Pistons-Bucks - THE BRAWL FOR IT ALL

[bstein14]

Bucks having the highest 3 point shooting percentage (minimum 25 attempts) by any team in the league since 2015 when the Pacers shot 73% from deep.

[TPA]

Bucks having the highest 3 point shooting percentage (minimum 25 attempts) by any team in the league since 2015 when the Pacers shot 73% from deep.

The Pistons best perimeter defenders hardly get a sniff because they can't keep up offensively.

[bstein14]

Last two games just incredibly frustrating to watch. Likely leaving right after this beat down to get on a plane and go get whooped by Boston tomorrow since they are sitting at home resting watching this one.

[Fennis Dembo]

Bucks having the highest 3 point shooting percentage (minimum 25 attempts) by any team in the league since 2015 when the Pacers shot 73% from deep.

The Pistons best perimeter defenders hardly get a sniff because they can't keep up offensively.

The game plan was double Giannas, that's going to lead to open 3's.

[TPA]

Bucks having the highest 3 point shooting percentage (minimum 25 attempts) by any team in the league since 2015 when the Pacers shot 73% from deep.

The Pistons best perimeter defenders hardly get a sniff because they can't keep up offensively.

The game plan was double Giannas, that's going to lead to open 3's.

I saw a lot of single coverage on Giannis. He cooked everybody this game.

[Neptune]

I'm not mad at this lost. Just took an ass whoop'n by a good playoff caliber team. Gotta keep our head up and keep pushing for that play-in spot

[Mr Peanut]

Yeah I think the "start Stew" narrative seems to be getting louder with each game that passes. He has been elite defensively this season. Also brings some additional spacing to the starting group.

The first thing a starting C should do in a game is to win the opening tap, because that can matter in the 4th quarter of a close game. Let me know when Stew grows 2-3" or develops mad hops and timing like Ben Wallace and then he should start. I'm much more concerned about who finishes the game. Let some dud C like Jerome James whose only real talent is winning the opening tap start, for all I care.

This is absolutely the funniest take I’ve seen on here in a while.

Yeah I couldn't tell if that was a troll comment or not. If you lose the opening tip you still end up starting the possession in two out of the next three quarters. Unless winning the opening tip is supposed to give your team some sort of psychological advantage but I don't feel like that's the case.

Anyway, this was a somewhat frustrating game to watch seeing the opposing team on fire from three. Our perimeter defense could've been better sure, but you will struggle to ever win a game when the other team is shooting that well.

[Uncle Mxy]

The first thing a starting C should do in a game is to win the opening tap, because that can matter in the 4th quarter of a close game. Let me know when Stew grows 2-3" or develops mad hops and timing like Ben Wallace and then he should start. I'm much more concerned about who finishes the game. Let some dud C like Jerome James whose only real talent is winning the opening tap start, for all I care.

This is absolutely the funniest take I’ve seen on here in a while.

Yeah I couldn't tell if that was a troll comment or not. If you lose the opening tip you still end up starting the possession in two out of the next three quarters. Unless winning the opening tip is supposed to give your team some sort of psychological advantage but I don't feel like that's the case.

Anyway, this was a somewhat frustrating game to watch seeing the opposing team on fire from three. Our perimeter defense could've been better sure, but you will struggle to ever win a game when the other team is shooting that well.

I like having the edge at the beginning and in the 4th quarter. There's a good article about it, here:

https://www.theringer.com/2024/02/21/nba/jump-ball-rules-strategy-chicanery-history

Having said that, the lineup I care most about is the one that ends the game for practical purposes (not talking Human Victory Cigars).

I don't get why Reed wasn't playing more, especially with all the fouls against Duren and Stew trying to keep their bigs in check. I don't get Special K's man-love for Tobias, and wasn't shocked to see he had the worst +/-. "Somewhat frustrating"? Closer to damn infuriating if you ask me. <sigh>

[bstein14]

Predictably predictable. You could see the Pistons play start to trail off the last 5 games or so outside of the Indiana one-off, I'd be surprised if the season doesn't spiral out of control now.

After the Boston and NY game we’ll get 12 days off. Hopefully that break recenters them and prevents a spiral

No we wont, we'll have two games added to our schedule if we miss the CUP. I believe they schedule everyone 80 games and then they add two during the cup for everyone that doesn't make the final 8 in Vegas. I believe we'll get two games against EC teams that aren't in our division an aren't in the West that didn't make the CUP that we are only scheduled against 3 games this season at the moment. Probably a small list of potential teams.

The two games added are another game against the Celtics in Boston an a game against the Heat at home.

