Bucks loss to defending champion 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 happened before they stepped on the floor at TD Garden.

“We played two terrible games, and there’s no excuse for that,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said after 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 close for the first two and a half quarters, but the Celtics pulled away and outscored Milwaukee 37-26 in the third. The result: A 119-108 Bucks loss, their third straight loss, 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, they are the defending NBA champions, and the Bucks will have to work to get to where they can try to challenge Boston in the postseason.

“They’ve been around for years now, and you can’t replace that. You can’t,” Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo said after scoring 30 points, 10 rebounds, six assists but also seven turnovers in Monday’s loss. “Man can put the best players together but just know how to play with each other, sacrifice for each other, play the right way, know where your teammates will be, know 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’re far off. I don’t care about the record. I just care about keeping building, keeping being healthy and get where we want to go.”

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 against the Chicago Bulls or Brooklyn Nets, so it was a welcome return to the expected baseline effort when the Bucks take the court. Maybe it was reasonable to expect against the NBA’s best team, but it wasn’t guaranteed after the last two games.

But while the Bucks brought the effort and intensity needed to compete with the Celtics to start the game, their execution was not up to par with the defending champions. It showed in the final three minutes of the third quarter, when the Bucks made a series of small mistakes that the Celtics took advantage of to eventually build a 15-point lead a little more than 90 seconds into the fourth.

While the errors weren’t massive, they showed the significant gulf in execution between the two teams at this stage of the 2024-25 campaign.

After a jumper by Bobby Portis and a technical free throw by Damian Lillard, the Bucks took an 80-79 lead with 2:42 left in the third quarter. That 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 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 Monday night — and the Bucks ended up with an empty possession.

“I just thought Bobby got off the ball tonight,” Rivers said. “Get 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 are nights when he can get better.”

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

The Bucks are just 12th in defensive rebounds this season, as they have grabbed 72.9 percent of available defensive rebounds, per Cleaning The Glass, but it feels a lot 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’s how they managed to win the possession game 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. Still, that means the Bucks have to be an elite rebounding unit, and that hasn’t been the case this season. As the numbers show, they have been good but not elite and that will continue to be a problem until that changes.

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

The Bucks did what they needed to in transition by finding matchups and defending the player in front of them, but their defense wasn’t quite sharp enough in the 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 in possession and gave 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 rebounding,” Portis said of how the defense can improve. “I think we cleaned that part up tonight, but the 3s, the extra 3s they hit, just getting up for touches and closing for touches is one thing that we can really lock in more, I think.”

After 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 flaw.

All in all, the Bucks probably wouldn’t have been in the bad spot heading into the final quarter without one final mistake.

After the game, Rivers told reporters that his team had been prepared for the late-season tendencies of Payton Pritchard, who has hit some big shots to end quarters. Rivers said the team’s scouting report suggested Pritchard will always look to “break right” in those situations. That’s exactly what the Bucks allowed him to do on his sidestep 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 so far this season.

Ultimately, because of their disastrous third quarter finish, the Bucks were forced to look to the positives from Monday despite dealing with the reality that they have won just one of their first four games in 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 ran out of gas a little bit. Didn’t get much help tonight from our bench, so we extended minutes.”

The schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Bucks as they wrap up 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 fueled more by necessity than true faith.

“You have to. You have no choice. You have to,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s the fourth game of the season. Even if we were bad, 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 we’re in, but at the end of the day, we have a great team. I believe we’ll keep playing better, keep learning from our mistakes, and eventually we’ll start to win games.”

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