The Utah Jazz embarrass the Milwaukee Bucks at home | Bucks lose 132-116

The Utah Jazz embarrass the Milwaukee Bucks at home | Bucks lose 132-116

What it do y’all welcome to another new episode of lock down bucks on today’s show well after the bugs lost to the rack the Rockets Giannis came out and said everybody had to be better first game after he said everybody need to be better and we did not get that type of

Effort an embarrassing first half effort for the Milwaukee Bucks led to a pretty Furious third quarter comeback effort but it fell short bugs lost to the Jazz 132 116 we got to get into it there’s a lot to discuss tonight you are locked on bucks your daily Milwaukee Bucks podcast part of the

Locked on podcast Network your team every day you are locked on bucks part of the locked on podcast Network your team every day I’m Camille Davis you can catch me weekly on the technical file podcast as well as cheese head TVs carry the G and MK joining me longtime voice

Of the Pod and founder of Brew hoop. Frank Madden we appreciate you for tuning in and thank you for making lock on bucks your first listen every single day we are free and available whever you get your podcast as well as on YouTube so if you’re on YouTube please subscribe

Hit the notification Bell when we go live we definitely appreciate that as well today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel make every moment more right now new customers get $150 in bonus Bets with any winning $5 money line bet that’s 150 bucks if your team wins so

The fanduel.com lockon to get started as I mentioned in the open Frank arguably this is the worst first half of Bucks basketball that we’ve seen all season like the bugs had a strong third quarter for sure but that first half in itself it it was it was it was confounding it

Was frustrating the boob Birds came out in Milwaukee and to my point Giannis just recently said after the Rockets game we need to be better we need to play with more pride and I actually have the quote um that he discussed after the game with Eric name our friend at the

Athletic and he mentioned that problem with the bugs defense pride pride pride pride we got to take it personal like we have to take it personal whoever wants to play hard plays hard whoever doesn’t want to play hard it’s got to be a decision that’s got to be made even

Myself too if I don’t play hard sit me out sit me on the bench there’s times I’m tired and I don’t play as hard and I as I can and there’s times even when I give everything I have but we have to have a m ality of where whenever we step

On the floor to get stops and again was not the case in the first half against the jazz tonight yeah I mean giannis’s heartt may be in the right place but unfortunately you cannot speak defense into existance and um you know I think in past years

The Bucks had the foundation of a great defense year in and year out you know certainly um since Mike buer had arrived obviously that was kind of the core of what they did and you know they had years years where they weren’t as good defensively right they had a couple

Years before last season where they weren’t as good one of those years obviously was with Brook Lopez missing most of the season but they were I think what 14th or something like that defensive rating with you know Giannis starting next to Bobby poris all year

Long so um you know I think Giannis and pretty much all the guys that have been there Brooke Chris Pat and yes Bobby um you know those guys are used to just sort of like well if we just play our style that we will get stops you know

There’s going to be nights where teams shoot the lights out and unfortunately this was one of those nights when you know the buck it’s been been quite a long time since the Bucks had an opponent actually make a bunch of Threes right they’ve been super lucky over the

Past month and a half and we saw tonight what happens when you’re not lucky and again I think you know Adrian Griffin pointed to they weren’t physical enough in some of their switches in the first half um you know I think I don’t know if it was them thinking like hey no Dame

Lillard no campaign those are two of our worst Defenders we’re aut aut atically going to be good defensively tonight right like I was very wary of of all the talk the last few days people saying like oh you know it’s just Personnel what can you do it’s personnel and I

Think the answer is always it’s multiple things right yeah the Bucks Personnel makes things more difficult but we saw tonight I mean do you trust this coaching staff and this group do you trust the this coaching staff has installed something that is going to get the Bucks to a good place defensively do

You trust that these players believe what they’re doing defensively do you trust that these players are going to execute you know when things are are spelled out for them in the way that they should I mean you know it’s just I think a systemic failure probably across

The board to to a large extent and that’s how you get to being as bad defensively as we’ve seen them in this last stretch so um you know when the other team then starts to make shots you know we saw on the second half the upside of that like you know mean

Reversion kicks in and they had a chance to come back and get they got it to single digits um but you know Camille we’re were talking for the podcast and you said well end of the day they lost by 16 points you know you lost by 16 to

The Jazz so you know gold stars whatever you want to do for the second half you played one good quarter and the third quarter was really good but again how much of that also was just the Jazz missing some shots that they were making um in the first half and then they went

