The results have yet to match the potential in Milwaukee. Did the Bucks make a mistake? Plus, free throw conspiracies, the most likely first-round playoff matchups, and more.
Each Thursday of the NBA season, we’re analyzing a grab bag of topics from around the league. This week, we’re diving deep into the Doc Rivers–led Milwaukee Bucks, examining the Los Angeles Lakers’ massive free throw disparity, calculating the likeliest matchups in the first round of the NBA playoffs, and more. This is the Kram Session.
Under Review: Are We Sure Doc Rivers Has Transformed the Bucks?
Let’s play a game. I’m going to share some overarching statistics about two different NBA teams, and you’re going to decide which is better and more likely to win the championship.
Team A has a higher winning percentage, entirely because of a better record in close games. Team B has a slightly better defense, but Team A has a better offense. Both teams appear to play to the level of their competition—they’re only OK against mediocre and bad teams, but they turn it on against top-tier opponents.
Which is better? Maybe you’ll pick Team A because it’s better in the clutch, so it wins more games; maybe you prefer Team B because it’s a bit more balanced. But the answer, at the very least, is a close call.
And now it’s time for the grand reveal: Team A is the Milwaukee Bucks before Doc Rivers’s first game as their new head coach, at the end of January. Team B is the Bucks with Doc on the bench.
Despite several false starts and early evidence that Milwaukee’s new coach had fixed the team’s problems—which happened to coincide with an easy stretch of the schedule—the Bucks are right back where they started when Rivers replaced first-time head coach Adrian Griffin midway through the season. The Bucks are still plagued by the same inconsistencies that cost Griffin his job. Sometimes, they blow out the Thunder and hold one of the league’s best teams to 93 points; other times, they blow a late lead to a Lakers team missing LeBron James (as they did twice in March).
To be fair, some positive changes have emerged from Rivers’s presence on the bench. Before Doc took over, the Bucks defense ranked 22nd in fast-break points allowed (per NBA Advanced Stats) and 29th in transition frequency (per Cleaning the Glass). Since Doc took over, they’ve improved to fourth in fast-break points allowed and fifth in transition frequency. Milwaukee’s players have talked about how Rivers’s relationships and schemes contribute to a more cohesive unit on both ends of the floor.
But professionalism only goes so far when the personnel isn’t up to the task, and the Bucks still have the same major problem they’ve faced all season: a lack of perimeter stoppers (with Jrue Holiday gone) who can complement Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez in the frontcourt. One only needs to watch how D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves torched the Bucks for a combined 58 points on Tuesday to see Milwaukee’s persistent perimeter weakness in effect.
While the Bucks have improved in transition, their half-court defense hasn’t followed suit. Milwaukee ranked 20th in half-court defensive rating before Rivers’s first game with the team, per CtG, and is 18th since. None of the teams with a worse half-court defense than the Bucks this season are true Finals candidates.
Title contenders in the NBA generally fall into one of two statistical categories: A team can compete with balance, by ranking in the top 10 on both offense and defense, or it can compensate for merely average performance on one side with a best-in-the-league showing on the other. In other words, ranking near the middle of the pack defensively, as the Bucs have with Rivers, would be OK if the Bucks were scoring as efficiently as a team with Giannis and Damian Lillard should—but they aren’t even a top-10 offensive team with Rivers on the bench, let alone top two or three.
Maybe Milwaukee’s offense will improve as the regular season winds to a close and the playoffs begin. The team will likely land the no. 2 seed in the East, after all. Lillard’s 3-point percentage has perked up since the All-Star break, Khris Middleton has looked reasonably strong in four games since he returned from injury, and rotations shorten in the playoffs, which should benefit Milwaukee’s top-heavy roster.
Interpreting lineup data is tricky, but when Lillard, Middleton, Antetokounmpo, and Lopez share the court, the Bucks are outscoring their opponents by 15.5 points per 100 possessions—the best net rating for any four-man unit with at least 500 minutes. Another Bucks quartet, with fifth starter Malik Beasley joining Lillard, Middleton, and Giannis, has the second-best net rating. (The top 11 four-man units by net rating all belong to the Bucks, Celtics, or Nuggets.)
But at some point, results must match potential, and the Bucks have yet to put together the sort of sustained run that would suggest they’re a legitimate threat to unseat the Celtics atop the East. Milwaukee’s underlying numbers don’t look much better—if anything, they might even look worse—since Rivers arrived, and the surface stats are even less encouraging.
