Bucks Stock Market: Second consecutive loss to the Hornets

In a game that came down to the wire, Milwaukee could not finish the job.

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.

For the second time in three days, the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Charlotte Hornets at Spectrum Center. As is the nature of this NBA season, Pat Connaughton was able to play in this game after clearing health and safety protocols and Donte DiVincenzo returned from his latest injury, while the Hornets lost Kelly Oubre Jr., to the health and safety protocols. It should be noted that the Bucks were still without Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen, George Hill, and Brook Lopez.

In classic trap game fashion, this was a hideous game for Milwaukee. They got outworked and outplayed, again. The Hornets deserve credit too, as they were executing at a high level and managing to get tons of open looks through every defensive scheme Milwaukee was throwing at them. Let’s get into the movements.

Bobby Portis 📉

It was a tough outing for the People’s Champ. Not only did he have a poor offensive output (5 points on 28.6% from the field), but his defensive limitations were on full display against the darting quickness of the Hornets. He’s come a long way this season in terms of fitting into new schemes, but schemes cannot fix foot speed, and Charlotte took full advantage on the perimeter and at the rim. He also managed to hit three separate Hornets in the head without getting a flagrant foul. I don’t know what this means, but I wanted to mention it.

Jordan Nwora 📈

After an awful performance on Saturday, Nwora had a bounce-back game on Monday. Putting up 18 points on 10 shots is incredible efficiency, which is likely what led to his team-high plus-20 (single game plus-minus is noisy, don’t read too much into it).

Jordan was the lone offensive bright spot in this game, though his defense did leave much to be desired. It should be noted that he was tasked with guarding Charlotte’s guards because Milwaukee had no guards available, so his poor defensive outing shouldn’t be held against him too much this time.

The Milwaukee Bucks return home on Thursday to take on the fully health Splash Brothers at 6:30pm central. Ti and I will be hosting a Playback watch party for this game! You can get the link and join us by getting into our Discord, which you can do by tweeting at Ti or I (or emailing gyrosteppod@gmail.com) with a screenshot of your subscription to this Substack or five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.