Bucks Stock Market: Love was not in the air for Milwaukee

Anfernee Simons, Jusuf Nurkic, and Josh Hart were too much to handle?

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.

After a 3-1 west coast road trip and three days off, the Milwaukee Bucks returned home to take on the Portland Trail Blazers in a battle of the Hart (Get it? Like Josh Hart? Valentine’s Day puns!). With no Giannis Antetokounmpo due to ankle soreness, Serge Ibaka got the starting nod in his first game as a Buck. Though having the reigning Finals MVP out of the lineup is most certainly a detriment, Milwaukee had the necessary pieces to get it done, but ultimately got blown out. Let’s talk movements.

Khris Middleton 📉

This is the type of game where you expect the All-Star to step up, but that did not happen in the slightest. Sure, he had 11 rebounds and 9 assists, but he also had a terrible scoring performance. He shot 3-15 from the field. Let me say that again: Khris Middleton shot 3-15 from the field. That’s 20%. Unacceptable. It’s not even just that he missed a ton of shots, but it was the manner in which he did it. He was taking walk-up threes down 20 in the third quarter and putting up bricks, which nuked any comeback chance that Milwaukee had. Couple that with four turnovers and turnstile defense and you get a down stock from GSPN. I was tempted to give Khris two down stocks for this game, but that felt a bit unfair as basketball is a team sport. However, this loss felt more on Middleton than anyone else.

Milwaukee will look to rebound from this loss as they play the second game of a six-game home stand against the new-look Indiana Pacers on Tuesday at 7:00pm central.