Bucks lose to defending-champ Celtics highlights gap between the two: ‘Our goal is to get there’

BOSTON — No matter what the Milwaukee Bucks did against the Boston Celtics on Monday, they couldn’t change the reality of what had already occurred before they stepped on the floor at TD Garden.

“We played two horrible games and there’s no excuse for that,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said following Monday’s game. “But it happens. I thought we played relatively well (against the Celtics), but we couldn’t sustain it tonight. But I think our guys like where we’re going.”

The Bucks kept the score tight for the first two and a half quarters, but the Celtics pulled away, outscoring Milwaukee 37-26 in the third. The result: A 119-108 Bucks loss, their third consecutive defeat, dropping their record to 1-3.

With their victory, the Celtics proved what was already clear before the game. Now 4-0 on the season, the defending champions are the class of the NBA and the Bucks will need to work to get to where they can attempt to challenge Boston in the postseason.

“They’ve been around for years now and you cannot replace that. You cannot,” Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo said after putting up 30 points, 10 rebounds, six assists but also seven turnovers in Monday’s loss. “You can put the best players together, but just knowing how to play with one another, sacrificing for one another, playing the right way, knowing where your teammates are going to be, knowing who’s going to take over, who has the hot hand — that’s what winning teams do.

“And our goal is to get there. Right now, obviously we’re not there, but I don’t think we are far off. I don’t care about the record. “I just care about keeping on building, keeping on being healthy and getting to where we want to get.”

For the first time since the Bucks’ season opener in Philadelphia, Milwaukee played with a high level of mental focus and physical intensity in the first half. That should happen every night, but it didn’t happen against the Chicago Bulls or the Brooklyn Nets, so it was a welcomed return to the baseline effort expected when the Bucks step on the court. Perhaps it was fair to expect against the NBA’s best team, but it was not guaranteed after the last two games.

Yet while the Bucks brought the effort and intensity needed to compete with the Celtics to start the game, their execution was not at the same level as the defending champions. That showed in the final three minutes of the third quarter where the Bucks made a series of small mistakes the Celtics exploited to eventually build a 15-point lead a little more than 90 seconds into the fourth.

The mistakes, while not massive, showed the significant gulf in execution between the two teams at this point of the 2024-25 campaign.

Following a jumper by Bobby Portis and a technical free throw cashed in by Damian Lillard, the Bucks took an 80-79 lead with 2:42 remaining in the third quarter. It would end up being their last lead of the game as things quickly went south for the Bucks.

As they often do, the Bucks posted up Portis on the left block on their next offensive possession.

While Portis has a size advantage against Jayson Tatum, he was called for a trip — one of his four turnovers in 19 minutes on Monday night — and the Bucks ended up with an empty possession.

“I just thought Bobby got sped up tonight,” Rivers said. “Got into it with somebody and, you know, he has those games every once in a while. I love him because he’s emotional, but there’s nights that can get the better of him.”

On the other end, the Bucks made a mistake that has been far too common this season and Derrick White made them pay.

The Bucks are only 12th in defensive rebounding rate this season as they have grabbed 72.9 percent of available defensive rebounds, per Cleaning The Glass, but it feels much worse than that because of their team-specific context.

With a defense built around protecting the rim and forcing contested shots, the Bucks haven’t focused on forcing turnovers. They were always very low in that category when they were consistently a top-10 defense under Mike Budenholzer, but they were a spectacular defensive rebounding team and that is how they managed to win the possession battle on a nightly basis.

This year’s defense, run by defensive coordinator Greg Buckner, like Budenholzer’s defensive scheme, is not expected to force turnovers. Yet, that means the Bucks need to be an elite rebounding unit and that has not been the case this season. As the numbers show, they’ve been good, but not elite and that will continue to be a problem until it changes.

After White’s 3 on the reload, the Bucks came down to the other end and went to Portis again in the post. This time, he was working against White and he got one of his favorite shots, a turnaround baseline jumper, but missed. Then, the Bucks showed off another one of their bad habits on the defensive end.

The Bucks did what they needed in transition by finding matchups and defending the player in front of them, but their defense was not quite sharp enough in semi-transition. This has been a consistent bugaboo for the Bucks’ as they haven’t been detail-oriented with their rotations when transition possessions turned into half-court possessions. Here, Portis was not high enough on the possession and gave up too much space on the switch with Antetokounmpo, something the Bucks forward admitted after the game.

“I think the biggest thing is coming up with the defensive rebound,” Portis said of how the defense can improve. “I think we kind of cleaned that part up tonight, but the 3s, the extra 3s they hit, just getting up to touch and closing to touch is one thing that we can really lock more in on, I think.”

Following the miscue on White, the Bucks gave up another offensive rebound. And this time, it was Antetokounmpo who missed the box-out on second-year Celtics forward Jordan Walsh.

Antetokounmpo is averaging 11.8 rebounds per game, but he hasn’t been perfect on the glass this season and this was a significant miscue.

All in all, the Bucks likely would not have been in that bad spot heading into the final quarter without one last mistake.

Following the game, Rivers told reporters his team had been prepared for the end-of-period tendencies of Payton Pritchard, who has hit some big shots to finish quarters. Rivers said the team’s scouting report suggested that Pritchard will always look to “break off right” in those situations. That is exactly what the Bucks allowed him to do on his side-step 3 to end the third.

It was the sixth time the Bucks allowed their opponent to score in the final 10 seconds of the first three quarters of a game this season. Through four games, Bucks opponents have scored 50 percent of the time on their final possession. Those buckets can be absolute killers and the Bucks have given them up at an extraordinary rate like this far this season.

In the end, because of their disastrous end to the third quarter, the Bucks were forced to look at the positives from Monday despite dealing with the reality that they have won just one of their first four games of the season.

“I don’t like moral victories, but I just thought that’s what we can be — at least for three quarters,” Rivers said. “I thought we kind of ran out of gas a little bit. “Didn’t get a lot of help tonight from our bench, so we extended minutes.”

The schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Bucks as they finish their road trip against the Memphis Grizzlies on Thursday and then play a home-and-home set with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Still, Antetokounmpo remains positive about where this team can go this season even if that positivity is fostered more out of necessity than true belief.

“You have to. You have no choice. You have to,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s the fourth game of the season. Even if we sucked, even if we were very, very bad, it’s the fourth game of the season, like you have to be optimistic.

“This is the job that we are in, but at the end of the day, we have a great team. “I believe we’re going to keep on playing better, keep on learning from our mistakes, and eventually we’re going to start winning games.”

(Photo: Paul Rutherford / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)