Bucks Stock Market: Disappointing loss to Philadelphia

At the end, it felt like neither team wanted to win the game, but I guess the Bucks didn't want to win more?

The Bucks Stock Market is a fictitious market run by the GSPN crew that tracks player stock “movement” following the conclusion of every game. Here’s the spreadsheet logging the game-by-game results.

In the last game before the All-Star break, the Milwaukee Bucks hosted the Philadelphia 76ers in a battle of MVP candidates. Though Philly was without James Harden (and the Bucks were without George Hill, Grayson Allen, Pat Connaughton, and Brook Lopez), Philly managed to squeak past Milwaukee to get the victory in part due to the dominant play of Joel Embiid. While Embiid and Giannis will be battling for end of season hardware, the pure basketball fan in me was entranced by watching these two titans go at it. Even though Milwaukee had plenty of opportunities to go out and get the victory, they ultimately kept shooting themselves in the foot and let the game slip though their fingers like sand. Let’s talk movements.

Khris Middleton📉

That was not pretty. Right from the jump, Khris did not have anything going for him. To his credit, he went full Dion Waiters and kept shooting, but he absolutely could not shoot himself out of a slump against Philly. 6-20 from the field and 2-12 from three is just disgusting, not much else one can say.

Bobby Portis📉

This is the type of matchup where Bobby needs to thrive on the offensive end to be valuable. Portis has no chance of doing anything defensively against the likes of Joel Embiid, so he needs to have extra juice on the offensive end to make up for his deficiencies. Yeah, that didn’t happen tonight. 6-13 from the field and 1-7 from three just isn’t getting it done. It’s similar to the Khris story, but a little more balanced in that this down stock comes from worse defense and a less egregious shooting performance, while Middleton’s down stock was from okay defense and atrocious shooting.

The next time the Milwaukee Bucks play will be Saturday, February 26th against the Brooklyn Nets in Fiserv Forum at 7:30 pm central. In the meantime, you can catch the Antetokounmpo brothers partake in the All-Star skills challenge on Saturday the 19th, and catch Giannis and Khris play in the All-Star game on Sunday the 20th.