The Bucks cruise past the Bulls in Chicago to complete the sweep
It's all upstocks in the Bucks Stock Market after a nice Windy City win.
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.
A few seasons ago, games like Tuesday night’s were all too common for the Milwaukee Bucks. An opponent, in this case DeMar DeRozan, puts on a ridiculous performance. (DeRozan had 40 points and 6 assists on 16/26 shooting.) One or more key Bucks players is simply okay compared to their expectations. (Giannis Antetokounmpo finished with just 18 points on 7/13 shooting, and Jrue Holiday only had 11 points although in fairness he did add 13 assists.) The opposing team has some seemingly important runs late in the game, as the Chicago Bulls did … to pull within 15 late in the fourth quarter.
Despite those key factors seeming to tilt away from Milwaukee, this was an easy win against the Bulls to complete the season sweep versus Chicago and keep the hope for the 1 seed alive (barely). We’ll get into some of the positives that led to that on the stock movements, but first a bit of sad news: Giannis’ MVP case is likely done after relatively pedestrian games against Dallas on Sunday and now this one in Chicago, given the lead Nikola Jokic has held for a while now. He never really pushed to run up his points total for a run at the scoring title and MVP trophy on Tuesday night, so it seems he was very serious when he said he didn’t care about any of that stuff. On a brighter note, Giannis’ run for a second Finals MVP is still very much alive.
Brook Lopez 📈
The stats don’t tell the full story of how great Brook Lopez was against the Bulls, and that says a lot considering Lopez dropped 28 points, 7 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks! Brook controlled the game on both ends in all of his minutes, absolutely owning the paint (and Nikola Vucevic) and utilizing his slow-motion drives to perfection to score at the rim over, and over, and over. The one piece missing from Brook’s game when he first returned from the back surgery was his interior scoring, as he solely shot jumpers early on, but clearly the big fella is comfortable pounding down low once more.
Grayson Allen 📈
If Grayson Allen is destined to be a super sixth man for the Bucks, that’s not a bad outcome at all if he continues to play like he did against Chicago. Grayson posted 13 points on 4/6 shooting, including a perfect 4/4 night at the charity stripe plus 3 rebounds, 1 assist, and 2 blocks. This is the energy and activity the Bucks need from Allen, and it appears he’s more capable of providing it when he’s out there with some other bench players — without trying to fit in around the Core Four of Giannis/Khris/Jrue/Brook.
Wes Matthews 📈
Speaking of the shooting guard spot, Wes Matthews had another zippy offensive game on Tuesday, posting 11 points on 3/4 shooting (all of them threes) plus a pair of free throws. Matthews also tossed in a few rebounds, and was looking like his early season self again out there on both ends. If he continues to knock down those threes at a solid clip, plus move around off-ball to keep defenses honest with guarding him, that Bucks starting 5 is going to be ridiculously tough to contend with.
Milwaukee is back in action on Thursday night when the Bucks take on the Boston Celtics in Milwaukee at 6:30 Central. This is a Playback game so you can watch live with us GSPN hosts — fill out this form to get access to the GSPN Discord, and you can get to our Playback room from there.