By Rohit Naimpally
This is one in a series of guides that will hopefully be helpful in demonstrating how to use Cleaning the Glass data to analyze players and teams. Whenever a specific stat is referenced, a video will demonstrate how to locate and parse out that number on cleaningtheglass.com/stats. Unless specified otherwise, all data is from Cleaning the Glass, and all stats were current through the end of the 2020-21 regular season.
Despite finishing with the best regular season record in both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons, the Milwaukee Bucks came up short in the playoffs. They finally got over the hump and after defeating Miami, Brooklyn, and Atlanta en route to the NBA finals, came back from 0-2 down to beat the Phoenix Suns for the 2020-21 NBA title.
The Bucks did this despite facing some offensive struggles in the playoffs. Milwaukee scored 114.5 points per 100 possessions in the 2021 playoffs, three points below their regular season output and worse than nine other playoff teams.
Fueled by Giannis Antetokounmpo’s poor free throw shooting, Milwaukee had one of the worst free throw rates (i.e. free throws made per 100 field goal attempts) amongst teams in the 2021 playoffs.
Beyond Giannis, the Bucks also went cold from beyond the arc. The Bucks made nearly 39% of their threes in the regular season, the sixth best mark in the league. That number plummeted to 33% in the playoffs; only three play-in teams (the Lakers, the Wizards, and the Hornets) shot worse.
What helped carry Milwaukee to the NBA title was robust team defense. The Bucks were a top ten defense in the regular season, allowing 112 points per 100 possessions. They got even stingier in the playoffs, allowing just 108.8 points per 100 possessions, best amongst all non play-in playoff teams.
The Bucks restricted opponent scoring in a number of basic ways. They kept fouling to a minimum; not including two play-in teams in Charlotte and San Antonio, the Bucks had the lowest opponent free throw rate amongst playoff teams. Much as their own poor free throw rate hurt them on offense, Milwaukee’s defensive free throw rate helped minimize the number of cheap points their opponents could pick up.
Milwaukee was also one of the top teams in the playoffs at cleaning the glass and restricting opponent offensive rebounds and second chance opportunities.
By strategically shrinking the floor, the Bucks were successful in either forcing opponent turnovers…
…or allowing their defenders to recover and put in a good contest.
P.J. Tucker aside, all of Milwaukee’s major rotation players maintained low foul rates (typically in the 80th percentile or better) throughout the playoffs. Even Tucker’s poor numbers may have been a product of him having had to guard Kevin Durant for seven games.
Defensive impact can be hard to measure, but what numbers we do have indicate that Milwaukee’s defense allowed them to weather an offense that occasionally got stuck in the mud. For the Bucks, there was certainly something to the old saying that defense wins championships.
Rohit Naimpally is the Innovation Team Lead at The People Lab, where he works on research to strengthen the public sector and the communities it serves. You can find his basketball writing at From The Logo, and can follow him on Twitter @rohitnaimpally.