Milwaukee Bucks had a back-to-back on Friday and Saturday night. Those are pretty common in the NBA. Both opponents were not good ones. They played New Orleans and Charlotte. Both teams are ones that Milwaukee had success over in the past couple of years. This weekend was different. Milwaukee came out more flat than a Jolly Good that had been sitting out for 12 hours in both their games. The bucks played catchup in both and led to the two worst regular-season losses in a long time. What are some reasons why things went off the rails this weekend.

1. Milwaukee couldn’t stop the three-point shot – Charlotte and New Orleans both made 21 three-pointers against Milwaukee. For the non-math majors reading, that is 42 threes in two games. That is absurd and almost doesn’t feel accurate. Neither team is full of sharpshooters either. New Orleans ranks 27th in three-point percentage while Charlotte is 13th. This was not a good look for Milwaukee. They did start constant switching versus Charlotte which slowed them down a little bit.

2. First quarters were a problem – Milwaukee cannot just flip the switch this season. I think that is abundantly clear. They cannot become the murder Bucks all of the sudden. And when you start slow as they did against New Orleans and Charlotte, you leave yourself vulnerable to lose games. That’s exactly what happened here. Bucks could not recover from starting slow, and that’s an issue. They need to bring more energy early and often. Starting Torrey Craig or Bryn Forbes might be worth the move on Monday.

3. Milwaukee’s Friday cost them Saturday – I have zero ideas why Mike Budenholzer didn’t wave the white flag on Friday night. Maybe it is because New Orleans isn’t a good team, and they might have a shot to come back. But still playing those guys 35+ minutes led to tired legs against Charlotte. They only scored 20 points in the final quarter of the game. If they’re rested, maybe they overpower Charlotte late and we have a 1-1 split on the weekend.

Next up: Milwaukee gets right back on the horse tonight against Portland at the Fiserv Forum. It is Damian Lillard and everyone else as the Blazers are without C.J. McCollum and Jusef Nurkic currently. Bucks will try to slow down the outside shooting of Portland with the likes of Lillard and Gary Trent Jr. If the Bucks lose this one, it is full blown panic time.

Charlie.