The Bucks are only 14-12 with Rivers on the bench, which converts to a 44-win pace over 82 games. That’s the winning percentage of a team that hopes to advance out of the play-in round and give a better team a tough first-round series, not an all-in Finals contender with four All-Stars on the roster, including two of the best players in the sport.
Take That for Data: No, the Lakers’ Massive Free Throw Advantage Isn’t a Conspiracy
Another free throw conspiracy is afoot. Social media is abuzz with data points about the Lakers, who have attempted 451 more free throws than their opponents this season—more than double the next-biggest margin and on pace for a plus-507 margin by the season’s end. This comes after L.A. led the league with a plus-476 margin last season.
But is that sort of advantage actually unusual? We can investigate by examining the Lakers’ placement not only next to their peers this season, but also next to high free throw teams throughout history.
Let’s start with a quiz: Reader, do you have any guesses for the team with the largest free throw disparity this century? Maybe these Lakers or another roster with LeBron? Perhaps a James Harden team? Maybe one with Shaq and Kobe?
All those reasonable-sounding possibilities are wrong—the average NBA fan could get 100 guesses and still not stumble upon the right answer. The free throw disparity kings of the 21st century are the 2017-18 Charlotte Hornets, who went 36-46 despite attempting a whopping 722 more free throws than their opponents. It’s hard to imagine that the league office concocted a conspiracy to help those Hornets, whose leading free throw takers were Kemba Walker, Dwight Howard, Jeremy Lamb, Frank Kaminsky, and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist. Clearly, there’s more to a large free throw disparity than player reputation or the whims of referees.
On a percentage basis, those Hornets attempted 48 percent more free throws than their opponents. For comparison, the 2022-23 Lakers were at plus-28 percent (which ranks 15th this century), and the 2023-24 Lakers are at plus-34 percent (which ranks ninth this century) with 10 games to go.
Note a few key takeaways from this chart. First, the 2023-24 Lakers are an outlier this season, but not compared to recent history. Second, rather than the result of some secret, league-aided scheme, it’s far more likely that large free throw disparities are the result of a few key figures, such as Howard, who was a member of three of the top five teams on this chart. That relationship makes sense because Howard both drew a lot of fouls and walled off the rim on the other end, limiting opponents’ free throws. Teams led by Harden and Tim Duncan also make multiple appearances on this chart.
And third, an extreme advantage in free throw attempts doesn’t actually lead to extreme winning. Of the top 15 teams this century in free throw disparity by percentage (not counting this season’s Lakers), the average regular-season record was only 49-33, and only one of those teams reached the Finals (Allen Iverson’s 2000-01 76ers).
Beyond a pernicious plot, moreover, there is ample reason to believe this Lakers team should draw many more fouls than it commits. On offense, the Lakers rank 29th in 3-point attempt rate, per CtG, and are tied for second in the rate of shots they attempt at the rim. (The team with the highest at-rim frequency is Orlando, which leads the league in free throw rate.) In other words, L.A. takes a larger proportion of its shots in the area most likely to draw foul calls.
And on defense, the opposite is true: The Lakers allow the fourth-lowest frequency of shots at the rim and the fifth-highest frequency of 3-pointers, meaning they funnel opposing teams into the sorts of shots that don’t draw fouls. Teams with similar defensive shot charts include the Celtics, who rank second in lowest opponent free throw rate, and the Heat, who rank fourth.
Put another way, the Lakers have taken 435 more free throws than their opponents this season—but they’ve taken 513 fewer 3-pointers (ahead of only the Bulls’ minus-535 margin). Given that not even 1 percent of 3-point attempts produce foul calls, that’s a gigantic number of extra shots on which the Lakers can draw contact.
Does the starry presence of LeBron and Anthony Davis play a role in the Lakers’ charity stripe advantage? Almost certainly, because stars have always drawn extra fouls. But that’s no reason to believe in a conspiracy; there are plenty of contextual factors that explain their overwhelming free throw figures and why that skew isn’t leading to more regular-season success.
Zacht of the Week: The Likeliest First-Round Playoff Matchups
Earlier this week, five of my Ringer colleagues picked their “dream first-round matchups” for this postseason. I would be entertained by all of their selections: a battle of youth versus experience in Thunder-Lakers; a Bucks-Heat rematch; a Pelicans-Clippers clash; and superstar showdowns in Nuggets-Mavericks or Timberwolves-Mavericks.
