Without Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bucks are sliding: ‘We gotta figure it out’ – The Athletic

MILWAUKEE — With a shorter defender on him, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo took his place just off the left block and started to post up. Upon receiving the ball, he took one dribble and then spun to the baseline for a fadeaway jumper.

Looking for space on the right side of the floor for the next shot, point guard Kevin Porter Jr. floated away from the ballhandler and relocated to the right corner for a catch-and-shoot 3. Then, it was back to Antetokounmpo. After that, Porter again. For the next minute, the Bucks’ two leading playmakers at the start of the 2025-26 season alternated shots.

Unfortunately for the Bucks, this occurred around 5:45 p.m., nearly 90 minutes before tipoff Monday against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Kevin Porter Jr. is out as well tonight, but he’s out on the floor getting some shots up at the same time as Giannis Antetokounmpo as well. pic.twitter.com/oheC5605tk

— Eric Nehm (@eric_nehm) November 24, 2025

Thirty minutes before that sequence, Bucks head coach Doc Rivers informed reporters that both players are “pretty close” — a phrase that has meant any number of things when used by Rivers over the last two seasons — to returning to the floor. But both Antetokounmpo and Porter had been ruled out Sunday afternoon.

The Trail Blazers visited Milwaukee on the second night of a back-to-back with a lengthy injury report of their own Monday and easily dispatched the Bucks in a 115-103 win. The final deficit was only 12 points, but Portland led by as many as 33 early in the fourth quarter. It was the Bucks’ fifth straight loss and their third loss in as many tries with Antetokounmpo on the sidelines with a left adductor strain. Porter, the Bucks’ starting point guard in the season opener, sprained his ankle in that game and had surgery for a torn meniscus earlier this month. He has only played nine minutes this season.

For a second straight game, a defense threw everything it had at Ryan Rollins, the Bucks’ breakout star in the first quarter of the season, and short-circuited Milwaukee’s offense.

“I think we’re really struggling scoring,” Rivers said after Monday’s loss. “They’re taking Ryan out of it. We don’t have the ability right now to get into anything else when he doesn’t have it. That’s what I was talking about with the coaches. We gotta figure it out, the coaches do. We gotta take the burden off them and try to make it easier for them.”

In the end, Rollins managed 10 points, five rebounds and seven assists. But he never found a rhythm as Portland pressed him full court with Toumani Camara, a 6-foot-8 guard who was voted to the All-Defensive Second Team last season, and then switched, trapped and blitzed against him in half-court settings to get the ball out of his hands and force someone else to make a play.

“Just pressuring him, same as (the Detroit Pistons) did,” Rivers said of what teams are doing to Rollins. “You can predict that. The league is copycat. After the other night, I told our coaches (that) Ryan’s next couple games, they’re gonna trap him and pressure him and try to speed him up, because they know … we don’t have a lot of ballhandling out there on the floor. We don’t have a lot of ballhandling on the team in that way. So, we have to figure that out.”

The Bucks’ offensive struggles without Antetokounmpo on the floor are far from a surprise. They were scoring only 104.2 points per 100 possessions without him on the floor this season before this stretch of games, but Antetokounmpo’s absence has only exacerbated several issues that were already lingering when he was playing.

• Offensively, the Bucks (8-10) were 16th in offensive rating (116.5 points per 100 possessions) across the first 15 games of the season. Over the last three games, they have dropped to 26th (108.6 points per 100 possessions).
• They were already the worst offensive rebounding team in the league, grabbing 23.9 percent of their misses, in the first 15 games. That number plummeted to 17.8 percent over the last three games.
• Even with Antetokounmpo averaging 10.2 free-throw attempts per game, the Bucks were 29th in free-throw rate, making only 17 free throws per 100 field-goal attempts. Without him, they’re 30th in free-throw rate, making 11.1 free throws per 100 field-goal attempts.

Without Antetokounmpo getting into the paint and imposing his will, the Bucks have been unable to play with the same force offensively, and they have lost their way over the last three games as defenses have refused to let Rollins, the Bucks’ lone healthy, sure-handed creator, beat them.

None of this is a surprise. Antetokounmpo is a singular offensive force. The Bucks know that and leveraged his ability to build a team of complementary players who could space the floor and bring the most out of him. For the most part, those players also needed Antetokounmpo to bring the most out of them, and that has led to problems without him.

Considering he was able to go through a pregame workout before Monday’s disheartening loss, Antetokounmpo should be back soon, and that will be a godsend for the Bucks. But they need to use whatever time is remaining in his absence to come up with better answers for how to create a competent offensive attack without him. Antetokounmpo won’t play every minute of every game, and he will almost certainly miss other games as the season goes on, so those answers will be important.