Back to making shots in in the fourth quarter so you know it’s a it’s a really bad l and it’s an especially bad loss coming after the last game because everybody starting with Giannis wanted to talk about how important it was to change things and he said Pride we gotta

Have pride it was Pride night in Milwaukee and I mean let’s just say we didn’t see any Pride from Milwaukee Bucks on the floor because it was just you know same crap different day it was embarrassing it was embarrassing and when the fans did Boo this team in the second quarter I was

Like that’s welld deserved because the Milwaukee Bucks fan you can say a lot of things about bugs fans but bugs fans are they are loyal and they want to see a good product and they know like when you’re not giving them that and it’s not often that you hear Milwaukee fans boo

Like generally they’re very supportive but with what the Bucks were putting together in that first half I don’t blame him at all but you saw the flip side of that Milwaukee love right third quarter bucks are playing well the crowd is in the game ferve was rocking and

They’re down 10 like the fans were trying to do everything that they could and the players were too but the reality of it is when you dig such a big hole like the bugs did in that first half it’s really hard to dig out of your margin for error becomes even more

Narrow at that point being down 31 points at half sure like you said a gold star for only losing the game by 16 and you know getting the score down to 10 nine eight in the third quarter going into the fourth a bit there but it was it was embarrassing and you mentioned

The three-point shoot shooting which I do want to point out because the Utah Jazz tend to only make 13 threes a game you mentioned the reversion game coming up they normally make 13 threes a game they made 16 in the first half they were

16 of 30 from three in the first half 30 attempts from three second half you saw them do a bit of a better job at running them off the line they were only able to get up 14 three-point attempts in the second half but it’s just I don’t

Understand at this point in the season when we’ve been having some of the same conversations why it takes until the second half for this team to show some energy yeah and I was really curious to look at what the two-point percentages were because again it’s like there’s

Going be nights where teams just shoot a bunch of three-pointers and you know you can only do kind of so much about it but I mean for starters the Bucs shot a higher percentage from three in this game than the chz they didn’t shoot as

Many threes but the Bucks were 17 of 36 that’s 47% the Jazz ended up 20 of 44 so in the second half whatever they’re uh four or 14 right that’s how you got back into this game they were 45.5% so of course yeah Jazz shot the lights out but

The Bucs they shot even higher percentage right so if you want to like cry about you know the other team just getting lucky shooting threes well bucks got even luckier by by that argument and but if you look at what they did inside the arcum the Bucks I don’t have the

Two-point numbers right in front of me I don’t know if you do Camille but 45% overall so basically the Bucks were dragged down they their overall they shot better from three than two meanwhile the Jazz shot 52% overall I think they were 27 of 46 on twos which

Is just a Skyhigh rate and I was looking at numbers I mean they they shot really well from mid-range uh especially long mid-range but you know overall you took out your two you know really bad guard Defenders and the other team made a bunch of Threes well they also got to

The rim a bunch and made a bunch of other shots and you know even without um any offensive rebounding the second half they had a number of kind of really painful kind of uncontested put backs in the first half but overall the Bucs defensive rebounding numbers actually

Ended up in a very good place and the other thing too that the the transition numbers were an absolute blowout for the bucks in the buck fa so this was really all about half court offense and not just half court offense including like putbacks but this was like all about the

First shot half court offense right because neither team really did much on the offensive class the Jazz 126 points per play first first play in terms of in the half court bucks 87.5 and look without Dame and or or any like normal point guard ball handler of course you’re expecting

The half court offense to be worse and honestly like if you lose this game you know 100 to 89 or something like that and you lose it just because you couldn’t get enough offense and because the Jazz were just loading up on Yannis and you had you know Andre out there

Starting and they’re not respecting him and he doesn’t know what to do with the ball and he’s being you know basically put in a position to score like okay you know like that at least would kind of track and you would say like okay well you know Dame’s going to come back

Hopefully on Thursday against the Celtics and then your offense will go back to the way it was but the offense was actually ended up being okay and they kind of problem solved their way to again a decent offensive night not quite their usual um metrics in terms of

Offensive rating but again the defense just you know no matter who it is no matter who’s out there you know take away all the bad Defenders the Bucks have and they still can’t play 48 minutes of of solid defense and you know we talk about Andre and Chris Livingston

