What to look for during Friday’s Bucks-Lakers showdown in L.A.

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James looked like he was in feel-it-out mode in the first game against the Milwaukee Bucks back in December.

The basketball world will have their eyes fixed on Los Angeles and Staples Center tonight as the two best teams in the NBA do battle for the second and final time in the regular season. Back on Dec. 19, the Bucks beat the Lakers in Milwaukee by the score of 111-104, with the Bucks holding the normally potent Lakers offense to just 104 points.

So while I usually save such effort for the postseason, I went back to watch the December match-up to see what to look for, what could be different and how the Lakers can earn what would easily be their best win of the season.

The Relentless Connectivity of the Bucks defense

The Bucks are running away with the NBA’s best defensive-rating by a country mile. Their current 101 defensive rating is four points better than the No. 2 ranked team in the league, the Raptors, and nearly five points better than the No. 3 ranked Lakers defense.

While Toronto relies on constant creativity and the Lakers have the talent to lock teams down for stretches, none of them have the relentless connectivity that the Bucks show on every possession. Even an early possession in the game warrants this hard close out from Brook Lopez on Kentavious Caldwell-Pope after LeBron finds him with an outlet pass. Plays like this and effort like this help Lopez’s legitimate case to make an All-Defensive team and also shows why the Bucks defense works on basically every level.

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Part of this also helps when LeBron himself has the ball. Look at all of the eyes on LeBron, let alone Wesley Matthews being inside his shirt on the drive.

The Bucks defense is elite for a reason but no NBA team is perfect, even though Milwaukee’s defense is pushing that limit. There is one avenue that the Lakers didn’t explore as much against Milwaukee last time and it will be interesting to see if the Lakers go to it tonight.

Will LeBron bring out the deep 3-pointers on the Bucks dropping scheme?

For the last three seasons, LeBron James has become more and more comfortable expanding his range from the 3-point line. But in going back to watch the first game where LeBron finished with 21 points and a triple-double, I came away wondering if LeBron had put his best game out there.

In the early going, it appeared that James was in learning-mode, almost like he is in Game 1 of a playoff series. And the shot-charts validated my observation as he took only one 3-point shot of 29-feet or longer against the Bucks. James has been shooting those shots more often since the Bucks game, taking over half of his 28 deep 3-point attempts since the calendar changed to 2020. James is 11 for 29 (39 percent) on those deep ones in 2019-20. So not only do teams have to think about it, it’s often been a devastating shot.

Will the Lakers bigs set screens higher to take advantage of the Bucks big men dropping back in the pick and roll? Can they set better screens on Wesley Matthew or whoever is guarding LeBron on the ball? For all of the other shooters on the Lakers, nobody on the team is equipped to create their own deep 3-point looks like LeBron is. If LeBron is going to put cracks in the defense, with as how great Milwaukee’s interior defense is, he’s going to have to do it from deep.

Should James force the Bucks defense to creep up, that could make things easier for Anthony Davis, who had a tough 11 for 25 night that included him going 0 for 6 from 3. The Bucks also give up the most corner 3s in the league, so Danny Green, who hit 7 3s in the last meeting, should still get plenty of looks.

Will Giannis stay hot from 3 against the Lakers? And will the other Bucks role players make them pay if he doesn’t?

The Lakers, while not as great as the Bucks as a team defensively, also have plenty of size in the middle to try and disturb the reigning MVP at the rim. To answer that size, Giannis had the best 3-point shooting game of his career in the Dec. 19 Milwaukee win. Antetokounmmpo was five of 8 from 3 in the game while he also got multiple 3-pointers from Wesley Matthews, George Hill, and Milwaukee’s other All-Star Khris Middleton.

Middleton only took 10 shots in the last game but still shot 50 percent, while Giannis lit it up from the outside. If Giannis struggles to make his 3-pointers, Middleton is plenty capable of creating his own offense. But the key for the Lakers will be trying to keep Giannis contained while also being turned into the rest of Milwaukee’s great 3-point shooters.

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