Is it time to hit the panic button in Milwaukee yet?

After a rough 1-3 start to the season, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks needed a win — and the basketball gods lined one up for them Thursday night. A rested Bucks team was about to take on a Memphis squad on the second night of a back-to-back with six players out, including starters Desmond Bane and Marcus Smart.

The result? The Bucks were blown out by 23 points in a game they never led after three minutes and never got within 10 points midway through the second quarter.

Milwaukee has now lost four straight, is 1-4 on the season and has the third-worst net rating in the league (-8.2) thanks to a 24th-ranked offense and defense. Antetokounmpo was straight to the point when he said, “Right now, we have no identity.” and Khris Middleton returning from surgery on both ankles won’t fix things.

It may be a small sample size, but it’s time to reach for the panic button in Milwaukee.

What’s wrong?

A lot of. But it starts with this:

Missed jump shots and lousy transition defense are a losing combination.

Milwaukee is simply made up of missing shots. Against Memphis, the Bucks were 9 of 42 from 3 (21.4%), and for the season they are shooting 33.3% overall from beyond the arc and 28% on 3s above the break. It’s not just three-pointers either: the Bucks are shooting 35.1% on jump shots (any shot outside the paint) this season. They shoot just 33.9% on shots in floater range (inside the paint but outside the restricted area). If they don’t get to the rim, they don’t score, at least not consistently.

Now combine that with a 154.1 defensive net rating in transition, the second-worst in the league, and you have a real problem: the Bucks are missing shots, opponents are grabbing the backboard, racing away and scoring in transition.

“The defensive transition was still terrible tonight and that’s on me. Everything is my responsibility until it is right,” Coach Doc Rivers said after the game. “We have to solve this.”

Rivers’ bigger problem may be that he has a book coming out on how to attack Milwaukee’s defense – bullying Damian Lillard and other Bucks guards (as Zach Lowe noted). The defensive rotations behind them haven’t been sharp, but there are places to attack Milwaukee now and teams are going to go there.

THE RAID OF DAMIAN LILLARD

On opening night, against an undermanned Philadelphia team, Damian Lillard looked like he was back, hitting 6 of 12 three-pointers on his way to 30 points.

Compare that to Thursday night, when Lillard shot 1-for-12 from 3 and finished with four points against the Grizzlies. If it was just one game, we could wave it off, but since opening night, Lillard has shot 6-of-33 from beyond the arc. He collapses, and the Antetokounmpo/Lillard pick-and-roll that everyone thought would be unstoppable doesn’t connect the way it needs to.

Milwaukee’s problems are more extensive than just Lillard or Middleton dropping out: they’re not sharing the ball, there’s little movement on offense and things are just plain flat on that front. Milwaukee used to have a defense that got them through tough offenses, but despite the efforts of Brook Lopez – who has some bounce to start this season – Milwaukee seems out of sync on both ends.

It’s ugly. This is one of the teams under the most pressure this season and if things don’t change soon, the pressure will only increase, leading to…

GIANNIS TRADE RUMORS BEGIN

We predicted it before the season that Giannis Antetokounmpo trade rumors would start once the Bucks started to struggle, league sources told NBC Sports he was on everyone’s “watch list.” We just didn’t expect the noise to start the second week of the season.

Rumors are already circulating – via the well-connected Bill Reiter of CBS Sports – that “teams are circling – and hopeful” and that the Heat and Nets are at the top of the list. You can bet that Golden State would also be interested and willing to include Jonathan Kuminga in the deal.

To be fair, Antetokounmpo signed a contract extension with Milwaukee a season ago — after deciding the Lillard trade was evidence ownership and the front office was determined to win — but the ultra-competitive Antetokounmpo is not a patient man. After the ugly loss to Memphis, he sounded like a man trying to figure out where he is and not wanting to move on, via Jim Owczarski of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“Losing is frustrating, but we are doing the right things. So we arrived in Memphis (Wednesday) evening and we got together as a team and watched a movie. Not like eight or nine guys playing. We watched film, we talked about: what can we do better? What we don’t do so well, let’s hold each other accountable. We do the right thing…

“This is part of the season where things aren’t going our way. But two losses, three losses, four losses, five losses, six losses in a row; Losing one is always frustrating. Then again, my dad always said, “Why are you whining if you’re not going to give up?” So I’m not going to give up.”

Milwaukee has no plans to trade Antetokounmpo unless he asks, and right now that’s not on the table. Even if he does, the Bucks will be in a position of power with that contract extension to take control. Still, the pressure is mounting and the idea that Antetokounmpo could ask out isn’t ridiculous.

Especially if the Bucks don’t turn things around and start winning some games.