And kind of what they were able to bring for stretches especially in that second half but you know again it’s it’s just this this team just doesn’t defend at a high enough level and you know there’s the micro of like what happened in this game you know whatever like stuff

Happens right Games bad games happen things like that but the real concern is how this reflects the macro problems that the Bucks have and again the fact that there is no Foundation of defense that the players or we as fans observers of this team believe in and you know

Adrian Griffin and coaching staff you think they go go to bed at night feeling like they know what the heck’s going to happen on defense and how they’re going to you know get this team to a better place I’m sure they’re also scratching their heads at this point you know we’re

Almost halfway through the season and there’s been again you talk about trajectory it’s it’s the trajectory in the wrong direction right now it truly is and we’re going to dig deeper into that later on in the show but the thing that really blew my mind you mentioned

Just how bad the bugs defense was at halime I just pulled up the metrics I just wanted to see at halim the Utah Jazz had a 16.4 offensive rating I like I I refreshed the page a couple of times just to say is are my eyes seeing what I

Think that they’re seeing at the moment and and I I couldn’t believe it the bugs finished the game or I should say the Jazz finished the game with a 131.5 offensive rating which is you know down from that crazy 160 rate but still of course not good enough I do want to

Talk a little bit about what the Bucs did do well in the second half if that’s sustainable before we talk a little bit more about Trends and let’s do that coming up next this show is sponsored by help the most common frase you tend to hear at

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Lock on bucks even after the tough losses light tonight a special shout out to all those every dayers who tune in Monday through Friday Friday I got to tell y’all about something else that you might enjoy which is lock on sports today because the lock on network that

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Our national shows that cover every league as well go to lockon sportsday on YouTube and subscribe to the first ever National Sports 247 streaming Channel now Frank I mentioned that the Bucks did do some things a bit differently in the second half I mentioned in the first

Segment we saw them running uh the Jazz off the three-point line a little bit better we saw them limit Second Chance points for the Jazz because as you mentioned they were getting killed on the boards early throughout that first half and tightened up in the second half

When it comes to secondo chances they still lost that battle overall uh 20 to 13 but that was looking like 17 to two after the first half so the bugs did tighten up there but is there anything else that you saw maybe Chris Livingston minutes uh that that might have piqu

Your interest in the second half of what the bugs did differently well first off I mean let’s kind of be at least a little measured with this because I get it I’m I’m sure there’s going to be people saying like you know oh we got to got to get Chris minutes

You know got to find a way to get him minutes every night and you know add him to the list with Andre and and marjon and whatever um look happy for Chris Livingston he responded the way I think you wanted a young guy to respond he worked really hard defensively was able

To get you know some kind of garbage kind of baskets you know around the rim um and again like what more could you have expected from Chris Livingston right I think he did about as much as he could um but you know also in the fourth quarter I think we saw pretty much

Anytime the ball went to Chris or Andre it was a mistake right like like you know they put it on the deck when they shouldn’t have turnovers bad passes missed shots you know again nerves they showed why they’re very limited offensive players and why you know I

Think them carving out niches in the NBA is going to be challenging but at least you know defensively I think we know obviously Andre has I think a high defensive ceiling a couple blocks tonight um had his moments defensively but again he also started and was part

Of the group that got run off the floor in the first half so it’s not like you know Andre Jackson was delivering any solutions defensively right that’s obviously what a lot of us have been hoping for that you know put Andre in the mix and suddenly you know you’ll

You’ll be a much better defensive team it’s it’s unfortunately not that easy and with young you know young guys rookies um there’s always a learning curve and we’ve seen that obviously kind of over the course of of the first few months of of Andre’s career but for

Chris Livingston yeah I mean you know again I think he just played with a high motor um he looked versatile defensively they obviously switched a ton of stuff I think playing bigger um you know we didn’t see very much Malik Beasley in the second half which obviously you can

Question at this point because he was the only guy kind of making shots there probably in those middle quarters and then he kind of disappeared again so again like yeah given that Livingston I think kind of Chris I thing kind of ran out of gas what he played like 14

Straight minutes or something like that in the fourth quarter of course we can say probably would have been good to bring Malik back in at some point but obviously uh Adrian Griffin tried to kind of run with the the guys that were giving them energy and um you know as is

So often the case there’s just sort of limits to that right guys you know a group can bring you back from a deficit but it’s just hard getting over the hump we saw that in Houston we saw that again tonight right like you dig yourself a

