What is separating Milwaukee from teams like Cleveland?

Well, the Milwaukee Bucks are now winless against the Cleveland Cavaliers—0-9 against the top three teams in the Eastern Conference, for that matter—and I wanted to talk through my feelings about where that leaves us as fans. And no, I’m not saying this one game on the second night of a back-to-back means everything, but to brush it off as nothing also feels wrong. Tired or not, Milwaukee’s approach and execution (or not) of a set gameplan showed us a lot, in my opinion.

I’ll start here: are the Bucks a better team than the Cavs? The answer for most people would be no; the stats tell us that, and so does the eye test. So if they are a fundamentally lesser team than Cleveland, and Milwaukee…