The Milwaukee Bucks are swimming in trouble at the wrong time. Damian Lillard suffered a clot, the same injury that ended Victor Wembanyama’s season. Now, he doesn’t have a return timeline with less than ten games remaining for the postseason. In this quick time, finding a counter strategy is vital. It didn’t happen tonight though against the New York Knicks.

The Big Apple completed a sweep in the season series against the Bucks. They held the grip on the game since the very first quarter. They did a lot of right things to make that happen. But the Bucks slipped up majorly. Notably, Brook Lopez who has been a healthy scoring contributor recently only took five shots. Moreover, there was an influx of turnovers that helped out the Knicks.

But Rivers thinks he knows why these things are happening. “I tell you this we still shot 55% uh and so if we take care of the ball. But because we went in these stretches forcing that’s where the turnovers came and if we had have made the simple movement plays uh then Brook or someone else would have got more shots. So uh just disappointed in how we’re playing,” the head coach said about their loss.

Without Damian Lillard, the Bucks do fall short in terms of having an independent scoring threat outside of Giannis. Furthermore, Rivers also noted that the team misses Lillard’s skills as a facilitator. You would imagine that with Lillard, distribution wouldn’t be a problem within the offense.

However, that task now falls on the head of Ryan Rollins. Not being used to being the ball handler, the 22-year-old may take some time. Bu he still had a great game tonight, scoring 20 points and getting four assists. But making up for Lillard’s absence is going to be difficult when the Bucks just lost because of the Knicks’ depth.

Giannis Antetokounmpo did well, but he doesn’t care

Milwaukee made a major strategic change tonight. They decided to utilize Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s storming defense to curtail Karl-Anthony Towns. It worked successfully. The Knicks’ big man failed to score 20 for the first time in ten games. But even though Jalen Brunson is still recovering from an injury, New York is armored with other great players.

Their depth of talent is the primary reason Antetokounmpo thinks the Bucks came short.

“Naturally when you play the game and your main guy sometimes is having an off night or he’s not able to get to his spot as well, other people take over. I feel like in the first half Bridges was able to read the pick and roll and he knew that I’m going to stay with Towns and I didn’t want I didn’t want to switch and he took advantage of that,” the Greek Freak noted.

With Towns failing, Mikal Bridges took advantage of not having to worry about Antetokounmpo’s help defense. He went for an efficient 26-point performance. On the other hand, OG Anunoby did the same in the second half. To be fair, the Bucks did have that too. However, they didn’t just turn the ball over twice as many times as the Knicks, it also cost them 26 points, twice they got as a result of turnovers.

So although Giannis Antetokounmpo did his job well, he didn’t have much to say about the Bucks’ change in plans. “I don’t know the answer if if this game plan was better or the previous game plan was better it doesn’t really matter we last all three games,” he said about the season series.

With the postseason coming closer, the Bucks don’t have much time to figure out ways to win without Lillard. They have an 8-8 record when missing the sharpshooter. But replacing his playoff experience is impossible. Milwaukee will need something herculean to find postseason success this year.

As unfortunate as it seems, their fans may have to wait another year to witness a healthy Giannis-Lillard playoff run.