31o hole you get it down under 10 multiple times again it’s just just kind of hard to to dig out of it and you know I think the Bobby poris experience and that whole back and forth with oen was interesting right I mean on the one hand

It got the fans really into it but you know Bobby also took you know ended up getting called for a couple fouls that put something to the free throw line and you know he had the ball on a back down I think they were down eight late in the

Fourth third quarter yep there was time on the shot clock so it wasn’t like you know it was the last possession and they could have run out the clock I think there I want to say there were like three or four seconds difference I thought there was not a lot of

Difference between the shot and game clock and he settled for a post shot it was not easy and went pretty early and he misses pretty pretty short short short rims it and Jazz just blow right down the the the floor get I think it was Keon George hit a layup or you know

A short Banker to make it go up to 10 and all of a sudden you know chance to get it down to six going to the fourth quarter set is 10 and then they come back from commercial and it’s oh Bobby bis has gotten a technical and they’re

Shooting a free throw to make it 11 and so it just felt like kind of the double-edged sword of Bobby right he hit a couple buckets on Kelly linic crowd’s going crazy as they’re going back and forth at it but you know Bobby giveth Bobby taketh away um is kind of what

That late third quarter felt like and you know I think it was correct to pull him you know I think he he wasn’t on the floor much longer beyond that and honestly if you’re if you have to play defense and you’re trying to come back from a

Deficit yeah Bobby’s not the guy I want on the floor right I mean unfortunately that’s kind of just a reality and especially on a night where you’re playing these younger kind of big wings siiz guys with Andre and Chris um obviously I think they were just giving

Kind of better energy and um you know and but it’s just such a big hole they dug that um they were going to have to pitch kind of a you know almost perfect game to to get back and win it in the fourth quarter yeah again that margin of

Error is really small when you’re down that big and it felt like down the stretch there where the Bucks would get some stops at the in fourth quarter in particular it felt like the third quarter is where they used up most of the juice and in the fourth quarter you

Started seeing more defensive breakdowns again and I mean at this point the formula to breaking down the bugs defense is you get penetration and you kick out you put the bugs in a scramble position and you force them to try to rotate to the right place because more

Times than not you’re going to be able to get an open look out of that and of course seeing Chris Livingston get career high minute so far this evening was interesting to see I thought we would see some interesting things in this game given the fact that we didn’t

Have Dame we didn’t have Cam so I knew the lineups would get a little wonky at times but the second half just felt to me like Griff was just throwing out guys who he thought in the moment could try to win that game and with the young guys in particular we’ve had the

Conversations about them a lot of different times and the the draw and the interest in them as you know is the fact that they’re younger guys who are athletic who theoretically play good defense and that all sounds exactly like what the bugs need and I don’t disagree that it’s not

But you also see what comes with playing young players and that’s mistakes it’s mental lapses as well things that you’re seeing from other players on this team at this point so for me it’s kind of like do you want to see your young guys making some of these mistakes or these

Vets continuing to make mistakes at this point and I don’t think that this game in itself is like some type of larger referendum that said say hey Chris lingon should play 15 minutes from here on out the rest of the season I think that we need to continue developing

These guys and when we can find minutes for them in the game give them minutes if the Vets don’t have it in that night I’m here for the young guys coming in and being able to do their thing so an interesting game so to speak and Frank you mentioned earlier that of course

We’re talking about this game but looking at it in a larger sample size is something that’s going to be helpful for us as well because this is the bugs team with championship aspirations we want to see them playing in June we want them to see they playing their best ball then

But after an 11 and two December January has not started off on the best foot for the buck so I want to take a look at some of those trends that we have seen so far this month during this very small sample size and look ahead to to what’s

Next for the Bucs with a pretty crucial brutal I should say uh three- game stretch coming up for them so more about that up next the NFL regular season has come to a close but the NFL season is turning up now that the postseason is here Wild Card Weekend starts on Saturday and

Listen with the bugs losing like this I’m so thankful at least the Packers have given me some Joy personally here in the state of Wisconsin but hey make sure you get in on the action with FanDuel America’s number one sport book right now new customers can get

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As I mentioned December was good to the Bucks 11 and two record and at this point here in January now losing to the Jazz dropped to one and four uh on the month here and I took some time just to kind of look back at December because

