What can the Bucks' crunch-time performance tell us about their playoff outlook?

Much scrutiny of the Milwaukee Bucks the past two-plus years has focused on their shortcomings in crunch time, particularly at the offensive end.

Skeptics have wondered if the team has a true "closer." They've wondered whether Giannis Antetokounmpo can be that guy, given his inability to punish half-court defenses with off-the-dribble jump shooting, or whether Khris Middleton is good enough to successfully occupy that role in the latter stages of the playoffs. The Bucks' offseason acquisition of Jrue Holiday was at least partly intended to address those questions. On top of Holiday's obvious defensive acumen, throwing another high-level creator into the mix figured to give Milwaukee a lot more late-game stability.

There have also been questions about whether Brook Lopez, for all his rim-protecting prowess, can stay on the floor in closing time against elite perimeter-oriented offenses, and if not, who can capably replace him in the closing five. The Bucks have toyed more with having Antetokounmpo close games at center as this season has progressed, and their midseason trade for the ultra-switchable P.J. Tucker gave them another option to slot into those lineups, which present a stylistic alternative to the drop scheme Milwaukee typically plays with Lopez on the floor.

And yet, there's a nagging sense that something isn't fully clicking. While the Bucks own the second-best net rating in the league at plus-6.5 and are one of just three teams that rank in the top 10 on both sides of the ball, their 38-23 record looks unimpressive relative to other contenders. One way to read that would be to say they're dramatically better than their record indicates and have simply gotten unlucky in close games. Another would be to say that despite their evident ability to pull away from teams early, they have a tendency to trip over their own feet when things get tight down the stretch.

Milwaukee is 8-8 in games that finish with a margin of two possessions or fewer, and 10-14 in games that involve "clutch" time (under five minutes to play, score within five points), with a 107.4 offensive rating in those scenarios that ranks 17th in the league. Clutch-time results are invariably erratic because they reflect a tiny slice of gameplay, but those scenarios can also be revealing in regards to process. In the final possessions of close games, both teams tend to lay all their cards on the table - which means putting their best five players on the floor, running plays solely for their lead scorers, and scrapping their base defensive schemes if necessary.

So, what can we glean from the Bucks' late-game process this season?

First off, despite being blah overall, they have a plus-17.1 net rating with Antetokounmpo on the floor in clutch time. Also, his usage rate in those scenarios is down to 25.6%, compared to 42.3% last year. He's being asked to initiate far less frequently from up top and is getting way more reps as the screener in pick-and-roll. Moving him off the top of the floor takes away the defense's option of simply walling him off at the nail, and gives him more opportunities to get the ball on the move. And with Middleton and Holiday both plenty capable of rising and firing behind his screens, it's dicier for opponents to defend Antetokounmpo with a gap.

Holiday has taken on the majority of Antetokounmpo's redistributed on-ball possessions, and he's shown an ability to do a bit of everything. He can punish drop coverages from deep (his 39.1% mark on pull-up threes is a career best) and from floater range (48.9%). He can also go one-on-one and chisel his way to the hoop against opposing guards. Middleton, one of the game's best multi-level scorers, has become the de facto closer, leading the team in clutch usage even though his share of individual possessions is actually down from last year's.

It's a mutually complementary trio, with all three able to score in isolation and work either end of the pick-and-roll. Their most effective go-to in the clutch has been Antetokounmpo screening for one of Middleton or Holiday, with the third guy either spotting up or cutting from the slot or the corner. Sometimes he'll screen for both of them on the same play, flowing from a Middleton-run pick-and-roll directly into a dribble-handoff for Holiday:

This should be a fearsome three-pronged attack. So why do the Bucks have a 105.7 offensive rating (about equivalent to that of the 28th-ranked Cavaliers) with all three of them on the floor in fourth quarters?

One explanation is that the players around them haven't pulled their weight. With Lopez's post game falling by the wayside and Donte DiVincenzo struggling on just about everything outside of spot-up threes, Milwaukee typically plays two non-threatening creators alongside the trio. That can result in the Bucks stalling out after their initial action gets contained, without enough second-side playmaking to consistently keep the gears churning.

But a bigger issue is that Middleton has struggled in clutch time, in terms of both shooting and protecting the basketball. Antetokounmpo and Holiday, by contrast, have been outstanding, but that's probably related to their lighter loads, so it's unclear if shifting more of Middleton's possessions to them is the answer.

