Dame struggling on just a 28-4-15 day! Dropping dimes all over the place. Just picked Allen's pocket too.
Dame would have more assist as a Blazer if his teammates makes shots like Bobby Portis Crowder and Beasley
No, Dame didn't have more assists in Portland because he was selfish and only looked for his shot first.
Wild that Milwaukee has never had a player to do that before, but I guess their glory days were before assists were tracked.
They were tracked during the Big O's entire career. Is their some player that would have put up this kind of line earlier in the Bucks' history?
No that was him, I was just taking a stab at the year. I guess Dell Curry wasn't going to get it done.
Yeah he's one of those guys who you can't tell if they're 20 or 60. Rookie Year 1996 75th Anniversary Team 2021
ESPN just printed a juicy one for Coach Rivers. I'm not about to read 5 pages about the Bucks, but i'll drop the link if anyone else is interested. https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/39760591/the-bucks-unleashed-lillard-giannis-pick-roll
Pretty much what everyone who has the slightest idea of how to play the game has said for the entire year. Not sure what Griffin was thinking? I can totally understand why Stotts left.
How’s it been? Lillard pauses to consider the question. It’s mid-February, days before the All-Star break, and Lillard is sitting behind a high-top table at a hotel in Memphis. How’s it been? It depends on what you are asking about. Personally, says Lillard, “it’s been a real transition.” At 33, this is the first time Lillard, who was acquired from the Trail Blazers in September, has been alone since he left Oakland for college. He built a support system in Portland, one that’s now gone. His three children stayed in Oregon with his ex-wife. Lillard’s downtime in Milwaukee is largely spent with his cousin Jon, rattling around a rented home playing Xbox and on FightHype streaming boxing videos. Professionally it’s been, well, a transition. Lillard’s Bucks tenure can be summed up in stages. The first: shock. Lillard learned about the trade on Instagram, when he scrolled past a photo of him and Antetokounmpo in Bucks uniforms. “I thought it was speculation,” says Lillard. Moments later his agent, Aaron Goodwin, called confirming it. A text from Blazers GM Joe Cronin popped up. “He was telling me he called,” says Lillard. “But I didn’t see it.” Alone, Lillard started dialing family. He called his father. No answer. His mother. Nothing. His brother. Voicemail. He wandered downstairs, where he found his kids’ nanny. Needing to tell someone, Lillard blurted out, “I’ve been traded to Milwaukee.” The next stage: excitement. It didn’t take long for Lillard to embrace the move. When he arrived in Milwaukee for his physical, Antetokounmpo met him in the training room. He asked for five minutes. They talked for an hour. About basketball. About trust. “I was just telling him, ‘Bro, there’s going to be a lot of s--- that probably takes place this season. But you’re never going to have to question where my head is,’ ” says Lillard. “There’s a lot of people with ability. But my biggest strength is mentally. I can be down bad and struggling, but you’re going to always be able to count on me.” Early on, Lillard saw flashes of the potential in their partnership, and it helped that Stotts, Lillard’s coach for his first nine NBA seasons, was there. “I thought it would just start happening,” says Lillard. It didn’t, which led to the next phase: confusion. Sure, there was early success: three straight 30-plus point games in November, a game-winning buzzer beater to beat the Kings in January. But Lillard was searching. For the right role. For the right chemistry with Antetokounmpo. His shooting percentages dipped. For the first time in his career, he was indecisive. “I want to try to be complementary to how he plays,” says Lillard. “But I think the hardest part is just I’ve spent so much time knowing exactly how I was going to do this and do that and where I could get a shot at and when the ball was going to come. I was familiar with everything so I knew how to control it. I knew how to get what I wanted. And I think the biggest challenge here has been I don’t know where that is.” There’s another stage, one Lillard hasn’t reached but believes is coming: vindication. Yes, the Bucks went 3–7 in Rivers’s first 10 games. But Lillard saw signs of progress. Stretches, he says. Of great pick-and-roll offense. Of connected defense. He believes in Rivers’s keep-it-simple approach. After the slow start under Rivers, Milwaukee won six straight, and the Bucks sit in second place as they visit conference-leading Boston Wednesday night. “Tell people what their jobs are,” says Lillard, “and people will usually do them well.” He shrugs off the criticism, mostly because he considers it uninformed. “This year more than anything I’ve learned that people don’t watch games,” says Lillard. “They look at a box score, they look at highlights or they look at what’s being said about games. But we’ve had moments. It is just not enough. People want it all the time, every time, and we have to do it more.” The chemistry with Antetokounmpo is a work in progress. “We talk all the time,” says Lillard. “I’m not a fan of forcing a relationship to just blossom right away. It takes time. You got to go through the process of having a relationship.” Still, Rivers has looked for ways to speed it up. Recently, Lillard and Antetokounmpo flew separately to events in Portland. Rivers asked why they didn’t fly together. “Those are little things that will get them growing,” says Rivers. “They communicate, but they can communicate more. They have to.” Shortly after accepting the job, Rivers gathered five members of the Bucks’ 2020 title team—Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez, Khris Middleton, Pat Connaughton and Bobby Portis—along with Lillard. He urged them to take ownership of the team. Singling out Lillard and Antetokounmpo, he said they had to be dominant. “We have to establish who we are, how we are going to play and then just be us,” says Rivers. “When you play Denver, you know what’s coming. Same thing with Miami. You have to deal with it. That’s how we have to be. That’s how we’re going to win.” In February, following an ugly loss to Memphis, Giannis called for urgency. “Enough with our s--- don’t stink mentality,” he says. “Do we really want it?” And there is urgency. Lillard is 33. Antetokounmpo is 29. Middleton, who has battled injuries the last two years, is 32. Antetokounmpo signed an extension last fall, but—as was the case with Lillard, who signed a max extension with the Blazers 12 months before asking out—contracts do not always mean commitment. Another early playoff exit could have consequences. “I know Dame—what, he came here to lose?” says Antetokounmpo. “He didn’t come here to lose. I believe that guy is one of the baddest motherf---ers out there. When he’s operating, we’re all behind him. We give him that confidence to lead; he is one of the toughest guys in the league. And that’s what we need him to do.” It’s what Lillard wants. He’s had success. Four seasons of 49-plus wins. Eight trips to the playoffs. One to the conference finals. It’s the ring that’s eluded him. The challenges of this season have not discouraged him. They only harden his belief that success will follow. “When stuff like this starts happening, I start thinking there’s a reward coming,” he says. “Because I do s--- the right way. I don’t change. Some things take time. Especially the stuff that’s most rewarding.” https://www.si.com/nba/2024/03/20/milwaukee-bucks-damian-lillard-doc-rivers
Rivers hasn’t complicated Milwaukee’s playbook. Rather, his mantra has been simplify. Simplify the offense, which wasn’t doing enough to feature Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard. The Freak–Dame pick-and-roll was effective; entering the All-Star break the Bucks averaged 1.23 points per pick, third best in the NBA, per Sportsradar. They just didn’t run it enough, ranking 25th in the number of pick-and-roll actions. At the Bucks’ first practice, Rivers ran dozens of pick-and-roll drills for the pair. Since the break the pair has run 6.1 pick actions per game together, up from 4.8 before it. “When they are making plays for each other,” says Rivers, “they are unguardable.”