Things I felt we were talking about things trending upward in December and we have not seen that from the buck so far and like I mentioned there’s a tough three- game stretch coming up for this team we have Boston on Thursday in Milwaukee followed by the warriors on

Saturday and then the Kings on Sunday a backtack here at home and if the Bucks keep trending the way they have been in January those games can get ugly pretty quickly and outside of just those games alone if these Trends continue this is a team that we won’t be seeing playing

Postseason basketball and we’ve seen them be able to play a bit better so some numbers to throw at you here in December the Bucks were 11- two offensive they had the fourth best net rating in the NBA plus 9.8 look at January and this is just the first four

Games here not including tonight’s Jazz game which we’ve talked about those numbers already but they have a negative 6.7 net rating in January so far 19th in the NBA I mean offensive numbers are just down by just just down the stretch offensive rating is down from 126.80 point1 uh effective field goal

Percentage down from 60% which was first in the league down to 54.6 the turnovers they’ve gotten a bit better with that so far in the month of January and defensively again it’s it’s been tough they’re giving up more points the Bucs defensive rating in December was around 117 which was 14th in the

League here in January so far it’s been about 121.8mi turnovers about the same the Bucks Don’t Force many of those they were last in the league in the month of December they’re still last right now turnover percentage in January and free throw rate they’re fing more as well uh in

December defensively they were giving up about a 20.6 free throw rate to opponents so far in January it’s been 27.3 and Frank when you hear all these different numbers about how the bugs have been trending in January and looking at what the bugs have up next is there anything that you’re looking to

See from this team to show how they can change course or anything that just stands out to you from what we’ve seen in December and what we’re seeing now in January I mean the the thing about the rotations for so much of this year is that’s interesting

Right Bucks have had terrific Health um which I don’t know if you’d say that’s a good thing or a bad thing in the context of this right you can’t you we’ve talked about it you can’t blame the Bucks defensive struggles on health Jay Crowder you know cannot be the reason

That you’re a bad defense right given everybody else has been pretty much healthy um but because of that you know the starting lineup has generally been very good and it seems like Griff’s kind of you know mo has been like well I don’t want to screw things up I’m just

Going to play the starting group they’re going to start the first quarter the third quarter they’re going to close every game and we basically have seen no combinations of wings other than Malik Beasley with Dame Yannis and Chris I was looking at this yesterday of of the minutes with damanis Chris your three

Best players 90% of those minutes have gone to Malik Beasley as one of the the two other players on the floor obviously Brook Lopez has typically been the fifth guy Bobby poris the other kind of guy that that most typically is at fifth guy because you know they’re the two bigs um

But you know literally like Ajax marjon even Pat Conan I think Pat con played like 20 possessions you know with the big three which I mean it’s kind of remarkable right that like for all the talk coming in that you know Adrian Griffin was going to experiment and get weird and do the

Kind of stuff that was going to like prepare the bucks for the playoffs he make adjustments all that he’s been super chalk when it comes to like his rotations and I mean again he’s doing what has worked nominally right the numbers say like yeah the starting

Lineup has been great but you know he he’s not playing I mean before tonight when it was kind of like forced to do something he’s not it’s not like he’s like playing and developing the rookies a lot or you know marjon another young guy right like I mean they’re they’re

Playing some but they’re not playing a whole lot and so I think the interesting thing is he didn’t really probably feel like he had to do that because they were winning most of their games so now I think the question is now you start losing games you start feeling the

Pressure you know people can talk about all they want but you know read Buck’s Twitter like don’t don’t don’t tell me that that I said you got to fire Adrian Griffin but people are talking Camille like people are not happy they’ve been saying that since week two of the

Season they didn’t give that man a sample size at all they you know and some people said oh just it’s it’s early whatever well it’s now we’re halfway through the season and stuff’s gotten worse as far as the defense and now you’ve actually started to lose some

Games and so you know is this guy gonna is this the coach that’s gonna lead you to Championship like yeah I’m not feeling it guys um you know but again like let’s put that aside I don’t think there’s really any good options at this point for the bucks as far as Adrian

Griffin goes like I think I’m pretty confident saying he was a mistake obviously with Nick nurse there you you know we’re going to have the Wolverine looking at the the picture of Nick nurse you know um and what might have been if they had hired Nick nurse but it is what

It is now and so I think the question if you’re agan Griffin you’re not firing yourself you’re not quitting so what are you going to do play different guys is the only other thing you can do right like your whatever adjustment schematics you’ve tried obviously hasn’t worked I

