better defense from Brook Lopez– In the the first two losses of the streak, the Bucks starting center was a -18. Yikes! Lopez was then benched by Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer for their game against the Nuggets on Monday despite being healthy.
4) Bucks need more offense from Ersan Ilyasova–After being benched against the Lakers, Ersan Ilyasova came in as Antetokounmpo’s replacement in the Bucks starting five and was dreadful offensively. He had zero points in zero shooting attempts against the Suns in 15 minutes and then only had two points while coming off the bench in the loss to the Nuggets.
5) Bucks struggling from the free throw line–In all three of the Bucks losses, they were beaten by their opponents from the charity stripe. Milwaukee missed 17 baskets from the free throw line as they only had a free throw percentage as a team of .726. Their opponents meanwhile shot .852 from the free throw line. The Bucks also got into serious foul trouble against the Lakers and Suns, who had a combined 25 more free throw attempts in those two games than Milwaukee had.