But how likely is each possibility? The answer, unfortunately, is not very. According to our NBA Odds Machine, only one specific possible first-round playoff series has more than a 50 percent chance of occurring. With just over two weeks left in the regular season, the playoff standings are still knotty just about everywhere except the top two seeds in the East; add in the complications of the play-in structure—which adds no. 9 and no. 10 seeds such as the Bulls and Warriors to the mix—and the permutations grow even more vast.
Here is every possible first-round series in the Western Conference with at least a 10 percent likelihood, as of Thursday morning:
The 6-seeded Mavericks, for instance, have a decent chance of facing the Clippers, Nuggets, Timberwolves, Thunder, or Pelicans—it’s impossible to predict with any certainty which opponent might have to try to slow down Luka Doncic in a playoff setting. Fortunately, all of those options sound exciting; that’s what happens when every one of a conference’s potential playoff teams carries intrigue and stardom.
Here’s the same chart for the East, with similarly scattered percentages:
One key takeaway is that there’s a two-thirds chance of a first-round series between the 76ers and either the Celtics or Bucks—a clash of titans if Joel Embiid can make his long-awaited return for the postseason.
Fast Breaks
1. The NBA’s major individual awards are all but sewn up.
Is it just me, or is this the quietest, most peaceful set of awards debates in recent memory? In many cases, it would be a stretch to even call them “debates” this year. FanDuel odds give Nikola Jokic an implied 85 percent probability to win MVP. They give Rudy Gobert an implied 87 percent probability to win Defensive Player of the Year. They give Malik Monk an implied 84 percent probability to win Sixth Man of the Year. And they’re completely off the board for Rookie of the Year because Victor Wembanyama is such a heavy favorite.
Those are the biggest, typically most contentious awards, which have produced plenty of rancor in the past (see: Jokic vs. Embiid, Marcus Smart for DPOY, Ben Simmons vs. Donovan Mitchell for top rookie honors); in contrast, nobody will get up in arms about the Most Improved Player, Clutch Player of the Year, or Coach of the Year races. And while it’s possible to make strong cases this year for alternate candidates for the most prestigious awards—I crafted a Wemby DPOY take in this column last week!—the favorites are so far ahead of the field, in both narratives and Vegas odds, that the public acrimony has been kept to a minimum.
2. Are Boston’s clutch woes overstated?
The Celtics lost another close game on Monday, blowing a big lead in Atlanta to fall to 57-15 on the season. The perception that almost every Celtics loss comes in this fashion isn’t wrong: Out of Boston’s 15 losses this season, 11 have come in “clutch” games, meaning the score was within five points in the last five minutes. That tally includes every loss during the team’s current 20-3 stretch since February 1, and it feeds into larger fears about the Celtics’ potential Achilles’ heel in the postseason.
But strictly by the numbers, Boston has survived just fine in the clutch this season. The Celtics have 11 clutch losses, sure, but they also have 20 clutch wins, and their 65 percent win rate in such games ranks fourth in the league. Moreover, the Celtics’ much-derided clutch offense ranks sixth in efficiency (121.8 points per 100 possessions, very similar to their 122.5 offensive rating overall), and the team ranks fifth in clutch defense, too.
It’s hard to trust Boston’s performance in close games given past playoff failures. But a few uncomfortable losses shouldn’t mask the title favorite’s broader strides.
3. Wild NBA-NCAA crossover takes? This is March.
Let’s end on a March Madness note today, as the Sweet 16 begins in the men’s Division I hoops tournament. Earlier this week, ESPN host Mike Greenberg opined that the top-seeded University of Connecticut—which seeks to become the first repeat champion in the men’s field since Florida won in 2006 and 2007—could conceivably compete for a playoff spot in the NBA’s Eastern Conference.
Perhaps I’m tilting at windmills here, but this sort of argument pops up every time a dominant college team arises, so let’s consider it for the brief duration of a Fast Break.
First, UConn’s best player during its title run last season was big man Adama Sanogo; he spent almost all of this season playing for the Bulls’ G League team, unable to get more than a few token minutes at the NBA level. Second, UConn’s best prospects this year are ace defenders Donovan Clingan and Stephon Castle, who go seventh and eighth, respectively, in Kevin O’Connor’s new mock of the weak 2024 draft. For reference, in a much stronger draft last year, the seventh and eighth picks were Bilal Coulibaly and Jarace Walker, respectively. Could a team led by the equivalent of Coulibaly and Walker possibly contend for a playoff berth? Certainly not.