Think we can talk about them like trying to be less pointlessly aggressive way out on the perimeter with guys that can’t do that that would be the kind of most obvious sort of tactical thing to change in general um but then especially when you’re not forcing many turnovers

As it is exactly they they’ they’ve gotten like no better at forcing turnovers despite that kind of philosophical change so um so I think again there there there’s definitely some things they could do differently um they could do some things differently probably like in terms of rebounding not

Be as aggressive going for the offensive glass try to get back and transition more although the transition defense over the last month plus has been a lot better um so there’s been Improvement there the rebounding obviously has been a problem uh but I think the question now is just

Like Jay Crowder hopefully coming back maybe in a week or so um what do they do differently in terms of rotations they try different things to try to again just give a different look to this defense do different things defensively because again that is the thing Adrian

Griffin has not done like you know these young guys are going to make mistakes I don’t think there’s any magic you know Silver Bullet here of just oh just play Andre and all of your problems are going to go away or play Chris Livingston like no of course those guys aren’t going to

Solve all the problems um but if they get desperate and they feel like they have to change something about the way things are going then I am curious to see if if maybe he’ll try to do some some different things defensively go smaller you know more regularly right

Because Bobby’s been generally not part of the solution this year overall um you know even unless his shots fall unless his three balls falling like it’s just like tonight when he missed those first couple threes was like okay it’s probably not going to go their way so so

Yeah um there’s tactical stuff they can do and then to me I think the most obvious thing we can see obviously anybody can see if different guys are playing rotations change um so we’ll see because Adrian Griffin has not done that so far and maybe for some decent reasons

But now I think we’re getting into kind of a situation where he’s going to have to try something Beyond just kind of rinse and repeat every night and hope that continuity solves all the problems because I think at this point we can say it’s not going to work just doing the

Same thing and just getting reps yeah definition of insanity right doing the same things over and over and over again expecting a different result so that’s what I agree on because I do think that this bugs team has some Personnel challenges when it comes to the style of

Play that wants to do I just don’t think on this team currently uh you have a lot of the Personnel to play as aggressively so yeah there are definitely some things that he can do uh schematically to make those changes the players themselves have to play with Better Effort I mean

We saw that just between the first half and the second half of play with these two teams and the effort levels and how different they were so there’s that to it and at this point until or unless I should say I shouldn’t say until assuming that something will happen but

If nothing does happen before the trade deadline for this team then this is going to be the roster you are stuck with and it’s going to be time to try some different things out right you know because earlier in the season I was thinking I’m thinking that he’s

Continuing to stay with some of these rotations and lineups to give the bets their chance to say like hey I’m putting the ball in your court I’m trusting in you like show me that you can run with this opportunity and that you can play

The way I’m asking of you to play and we haven’t been seeing the results on a consistent basis we see them in flashes every so often every couple games against certain competition but on a consistent basis what we’re looking to see we haven’t seen yet and they’ve been

Trending down in January so I hope that Griff does try some different lineups here I hope more than anything too as well coming into Thursday’s game is that Dame is back with the team not having Dame is definitely different we saw how much attention jannis got defensively

Without Dame being on the court with him as well in the first half and second half they started facilitating offense through other options besides which did help so having Dame back on Thursday should help what we saw tonight but when we’re thinking about how the bugs have

Looked so far this season there are still questions that need to be answered and the sample size is getting large enough now where you can say hey these things aren’t working so now what are we going to do so yeah I think and I was gonna say

Camille I mean you know there’s no official reason other than personal reasons for Dam missing tonight’s game right you know he’s talked about over Christmas like you know he’s going through a divorce he’s not seeing his kids regularly I think you he’s regularly being in scrums with media

Like and has his literally his kids on FaceTime um so I think from just a parent standpoint um it’s a pretty pretty tough time for him I imagine and then you know even though they’ve been winning games and his numbers are good like there’s still this weird energy

Around like the team and and things like that so I mean who knows right where his head’s been at because obviously over the past 10 days he’s put together you know the exception of like the end of the Spurs game it’s been pretty ugly run

A games for him so again you hope that he’s okay off the floor and that things are okay with him personally um you know like I’m I’ve been just sort of like waiting over the past few days like when do we get the Chris Haynes um you know

