Pacers caught Bucks out of position and ran away with Game 2

MILWAUKEE — It all happened so quickly.

With 11 minutes 17 seconds remaining in Tuesday’s Game 2 matchup against the Indiana Pacers, Pat Connaughton hit a free throw to cut the Milwaukee Bucks’ deficit to four points. A little more than five minutes later, the Bucks watched as Pacers point guard Tyrese Haliburton grabbed an offensive rebound and made a 3-pointer to give his team a 23-point lead.

There was still 5:55 remaining, but Haliburton’s 3 capped a 23-4 run from the Pacers that served as a fitting exclamation point to their response to Milwaukee’s Game 1 victory. After watching the Bucks comfortably take the first game of the series without two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Pacers evened the series with a 125-108 victory in Game 2 on Tuesday.

The Pacers won in precisely the manner the Bucks feared they might be able to before the series began.

“I thought it was more our offense versus their defense than the other way,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said Tuesday night. “They got out on breaks because of our offense. I thought their pressure took us out of sets. I thought we struggled execution-wise on the offensive end, and I thought that bled over to the defensive end.”

Since taking over as head coach in late January, Rivers has not been shy about publicly discussing his team’s strengths and weaknesses. Rivers has been frank about having an older team that is not especially athletic and honest that his team would much prefer fighting in the mud over getting in a track meet with a young team.

With that in mind, Rivers spent much of the week of practice leading up to his team’s first-round matchup against the Pacers preaching the importance of “shot discipline” to his players.

“Our shots have to be the right shots,” he said last week, after the Bucks’ first playoff practice.

Rivers went on to explain that the Bucks needed to have the right players take the right shots at the right time if they wanted to beat the Pacers. That meant the Bucks needed to play through the Pacers’ physicality and put their players in the correct spots on the floor. That didn’t mean simply getting Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton shots in their favorite locations, but also putting the rest of the team in the correct positions to get back on defense.

Without Antetokounmpo, their athletic 7-footer who erases tactical mistakes and physical missteps, the Bucks were going to need to control the circumstances of the game as much as possible. While they did that in Game 1 and parts of Game 2, the Bucks lost their discipline in the fourth quarter.

As the Pacers turned up their intensity on defense with a full-court press to start the fourth, the Bucks looked for ways to counter that pressure. For Lillard, who carried the Bucks again offensively with 34 points and five assists, that meant making moves to break down T.J. McConnell in transition and get all the way to the rim.

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Lillard could not finish at the rim, and the Bucks were out of position in transition:

With his momentum carrying him past the baseline, Lillard was the farthest player away from the Pacers’ basket. Patrick Beverley and Middleton were stuck in the corners when Lillard missed, giving the Pacers a head start to run the other way. Brook Lopez, the Bucks’ only true rim deterrent on the roster with Antetokounmpo on the sidelines, was still working to get to his spot on the floor on offense, and he started the Pacers’ transition possession at the free-throw line instead of beyond the 3-point line. Ultimately, the Pacers got an easy look at the rim as Jae Crowder tried to defend the fast break by himself.

Two possessions later, the Bucks tried to work the ball to Lopez in the post. That backfired as the Bucks lost their floor balance once again.

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With Lopez unable to finish his acrobatic attempt, the Bucks’ rim protector, and slowest player, was farther away from the Pacers’ hoop than all nine other players on the floor. Beverley and Middleton were again stuck in the corners and Crowder and Lillard were left to defend alone in transition:

The Pacers didn’t score immediately, but the 3-on-2 disadvantage to start the possession allowed Pascal Siakam (37 points, six assists) to get deep post position and catch the ball with two feet in the paint, which led to an easy score. The Pacers’ lead had ballooned to double digits.

Getting into the paint and trying to finish at the rim is not a bad thing. With Antetokounmpo sidelined, the Bucks need to find ways to touch the paint. But not finishing at the rim puts the Bucks in awful defensive positions.

“Those were not great,” Rivers said of the Bucks’ misses at the rim at the start of the fourth quarter. “I mean, they have to be good shots. If you’re twisting and turning, we should move the ball.

“I can’t wait to watch the tape, because I just thought there were times we could have moved the ball better, but there were times that their pressure got to us and we have to do a better job there.”

As The Athletic’s analytics guru Seth Partnow often reminds people on X, missed layups lead to transition buckets far more often than missed 3s, and that problem was exacerbated in this matchup. The Bucks don’t have the speed to contain the Pacers when the conditions are even. They definitely don’t have it when the Pacers have an advantage.

And while the misses during the fourth-quarter 23-4 run stand out most, the floor-balance and shot-discipline issues were evident throughout the second half.

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This wasn’t a bad shot by Bobby Portis. He did a great job to fake a dribble handoff and get to the rim, but when the Bucks missed close looks around the rim, the Pacers made them pay.

“They picked up the pressure,” Lillard said. “They started to face-guard and deny a little bit harder. And I just think we weren’t as organized as we needed to be when they defended that way.

“Against a team like this who wants to get the ball out and run, get up and get quick shots up, they play at a extremely high pace, I just thought the areas that we struggled in offensively really hurt our defense and allowed them to just get out and play the way that they’re comfortable and the way that they want to play. And I think it showed when they just jumped out and took that lead.”

Before Tuesday’s game, Rivers told reporters that Antetokounmpo got shots up on Tuesday and he “was on the floor a bunch, so he’s getting closer,” but that doesn’t mean Antetokounmpo will be ready to play on Friday. If Antetokounmpo cannot play, the Bucks will have to bring the focus they brought to Game 1, when they took the right shots and played at their own pace.

Winning in the playoffs is difficult. It’s even more difficult when the two-time MVP is on the sidelines. If the Bucks want to take Game 3, they will need to play with a renewed focus on taking the right shots and an increased intensity to match the physicality and pace Indiana brought to Game 2.

“It’s 1-1,” Rivers said after the game. “We’d love to be (up) 2-0, but it’s 1-1, so we go to Indiana and go win a game, or two.”

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(Photo of Pascal Siakam: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)