Nov 30th Philly LOSS
Dec 3rd Milwaukee LOSS
Dec 4th @ Celtics (Likely LOSS)
Dec 7th @ Knicks (Likely LOSS)
Dec 12th @ Celtics (Likely LOSS)
Dec 16th vs Heat (Hopefully a Win)

Looks like some we could very likely hit our longest losing streak of the season at 5 or 6 games. We've already fallen down to 11th in the East so we really can't afford to let this losing streak get too big.

[Billl]

It's disappointing to watch them play defense that poorly. Realistically though, they are 9-14. That's a 32 win pace. If they keep that up, I'd call that a really successful season. It's not like we were going to go from "possibly worst team in the history of the NBA" to playoffs in 1 off season. The key guys need to keep making progress and let the wins and losses fall where they may.

[Snakebites]

It's disappointing to watch them play defense that poorly. Realistically though, they are 9-14. That's a 32 win pace. If they keep that up, I'd call that a really successful season. It's not like we were going to go from "possibly worst team in the history of the NBA" to playoffs in 1 off season. The key guys need to keep making progress and let the wins and losses fall where they may.

Yeah. I think the fact that we're still this bad really speaks to how far we have/had to climb. The bar was set extremely low last season, but so far we're performing above it.

There's still some fundamental flaws with this team. Not every player is someone who realistically can play a key role on a "good" version of this team. A lot will have to be shuffled around or outright replaced. But really? This team was so fundamentally broken last year that I don't think more improvement than this was ever realistic.

[Kalamazoo317]

This is the first one where I've really questioned the game plan, especially in terms of in-game adjustments once the Bucks got a big lead. Why were our veteran snipers (Beasley, Harris, THJ) spending so much time in the paint instead of launching threes? At a certain point you're down far enough that your only hope is to increase your risk profile. We have too many guys who're way too passive on offense and turn down too many decent shots hoping for something perfect.
Possibly Beefstew's worst game of the season too. His passiveness on offense lead directly to a couple of turnovers and he couldn't defend without fouling.
As a team we really need to get better at defending the three point line and at shooting threes with confidence and without hesistation. We're not going to succeed in the modern NBA if we can't do those two things.

[Billl]

This is the first one where I've really questioned the game plan, especially in terms of in-game adjustments once the Bucks got a big lead. Why were our veteran snipers (Beasley, Harris, THJ) spending so much time in the paint instead of launching threes? At a certain point you're down far enough that your only hope is to increase your risk profile. We have too many guys who're way too passive on offense and turn down too many decent shots hoping for something perfect.
Possibly Beefstew's worst game of the season too. His passiveness on offense lead directly to a couple of turnovers and he couldn't defend without fouling.
As a team we really need to get better at defending the three point line and at shooting threes with confidence and without hesistation. We're not going to succeed in the modern NBA if we can't do those two things.

Meh. It didn't work. "Force Giannis to give it up and hope their shooters miss" isn't a stupid game plan. We tried the opposite of "Stay home on their shooters and make Giannis score 50 to beat us" last time.

And we took 33 3's and weren't "on". Adding a couple more to get to league average wasn't going to make any difference.

[Laimbeer]

Last two games just incredibly frustrating to watch. Likely leaving right after this beat down to get on a plane and go get whooped by Boston tomorrow since they are sitting at home resting watching this one.

Probably more to do with Boston being a massively better team.

[Kalamazoo317]

This is the first one where I've really questioned the game plan, especially in terms of in-game adjustments once the Bucks got a big lead. Why were our veteran snipers (Beasley, Harris, THJ) spending so much time in the paint instead of launching threes? At a certain point you're down far enough that your only hope is to increase your risk profile. We have too many guys who're way too passive on offense and turn down too many decent shots hoping for something perfect.
Possibly Beefstew's worst game of the season too. His passiveness on offense lead directly to a couple of turnovers and he couldn't defend without fouling.
As a team we really need to get better at defending the three point line and at shooting threes with confidence and without hesistation. We're not going to succeed in the modern NBA if we can't do those two things.

Meh. It didn't work. "Force Giannis to give it up and hope their shooters miss" isn't a stupid game plan. We tried the opposite of "Stay home on their shooters and make Giannis score 50 to beat us" last time.

And we took 33 3's and weren't "on". Adding a couple more to get to league average wasn't going to make any difference.

The number of three point attempts might've close to evened out by the end of the game (41 them, 33 us) but when there was still a decent amount of time left in the game they had more makes than we had attempts and our offense was routinely turning down outside looks to go in the paint and turn it over. I wonder how much of our low outside shooting potential was our hesitation and reluctance to fire away? We need our shooters to shoot with confidence and without hesitation.