Uh tweet story murmurs um about Dame’s happiness with Adrien Griffin or something else around the buck or something like that um I’m still kind of keeping an eye on that you know Haynes has a direct line to Dame and I I guess Haynes is like I don’t know if he’s like

First cousins but he’s like sort of cousins with Mariah giannis’s um partner so yeah so if if if things have to go down and and this is the thing I always come back to it’s like we can talk about Adrien Griffin being the wrong hire or

They should fire Griffin we can talk all we want about it unless Damon Yannis like basically decide that we’re going to go to John horse and be like this has to change like that’s what it would take to me to to get some sort of inseason change because that’s a right you know

That’s a huge change to make it’s hugely disruptive who knows you know I mean is Terry STS gonna walk back in and solve all the buck problems you know I mean anybody coming in is gonna have you we talk about Adrian Griffin a rookie coach having a really tough chore as a head

Coach for a team with these types of expectations if you try to bring in somebody else mid-season you’re going to have another huge challenge kind of coming in so um I almost am just sort of like I don’t expect anything to happen not because I think Adrien Griffin is

The right guy for this team but just because it’s just now you’re just in this really bad spot um but I think it is again just tell me that I’m always curious to see giannis’s comments I’m always curious to see Dame’s comments and again something to mod where they

Are relative to the coaching because if there’s one thing that can get head coaches fired in the modern NBA it is star players who are not happy and um you know our friend Eric had very direct question I mean people say like oh like oh why don’t why

Doesn’t the media get on the coaches and stuff you look at Eric’s questions that he had pregame to Adrian Griffin super direct it was basically like Giannis called out the coaching last game how do you react to that and you know I mean whatever like I’m not expecting Adrien

Griffin to say like well I really thought about that that really doesn’t make me feel good that Giannis thinks I need to be better at coaching and that we don’t have a strategy right like I he didn’t answer the question but um you know credit to Eric like he he tried to

Ask the question and you can’t you know you can’t just like stomp your feet and pound your fist and say like you got to give me an answer to that question Griff like I mean that’s not how media you know relations with with coaches work

But um but yeah I mean again this is just one of these kind of subtexts of of everything going on with the Bucs right now the more these losses pile up um the more I think we’re all going to be looking at what Dame and Giannis are

Saying and doing and the body language and all that other stuff because I’m sure they’re very frustrated right now um and man Thursday’s game against the Boston Celtics you got a few days off to they can actually practice and really think about that game if they come out and lay

Another egg in the first half I think that’s going to say a whole lot about where this team is and where the coaching staff is and you know again kind of like uh how they measure up in the Eastern Conference because obviously right now they don’t measure up to the

Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference they’re somehow I think they’re technically still second yes just because embiid’s been out and so Philly’s been losing some games but um yeah I mean again like they they need to write the ship quickly because again if if you start slipping down the standings

Like that’s I think when the pressure really starts to get amped up so season is long you know we forget about the losing streaks that happened in previous years you know people kind of just out of sight out of mind it happens um but again this is just a different situation

Because there’s so many more unknowns and again the coaching staff obviously being a big part of that a lot of questions with this Bucks team and we’re gonna start getting a few more answers as the season continues to go on like I mentioned maybe like we’re getting a

Bigger sample size and I’m very much looking forward to this game against Thursday because it’s going to tell us a lot about where this team currently is I will give them credit for not quitting tonight but man still an embarrassing effort that uh the Bucks put out on the

Floor tonight so let’s wrap up there we’re gonna have a lot more locked on bucks for you all throughout the week ahead of the Celtics game and hey the Bucks got two days off so like Frank mentioned maybe maybe that’ll be helpful I will say too Thursday’s game is only

On TNT uh so just for Bucks fans keep that in mind so we’re GNA get out of here before we do make sure you head over to lock on sports today on YouTube and subscribe go and check that out after we close up here for Frank and myself we’ll catch you later

On the heels of Giannis Antetokounmpo saying that everyone on the Milwaukee Bucks needs to be better…the Bucks put together a disappointing 132-116 loss at home against the Utah Jazz.

What went wrong in the first half? Did the Bucks find any sustainable solutions during their third quarter comeback attempt? What do the current trends say about this Bucks team?

Camille and Frank discuss all of this, plus more, on today’s episode of Locked on Bucks.

0:00 Intro
1:32 Where was the pride for the Bucks in the first half?
13:49 What did the Bucks do well in the second half to trim the lead?
23:30 Bucks have been trending downward to start off the new year

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