 What's the word y'all? So far the Milwaukee Bugs don't look very good. Now I don't want you to take that and think that I'm saying that they can't win a championship or they'll never get their stuff together but through the first four games, you know, don't want to overreact. Obviously there's so much basketball left to be played but there as of right now are some fundamental things that don't look too exciting. I've got to say this, a new episode of the Kenny Beecham podcast just dropped. Right now we are the fifth ranked basketball podcast in America which is dope but I want number four, the number three, number two and number one. I think it's a really good show. I worked very hard on it. Link is in the description. Go show us some love. Please, I appreciate you. First of all, I want to say there were a lot of teams out there that made big time moves this off season. The Suns, the Boston Celtics, the Milwaukee Bugs so on and so forth. A lot of teams made major adjustments and I was pretty confident going into the season that all the teams to make these big changes. The Bugs will be the one team that wouldn't take too much time to jail. I saw Damien Lillard, I saw Yoncete DeCumpo, Brooke Lopez and so on and so forth and I thought that they were just a match made in heaven. And through the first four games you can compare them to the other teams that made big time moves. They're the one that looks the clunkiest, that doesn't look as smooth. The Boston Celtics is beat a team by 51 points. The boys look good and the Bugs a little bit less than that. But one thing I failed to even realize is that the Boston Celtics were taking a system that they developed the previous season and just adding pieces to it. While the Milwaukee Bugs are taking a team, adding pieces to it but also incorporated an entirely new system under Adrian Griffin. Now this has been a lot of conversations about the offense of the team and for good reason. This is a team that I thought immediately with the two guys that are up top they would have one of the most effective and most dangerous high picking roles in the entire league. And the numbers say that it's successful but the frequency of it is not great. The most we've seen the high picking role between Damian Lillard and Giannis was the opening night of the season where I think they ran at 11 different times. Then after that it was single digit, single digit and I don't got the info in front of me from their recent game versus the Toronto Raptors but I just re-watched it. It wasn't many times. So this, I don't know weapon that I thought they were gonna use a bunch and be super effective. They just haven't done it. I mean, I don't think I need to show you this but I just wanna show you that the effectiveness of a Damian Lillard picking role and this is not even accounted for being Giannis it could be really anybody is still the fifth best picking role points per possession and all the basketball but the frequency being at 39% is just a lot lower than what I anticipated. So because of that, I'm not extremely worried about the offense. The offense has been fine I guess even without them using the weapon that I think they're gonna use a ton. I think there's more red flags on their defense if anything because even though they're not using the picking role as often as I hope I honestly watched this team and watch Damian Lillard and it really does feel on the offense side of the ball. He is just trying to feel out where he fits in which is a lot different than what Giannis was anticipated because Giannis said before the beginning of the season that this is Damian Lillard's team. So eventually I guess Damian Lillard realized that and we'll get more shot attempts because the other night against the Atlanta Hawks he shot two of 12 which is obviously one of the worst Damian Lillard performances in his career. And then tonight as I record this he only attempted nine shots against the Toronto Raptors which is the lowest amount of shots he has attempted since 2018. A five years like this is just not the game we know and I think that his volume is gonna go up with time. I do wanna give a lot of credit to the Toronto Raptors because though I'm talking about how bad the Milwaukee Bucks look right now I wanna give love to Toronto. This is crazy because 48 hours ago their fans were feeling really upset about everything because the offense wasn't juggling. The defense has been great but for the most part they couldn't score and then today they scored a bunch of points and now the same fans that I saw that were really sad are like hey maybe it's not that bad. That's just what fandom is at the end of the day. So the offense I think will come with time. The defense is the stressor though. I and many people that talked about this trade when it happened recognize the fact that when you trade a guy like Drew Holiday and insert a guy like Damian Lillard into the lineup you're going to see defensive drop off regardless and that has been the case. But as of right now, four games to the season they are the 29th ranked defense in basketball and that is just not good enough. I mean that's not breaking any news but that's just not good enough. We should have probably known what was about to happen when this came out. His role going into the season that he's gonna have to take the toughest assignment most nights and they're talking about Malik Beasley. And when this came out a month and a half ago everybody in NBA Twitter was scratching their hands because we've watched Malik Beasley play basketball for the last what five, how many years been in league five, six years or so. This is not who he is. So the fact that they had to be one of two things. They just don't have the personnel to be to have somebody be the stopper or Malik Beasley just turned great defensively overnight and it's not the second one. I'm telling you it's not the second one because I've