Before the start of last season, Bucks big man Brook Lopez couldn’t shake a weakness in his left leg. In the preseason, he hoped it was only a sign he still needed to play his way back into shape. As opening night approached—the night the team would receive its championship rings for winning the 2021 Finals—Lopez was determined to play, even as his leg didn’t feel quite right. But the weakness persisted, as issues in his back were trickling down to his leg. And so Lopez began to miss games, hoping to regain his strength through rehab and rest. He even took two injections in his back to see if they could resolve the issue, yet he still couldn’t get on the floor.
Then in early December 2021, Lopez saw a specialist in Los Angeles, who said Lopez could either wait for the bulging disk in his back to reabsorb, or undergo surgery. At 33 years old and standing over seven feet, a back surgery was no minor procedure for Lopez. But he put his faith in the doctors, who said at the latest he should be ready in time for the playoffs.
“I never really thought about, ‘What if this is it?’ ” Lopez says. “I missed being out on the court. I didn’t watch any basketball. I was trying to focus solely on the rehab, reading a ton. I really missed being out there with my guys.”
Brook would return in time for the final 12 games of the regular season and helped Milwaukee push the Celtics to seven games in a thrilling second-round series. And now, a little over a year after his surgery, Lopez is playing some of the best basketball of his career. The former No. 10 pick in the 2008 draft is the anchor of the Bucks’ third-ranked defense. And if the season were to end today, Lopez would garner serious (and well deserved) consideration for Defensive Player of the Year.
“Absolutely it would mean something, it would be a great honor,” Lopez admits about possibly winning DPOY. “I’ve had a very interesting career arc. The changes I’ve had to make to my game to stay in the league, I’m proud of that and I’m proud of the player I’ve become. It would definitely be an honor.”
Lopez is the central figure of a frightening Bucks defense. His long, Mr. Fantastic-esque arms allow him to patrol the paint like very few centers. In a league in which switching is en vogue, Lopez dominates the paint in drop coverage, almost daring players to test him close to the basket. Some teams drop out of limited options. Others to accommodate their centers on the offensive end. The Bucks do it because Lopez is a special talent.
Milwaukee has a 106.6 defensive rating with Lopez on the floor, per Cleaning the Glass, which puts him in the 94th percentile of the league. (The Bucks are better defensively overall in Lopez’s minutes than Giannis Antetokounmpo’s.) Lopez is elite at defending the rim on a high volume of shots. Of all players defending at least eight shots a night within six feet, Lopez is second in defended field goal percentage. Moving a little further out, of all players defending at least nine shots a night within 10 feet, Lopez is again second in defended field goal percentage.
It would be too simple to say Lopez simply meanders backward into the paint and waits for players to shoot against him. His body positioning is sublime. And he subtly shifts his movement depending on both the ball handler and the screener. Against the Warriors, he may play a step or two (or three) higher against Stephen Curry while retreating more quickly toward the hoop against Jordan Poole. If Draymond Green is rolling to the basket, that requires a different attention than if it were Kevon Looney.
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“There’s overall instinct, and there’s also knowing who is in the pick-and-roll,” Lopez explains. “Is the screener a roller or a popper? Is he a scorer? If he gets the ball, will he go right up with it? You know there’s bigs who catch on the roll who stop and don’t know what to do with it. And the guy coming off the screen, is he looking to pass? Does he go downhill immediately? Does he pass at all or does he shoot every time? You have to make those quick reads as the pick-and-roll happens.”
Lopez processes these nuances of the game with the mind of a supercomputer and then contorts his long limbs accordingly. The word “drop” is so simple, yet in the case of Lopez, encompasses a wide variety of movements. And it’s not like he can practice the intricacies of this coverage on a daily basis. Lopez says he relies on his instincts and experience when figuring out pick-and-roll combos, because the only way to improve is to defend the action at game speed.
And in what’s become a hallmark of his career, Lopez is willing to adjust. In playoff matchups against the likes of Kevin Durant or DeMar DeRozan, for example, Milwaukee may tweak their coverage and start playing up right away to take away pull-up midrange jumpers. Lopez also says he’s confident in his ability to switch if he’s called upon, even working on his lateral movement in the weight room in the offseason so he’s more comfortable on the perimeter.
As a team, the Bucks have always been among the league’s best defensively during Lopez’s tenure. This year, they’ve flashed the potential to unlock a new level of stinginess thanks to an ability to take away the three-point line. In three of the previous four seasons, the Bucks gave up the most three-point attempts in the league. (In that fourth season, they gave up the third-most.)
After giving up nearly 40 threes a game in 2021, Milwaukee opponents are shooting only 33.5 a night so far this season, 13th-fewest in the NBA.
Lopez says giving up fewer outside shots was a focus from the first day of training camp. Mike Budenholzer actually put the statistic up on the board that revealed how many threes the Bucks were conceding every night. In past years, Milwaukee’s most important guys on defense—the MIGs—were the help defenders who crashed into the paint to help protect the rim. This year, the MIG is the player on the ball in the pick-and-roll. That puts pressure on Lopez and his screen navigators—Jrue Holiday, Jevon Carter, Grayson Allen and others—to contain actions by themselves so other defenders can stay at home on shooters. So far, it’s worked. (Lopez admits Grant Williams’s three-point explosion in Game 7 of the Boston series probably played some role in the new defense, though this was always the next logical endpoint of Milwaukee’s scheme.)
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The drop nuances, the switching and staying at home on shooters are all part of what the Bucks hope to perfect before the playoffs. Lopez describes the regular season as a testing ground for different hypotheses, with the team trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t before the postseason. He won’t say whether the team is targeting a specific opponent as they work to fine tune their defense, even as the Bucks and Celtics battle for the top seed in the East. It’s very possible their Christmas Day tilt ends up being a conference preview.
For now, Lopez is simply enjoying one of the finest seasons of his career. In addition to his stellar defense, he’s also hitting 40% of his threes and averaging his most points per game since 2017, a time when he was posting up as much as he was launching from deep. When asked if he considers himself a 3-and-D guy, Lopez laughs and admits he fits the criteria, although he likes to think he can do a little bit more. And he’s not wrong. He’s not only the kind of player who can slide into a team‘s existing defensive structure. Lopez can provide that structure himself. You could even say he’s the backbone.
