leado01 wrote:This team will not develop running 6 or 7 players and refusing to close games with the movement that gets you leads. I would have rather lost and spread the minutes out.
I'm not expecting to win all of our games, but I do expect some sense of decency and logic regarding playing time.
I wonder why Milwaukee blew right by us in the 4th?
Because the bench gave up the huge lead to begin with. Did you watch this game because this is example A of why it's so hard for Thibs to play his bench more. They were God awful tonight. It's just straight insane to criticize Thibs for minutes tonight given the huge negatives that came off the bench.
I agree, but he has to let them play thru it and try and develop some continuity. It's just not sustainable, fools gold.
In a normal game sure. Play the bench more. On a night like tonight with what they were giving you, you are literally throwing the game away if you play them more. Legit almost -1 per minute for all of them except Belly who's still not back yet. Tonight's just not the night to argue the bench needed to play more.
Its also hard when 3 starting positions played less than their season average. Ball movement down the stretch in my opinion needs to get better but we are close to where we need to be. Also when did people want the bench to be played. Wiggins got hurt when we were up 20, he came back in when we were up 7.
leado01 wrote:This team will not develop running 6 or 7 players and refusing to close games with the movement that gets you leads. I would have rather lost and spread the minutes out.
I'm not expecting to win all of our games, but I do expect some sense of decency and logic regarding playing time.
I wonder why Milwaukee blew right by us in the 4th?
Because the bench gave up the huge lead to begin with. Did you watch this game because this is example A of why it's so hard for Thibs to play his bench more. They were God awful tonight. It's just straight insane to criticize Thibs for minutes tonight given the huge negatives that came off the bench.
I agree, but he has to let them play thru it and try and develop some continuity. It's just not sustainable, fools gold.
In a normal game sure. Play the bench more. On a night like tonight with what they were giving you, you are literally throwing the game away if you play them more. Legit almost -1 per minute for all of them except Belly who's still not back yet. Tonight's just not the night to argue the bench needed to play more.
I'm not pointing to anything specific tonight. Just in general. To be honest I was surprised he let Belly play as long as he did. He made a couple bad plays and let him play a couple minutes after that, that's not the norm. It's a common theme, Tibs has been here 1.5 years and he's teams have coughed up leads regularly. That 4th quarter offense was hideous. Been that way all year. Im repeating what everyone is saying.
At times they do it but when it comes to the 4th it's Jimmy walking the ball up the court 90% of the time.
I was frustrated with the Wolves offense down the stretch but I do think the Bucks D absolutely deserves some credit for how difficult it was to get into anything. They have plenty of length and they can do a lot of effective switching. Obviously it's also likely the Wolves were just out of gas. Who knows how well Wiggins ankle was feeling. It's tougher to drive to the basket of that thing is feeling stiff or something.
It's a shame we couldn't have finished this one off but a back to back after an overtime down a starting PG then Tyus dislocated his finger Brooks who hasn't looked good anyway had been sick and Belly is rusty... playing a plenty talented Bucks team on the road I don't think there is shame in losing this one. If the Wolves wouldn't have had some of those TO's in the first half some probably were because of not having a real backup PG they probably win this one. Even with a healthy roster this was far from a guaranteed win anyway.
Also other than the Bucks having some injury issues of their own you can see why they have struggled.
Middleton is a really nice complimentary player and he can facilitate but isn't really an iso guy or do a ton of creating. He is having a pretty nice season and I see he is finally getting up more 3's.
BizarroJerry wrote:Good to see Thibs kill the starters again, on a back to back no less.
Pretty tough game to do something much different when you are down a starting PG and your 3rd guy has also been sick enough he wasn't even available the night before.
CoolBreeze44 wrote:One vs five isn't going to work every night
Absolutely right, Cool. Tonight Jimmy and Crawford didn't play super iso basketball like they did last night, although Butler still played well. The result is that we couldn't stave off the Buck's closing surge.
Even the overtime win last night was instructive. It was a great win in the face of adversity. But we won primarily because of Butler's amazing individual talent and will. In contrast, Denver showed great ball movement and passing during the overtime, creating easy buckets for different players that nearly got them the win. Denver lost because Butler is a great player who had an unbelievably tremendous game. But it's not enough over the long haul.
We will make the playoffs this season on talent alone unless Butler goes down. But we need better ball movement and pace to get the most out of the talent we have. We've actually been moving the ball better lately, but not well enough and not in crunch time. In fairness, we might have run out of steam tonight on a back-to-back with Teague down. Yet, with Crawford jacking the ball up repeatedly tonight and missing, this would have been a good night to get Bazz in the game.
To be fair the Bucks were running similar sets with Bledsoe and Giannias but they just beat us off the dribble consistently. It was a game they should have won after building the huge lead. They ran out of gas and you are right they need better ball movement down the stretch. The thing I do like it small things they have to fix. It is not like we have a massive weakness.
Many, including my relatives in Milwaukee, think the Bucks have been underachieving this season. I've watched a number of Bucks games this season and they also play a lot of iso ball.
I'm disappointed in tonight's loss given the big 3rd quarter lead we had. But I'm not surprised we lost and I'm not going to extrapolate much from this game. We saw the same weaknesses we've seen before from this team in the 4th and it was worse tonight on the heels of an overtime game the night before.
Did anyone else wonder if Bledsoe fouled Wiggins on that one possession under the basket on purpose because Kidd told them to foul Wiggins whenever they could? Jim Peterson seemed confused. Kidd has been employing some interesting tactics which have been criticized by plenty of people that probably know more about the math of what he is trying to do than me.