Though Middleton's handle under pressure is definitely a concern, there's little reason to think his shooting won't stabilize. He's still probably the team's best overall shot creator against a set defense, so the best version of the Bucks likely involves him leading the charge in the clutch. He just needs to be better.

If the Bucks get especially desperate for scoring, they can theoretically insert a more offense-oriented player into their closing lineup, be it 3-point flamethrower Bryn Forbes or inside-out masher Bobby Portis. But that would also mean introducing a defensive liability into the mix, and it's something coach Mike Budenholzer has largely declined to try so far. Even if he wanted to, there isn't much time to get high-leverage reps in before the playoffs to see if it can work.

The defensive end hasn't been quite as big a problem for the Bucks in crunch time, but they still have a tendency to make untimely gaffes. They've been working all season to introduce more schematic variability, with mixed results.

Despite the tweaks around the edges, Milwaukee's defensive identity still rests on protecting the paint and gang rebounding at all costs, and its perimeter players can get caught up over-helping and conceding 3-point looks to knock-down shooters. That happened repeatedly in their fall-from-ahead loss to the Hawks last week, in which they surrendered 41 points in the fourth quarter.

Middleton was an unlikely culprit, turning his back on the scorching-hot Bogdan Bogdanovic in order to squeeze in and needlessly provide cover for Middleton on Solomon Hill in the post:

Being too attached to their core tenets has long been an issue for Budenholzer's Bucks, and that was an instance in which the specific situation needed to take priority over big-picture principles.

Meanwhile, attempts to deploy Lopez in non-drop coverages late in games, particularly as a switch defender, continue to go poorly. Against the Rockets on Thursday (a game in which Antetokounmpo was unavailable after the first minute), Kevin Porter Jr. repeatedly toasted Lopez on switches down the stretch, en route to 50 points.

While the Bucks' starters have been very good overall this season, that group has been comfortably outscored in the fourth quarter, their defensive rating ballooning to 116.5. Whether because of fatigue or because opponents are more zeroed in on him, Lopez's late-game struggles have been evident, and he's begun to see the bench more often in crunch time.

Downsizing is not a panacea, but it certainly makes the Bucks more switchable. And that makes defending multi-screen sets - which tend to give them problems in their base scheme - a little easier. Watch how effectively they blow up this Hornets' Spain action with their seamless switching:

The four-man combo of Antetokounmpo, Holiday, Middleton, and DiVincenzo has thrived this season almost no matter who the fifth participant has been. The Bucks have a handful of options for replacing Lopez if it comes to that, but they've almost exclusively used Pat Connaughton in closing units. And with good reason! That lineup has outscored opponents by 40 points across 38 minutes.

The core quartet hasn't gotten much run with Tucker, who missed a bunch of time with a calf strain, but that lineup has defended extremely well in its limited sample. On the whole, lineups with Giannis at the 5 (for the purposes of this exercise we'll consider Tucker a 4 in those groups) have a 14.3 net rating and 100.5 defensive rating in 92 minutes, with the bulk of those minutes coming in fourth quarters.

So, the overall struggles aren't a cause for panic. The reality is, clutch performance proves to be an outlier far more often than it proves predictive. Jimmy Butler, to use but one example, was statistically one of the worst clutch-time players in basketball last regular season. Then, as the Bucks know all too well, he morphed into a ruthless closer for the entirety of the playoffs. There are encouraging signs for Milwaukee from a process perspective, which should take precedence over the results.

But try as one might, it's hard to fully separate the team's present from its past. Though the team looks different this year, most of the key figures are the same, from Antetokounmpo and Middleton on the court to Budenholzer on the sidelines. Milwaukee went a combined 3-7 in "clutch" games over the last two postseasons, getting outscored by 10.4 points per 100 possessions in crunch time in 2019 and 23.6 points per 100 in 2020.

Again, those were tiny samples (29 minutes and 18 minutes, respectively), so they don't necessarily portend more of the same. But postseason fortunes are made and broken in small samples, and the fact that late-game execution is a bugaboo that continues to haunt the Bucks, in spite of their personnel and schematic changes, has to be at least a little troubling.

As formidable as they look on paper, would you trust them right now to pull out a must-win playoff game in the clutch?

Joe Wolfond is a feature writer for theScore.