Bucks Stock Market: Milwaukee extinguishes the undermanned Blazers
The Second Greg Monroe Era is off to an awesome start.
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.
The Milwaukee Bucks finally won a third quarter and put away an inferior opponent without extra drama late on Saturday night, as they smoked the Portland Trail Blazers without needing to try all that hard. The addition of Greg Monroe on a 10-day contract before the game is not entirely to credit for the nice win, but I do think it’s not coincidental that having another big body freed up Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to have explosive games without needing to cover 48 minutes of center play all by themselves. We’ll get to those two in a second since they’re both getting upstocks, but for his part Monroe looked spry — he couldn’t finish through contact whatsoever, which was jarring to see, but as long as he stops trying to post up repeatedly the quickness he traded his strength for should treat him well.
Bobby Portis 📈
Even if I hadn’t spoiled it up above, this was an obvious movement after the Portland game. Portis was nearly perfect on both ends of the ball, posting a game-high 30 points on 11/13 shooting from the field and 6/8 marksmanship from three-point range. Bobby also added 4 rebounds, 5 assists, 1 steal and 2 blocks, as he dominated the Blazers to kick off the road trip. It’s really hard to beat the Bucks when Bobby Portis plays well, and probably impossible when he plays this well.
Wes Matthews 📉
Wes Matthews has been relatively cold from deep for a few games now, and this felt like a low point as he missed both of his shots and had a truly grotesque turnover as he drove instead of taking a third shot and basically fell over, surrendering the ball to the Trail Blazers. It’s not nearly time to jump ship from the Matthews bandwagon, but hopefully Wes can knock down a few shots next time out and work on proving his early hot shooting wasn’t just a fluke.
Giannis Antetokounmpo 📈
Giannis has become so good at playing off of his teammates. The Greek Freak must have been thrilled to only need 12 shot attempts to handle business against Portland, especially with it being the first night of a back-to-back, as Giannis was again looking to pass more than shoot often early in this one. The Bucks were good enough to not need him to go full pedal to the medal in the second half, but Antetokounmpo still managed 29 points, 9 rebounds, 6 assists and a block in his 24 minutes, because he’s freaking incredible. Hot three-point shooting helped with the crazy amount of points Giannis scored per shot, as he made 4 of his 7 attempted threes, with most of those coming as he was wide open and shooting from the catch instead of the dribble.
The Bucks are back in action tomorrow (Sunday) night, when they take on the Los Angeles Clippers in LA at 8 pm Central.