{"id":106456,"date":"2024-11-11T21:13:11","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T02:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=106456"},"modified":"2024-11-11T21:13:11","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T02:13:11","slug":"bucks-superstar-duo-missing-key-championship-element","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/11\/11\/bucks-superstar-duo-missing-key-championship-element\/","title":{"rendered":"Bucks Superstar Duo Missing Key Championship Element"},"content":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0<\/span>Milwaukee<\/span><\/a>\u00a0Bucks are an unmitigated disaster of a basketball team at this point. Their baffling record of 2-8 puts them second to last in the Eastern Conference.\u00a0<\/span>Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/span><\/a>\u00a0is a child,\u00a0<\/span>Damian Lillard<\/span><\/a>\u00a0should have turned down the trade, and\u00a0<\/span>Doc Rivers<\/span><\/a>\u00a0might be on a ticking clock. What is the biggest problem with the Bucks superstar duo right now? ESPN’s Andscape senior writer David Dennis Jr. has the reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bucks Superstar Duo Missing Key Championship Element<\/h2>\n

The Hole Keeps Getting Deeper, and Deeper, and Deeper<\/h3>\n

The urgent issues infesting the Bucks right now can be attributed to a few things: coaching, injuries, depth, or the lack of chemistry between the Bucks superstar duo. What is perhaps shocking is that despite Milwaukee’s dismal record, both Lillard and Antetokounmpo are putting forth solid performances individually.<\/p>\n

Giannis exploded for 43 points in the 113-107 loss to the\u00a0<\/span>Boston Celtics<\/span><\/a>\u00a0on Sunday. He leads the league in scoring, averaging 31.6 PPG. He’s also shooting above 60% from the field with 12.8 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game. Statically speaking, Giannis is having one of his best seasons. As for Lillard, he’s also averaging solid numbers, with 26.0 points and 6.6 assists per game. He’s had a few rough outings, but for the most part, he’s scoring well.<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the individual statistics for both players, the team has <\/span>been unable<\/span> to find its game, which has resulted in Milwaukee’s worst season start since the 2013-14 season.<\/span> It’s a deep, deep hole the Bucks have dug for themselves. Rivers, though, stresses that\u00a0<\/span>he believes it’s a hole that will be dug out of<\/span><\/a>, eventually.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Well, we just gotta dig ourselves out of this hole that we’re creating; we created it, all of us, me, them, together. I have no doubt we will, but it’s not one night. If we had won tonight, we’re still going to be in the hole. We have to play ourselves out of this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Missing ‘Championship Adjustments’<\/h3>\n

While discussing the Bucks struggles on ESPN’s NBA Today, David Dennis Jr. spoke to one vital element<\/a> missing from Giannis’ and Dame’s partnership.<\/p>\n

“The biggest issue is that in the history of these teams when you have superstars that come together they have to make championship adjustments to go to that next level. Dwayne Wade did it for LeBron [James], LeBron did it with Kyrie [Irving], Steph [Curry] did it with KD [Kevin Durant], and the thing is Giannis and Dame have not made the championship adjustments. There’s no excuse that these guys have no been running the league with the pick and roll offfense. They have not figured out how to do that together…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not all super teams wor<\/span>k, of course. Case in point, more recently, the\u00a0<\/span>Kevin Durant<\/span><\/a>–<\/span>Kyrie Irving<\/span><\/a>–<\/span>James Harden<\/span><\/a>\u00a0mess with the\u00a0<\/span>Brooklyn Nets<\/span><\/a>. However, many others do. As Dennis Jr. alluded to the few superstars in his take, the Antetokounmpo-Lillard\u00a0pairing was supposed to look much more like those partnerships\u2014it has looked far and away from those expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rivers is correct on one thing: The Bucks can dig themselves out of their hole. A rumored trade may assist. Regardless, it’s not a matter of\u00a0<\/span>can<\/span><\/em>\u00a0but of\u00a0<\/span>having<\/span><\/em>\u00a0to. They\u00a0<\/span>have<\/span><\/em>\u00a0to dig themselves out, or this season will be lost.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Milwaukee\u00a0Bucks are an unmitigated disaster of a basketball team at this point. Their baffling record of 2-8 puts them second to last in the Eastern Conference.\u00a0Giannis Antetokounmpo\u00a0is a child,\u00a0Damian Lillard\u00a0should have turned down the trade, and\u00a0Doc Rivers\u00a0might be on a ticking clock. What is the biggest problem with the Bucks superstar duo right now? ESPN’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":106465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,1608,62],"tags":[187,190,2173,306,444,69,406,38,48],"class_list":["post-106456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bucks","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-damian-lillard","tag-doc-rivers","tag-dwayne-wade","tag-giannis-antetokounmpo","tag-james-harden","tag-kevin-durant","tag-kyrie-irving","tag-lebron-james","tag-stephen-curry"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}