Rivers reveals glaring defensive breakdowns.
The Milwaukee Bucks are falling apart at the worst time, and head coach Doc Rivers knows exactly why.
After yet another blowout loss, Rivers was blunt about what he is seeing from his team on the defensive end, and the picture he painted was not pretty.
"We don't force turnovers. We give up a ton of threes and we give up threes when the ball doesn't get to the paint. That's a concern and that should never happen," Rivers said.
It is one thing for an opposing team to earn good shots through ball movement, but when a defense is giving up wide-open looks from deep without the offense even needing to break them down inside first, that is a sign of a much bigger problem.
The Bucks sit at 26-35 on the season, which puts them 11th in the Eastern Conference and outside the play-in picture entirely, and they are currently riding a four-game losing streak where they have been outscored by a combined 97 points.
The Return of Giannis Has Not Changed Anything
Milwaukee got Giannis Antetokounmpo back from a 15-game absence due to a right calf strain, and most fans expected his presence to steady the ship immediately.
That has not been the case at all.
In his first game back on March 3, the Bucks were destroyed 108-81 by the Boston Celtics, a team that was missing both Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown.
Two days later against the Atlanta Hawks, Antetokounmpo put up 24 points on 10-of-15 shooting, and the Bucks still lost 131-113 as the Hawks poured in 20 three-pointers and shot 54.3 percent from the field.
Antetokounmpo is averaging 27.6 points, 9.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game this season, but even with numbers like that, the defense around him has been too broken for one player to fix on his own.
His frustration boiled over late in the Hawks loss when he fired the ball against the stanchion after a basket by Dyson Daniels and picked up a technical foul.
Rivers downplayed the moment, saying he would rather see his players show emotion than have none at all, but the frustration is clearly building inside the locker room.
A Defense That Keeps Getting Worse
The numbers back up everything Rivers is saying.
Milwaukee holds a defensive rating of 116.5 on the season, which ranks 18th in the NBA, and it has looked even worse during this losing streak as opponents are shooting the lights out from deep with very little resistance.
Doc Rivers has admitted that the team has changed its defensive scheme five times this season, which tells you just how lost they have been trying to find something that works.
The lack of forced turnovers has been a season-long issue, and teams are getting clean looks from three without even having to attack the paint first, which is the exact thing Rivers says should never happen.
Kevin Porter Jr. has been one of the few bright spots this year, averaging 17.7 points and a career-high 7.7 assists per game, but he is now dealing with right knee swelling that kept him out of the Hawks game and could sideline him further.
Without Porter's ball pressure and playmaking, the Bucks lose one of their only guards who can consistently disrupt opposing offenses and create for teammates.
Bobby Portis called the team's recent eight-of-ten stretch before this losing streak "fool's gold" because most of those wins came against teams that were tanking, and now that they are facing squads fighting for playoff positioning, the Bucks cannot keep up.
Milwaukee hosts the Utah Jazz tonight, and while the Jazz are one of the league's worst teams at 19-44, even a win would only serve as a temporary bandage on much deeper issues in Milwaukee.
With 21 games left and five games separating them from the 10th seed, the Bucks are running out of time to figure things out, and Doc Rivers knows it better than anyone.