watched every single Bucks game so far. Now I don't wanna say that he is the reason for the poor defense. I'm just saying that they're missing your holiday but not only just that the scheme that Adrian Griffin is incorporated right now is just so much different than what we're used to seeing for the Milwaukee Bucks. The Milwaukee Bucks, the entire Yanis superstar era they have been a well above average defense. For some years they were the best, the second best. I think their championship year, I think they were 10th in the regular season but still they were always really, really good and they had a defensive identity. Yanis won his DPOWs by being one of if not the greatest help defender in all of basketball. And now with his new role because of the change of personnel and the change of the coaching staff we're not seeing as much of Yanis on the help. And the way they cover the number one play in all the basketball, the pick and roll doesn't fit the personnel that they have. Brook Lopez has been a runner up to DPOW because mostly because of the way they defended their pick and rolls and the way they had this cover. So you can see Javon Cardis fighting over the screen but is that Uzman Garaba and as Jalen Green you're going to see right here Brook Lopez is gonna drop heavy. He's always, well not always but for the most part he's heavy on drop coverage defensively. And I wanna say this video is created by Hoops by Nick I'll put the link in the description and this is an older video maybe a year or so old but this is just a way for me to showcase how they've been able to defend so great defensively. They've been a team that have forced their opponent to take mid-range jump shots. They make you take mid-range jump shots even if that's not your thing. They run you off the three point line and then they run drop coverage and we either have Yanis but mostly Brook Lopez protecting the paint. And that was their formula where their frequency of their opponents taking shots at the rim was the best in basketball. You did not get rim touches against the Milwaukee Bucks over the last couple of years. Last year they attempted their defense forced you to how do I even word this? You weren't taking three point shots against the Milwaukee Bucks they ran you off the line. All right, okay, cool. Even on something like this a dribble handoff Nicholas Claxton is not a threat up there and even though we trust is that Joe Harris is a shooter we're gonna trust Grayson now and getting over that way more so Brook just sits back. Is that Joe? I can't, it's a little blurry for me and brother ain't got his glasses but Brook just stays home. Stays home the entire time and then there he is once Nicholas Claxton finally gets the ball straight up. I mean, that could have probably been a foul but nonetheless that's what he was doing. Now it's completely different. Now I'm using this clip and not one against the Toronto Raptors because the Raptors don't run a ton of pick and roll they was just hooping, you know what I'm saying? But they played against the Atlanta Hawks the other day and they got dogged by the Atlanta Hawks whose their frequency of picking rolls is crazy. So this is a good example. This is an action by Troy Young obviously Troy Young is one of the more dominant pick and roll players in all the basketball him and Clint Capella have had a really good connection over the last, I don't know how many years but here's a double screen and as you can see this is just different. Watching Brook Lopez be at the point of attack on a pick and roll for 48 minutes or however many minutes he played just was, I open it for me because that's just not what we've seen him do. They've done a ton, they've forced a ton of ball pressure that is their new goal under Adrian Griffin. Ball, ball, ball pressure, ball pressure, ball pressure. So they ask Brook Lopez to fight up mostly because maybe they don't trust Malik Beasley and these other guard chasers to be able to get through these screens. So now in order to prevent Troy Young from having this much space in an open three point shot Brook Lopez is asked to come all the way up and boom, there's a trap. Troy Young being as poised as he is he has his eyes on Jalen. So that means Yon is, oh my God, I see his eyes are there. I'm gonna go contest Jalen and just the eye fake gets clink a pillow wide open and boom, that is a dunk. Right now opposing teams are shooting 85% from the paint against the Milwaukee Bucks. 85%. And my calculations last year has it at 64%. So that is a huge gap, huge difference. Now the saving grace in all of this is that they're not giving up a ton of shots at the rim. But when you're there, it's typically wide open. With this new coverage, they're still trying to get you to take more mid-range jump shots but they're not nearly running people off the line as much. I wanna say shout out to Eric Neem for that clip just made it easy for me. So the defense is just the major problem. The offense right now is about league average through four games. And again, I'm assuming that Dame is gonna get his stuff together and Yonis is gonna become more dominant but it's a matter of can they get the defense to work? Because we're confident that they're gonna be able to win a good amount of regular season games but when it's time to win 16 games after, what is that, April 15th or so, their defense needs to be good to great in order to get there. And right now, because the offense is league average, it's not compensating for the terrible defense. So they need to either lead at one place or just pretty good at both. And I don't know if they're gonna do that just yet. So let me know what you think about the Milwaukee Bucks through the first four games. Bucks fan specifically who've watched every single second. How are you feeling about the pairing? I'm not overreacting too much but I thought it was something worth pointing out to y'all.