12/29 - POSTGAME | Milwaukee Bucks (97) - (95) Oklahoma City Thunder

[NaturalThunder]

Ya we got away with some bull****, you guys got robbed. Would've loved to see some OT. But you guys are looking scary w/ a healthy PG13. Rooting for you guys in the West playoffs

Don't feel too bad. If we hadn't fallen behind 33-11 in the first quarter, we wouldn't have been in this situation.

[bondom34]

Ya we got away with some bull****, you guys got robbed. Would've loved to see some OT. But you guys are looking scary w/ a healthy PG13. Rooting for you guys in the West playoffs

lol an you guys suddenly the 4 seed again. Rooting for you guys too, goo luck man and drop by more!

[Funcrusher]

I missed the whole first half and just laughed when I saw Abrines's line.

low key the reason we lost this game.

It's also the reason we didn't beat the Raptors by 35 instead of 17. Unfortunately for Abrines, when he's been on the floor the last two games our +/- numbers have been comically terrible. The last two games he hasn't even looked like a G-League caliber player. We survived it against the Raptors because we were at full strength and Adams played well. Tonight, we were missing George and Adams had such an awful game he got dominated by a pretty bad starting center in John Henson and we couldn't overcome Abrines' ineptitude.

Hopefully tonight is enough to convince Donovan to permanently bench Abrines and enough for Presti to realize he absolutely has to make a move at the deadline to shore up our bench.

Billy is stubborn and refuses to give Patterson burn. We will continue to lose games for this reason until Presti gets a bench scorer.

[NaturalThunder]

Ya we got away with some bull****, you guys got robbed. Would've loved to see some OT. But you guys are looking scary w/ a healthy PG13. Rooting for you guys in the West playoffs

lol an you guys suddenly the 4 seed again. Rooting for you guys too, goo luck man and drop by more!

This. The Bucks are my favorite non-Thunder team. I get a lot less pissy about losing to them than I do any other team. They lapped us several times over in the 1st quarter and still mostly outplayed us the rest of the game. I mean they outplayed us enough the rest of the game to hold a 14-point lead with eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter.

But I like the Bucks. Giannis may be my favorite non-Westbrook player, and they're very similar to us in that they are smaller-ish market blue-collar type of team that has to figure out a way to be a contender without attracting big time free agents.

[Dn4sty]

Donovan’s rotations in the 1st quarter added fuel to an already terrible start by OKC. Yes the refs were/are terrible, but Donovan has to seriously shoulder a pretty decent amount of the blame for that abomination. He obviously realized it in the 2nd quarter and half, but how he didn’t see it at 16-2 (or before is beyond me).

I REALLY like Abrines and believe he can become a really solid player in this league, but he’s been put in a really bad spot (granted he’s not responding well at all to really anything this season).

I’m not sure it makes sense to keep him, especially if he’s needed to match salaries or viewed as an asset in a trade. Although it won’t shock me in the least to see him end up being successful in the future on a different team.

[DoubleJ13]

Adams wasn't in because the Bucks went extremely small. It was Bledsoe, Brogdon, Snell, Middleton, and Giannis.

Sub Melo for Adams and put him on Giannis. Huestis/Melo can't guard Giannis one on one. All you had to do was force him away from the paint.

Josh actually played that great, he used the baseline as an extra defender like you're supposed to do. Just couldn't account for a ref standing a foot away not doing his job.

[Thundershock88]

Adams wasn't in because the Bucks went extremely small. It was Bledsoe, Brogdon, Snell, Middleton, and Giannis.

Sub Melo for Adams and put him on Giannis. Huestis/Melo can't guard Giannis one on one. All you had to do was force him away from the paint.

Do you really want Adams guarding Giannis on the perimeter? That would have been just as disastrous. He's not quick enough, even though he's a great post defender.

[HurricaneKid]

Tough break gentlemen. Great game. Would have loved to see another 5:00.

Curious about why the best D in the league in a last sec defensive situation after a TO would run out Felton/Melo/Huestis. I was expecting Roberson, Adams... Just something else. I know they were all a big part of the comeback but I... well I would have put a different 5 out there.

I guess I'm trying to feel out the room on the temperature of Donovan's seat. Making Kidd look good is NOT a good sign.

[RunOKC]

Abrines is unplayable now

[H2tObes]

What a rough way for the game to end, Ill be cheering for you guys though as the season goes on. Us small markets gotta stick together

[sleestak33]

Blame the refs all you want but this game was lost mainly because Adams only shot the ball 7 times (and also because OKC missed 5 free throws in the last 2 minutes). In a game without your 2nd best player PG they needed to feed the big Kiwi all game and just like in many of their losses they just seem to forget Adams is out there. There should never be a game where Roberson gets more shots than Adams...that's just ridiculous. They took way too many contested long jumpers which has been their biggest downfall all year. It's all good though because at the end of the day they played like crap and didn't have their 2nd best player yet still probably should have won against a pretty good Milwaukee team. They're going to be much more fun to watch from here on out and by the end of the year I think they'll be prepared to make a playoff run.

[Pillendreher]

Couple of things:

-The NBA needs to address this Replay issue. JVG has had some excellent points over the years on this one. It's purpose is to avoid wrong calls. Yet you can't use it when a call is in question. The rules governing the Replay are nonsense. You either use it correctly or not at all. They can review it if they call it out of bounds? What nonsense is that? You have two choices in that situation and you can only review it if you made a certain one? Why?
-It's glaringly obvious that we're heavily dependent on both George and Melo as 3pt shooters. We currently don't have anybody else who can come in and give you a couple of 3s on good % every game. Every other 3 we get is in the 'I guess we'll take it' category.
-Abrines is the new Morrow. A good to great shooter who is not getting shots and is the odd man out defensively. He's obviously not this bad, but our complete inability to generate shots for role players is killing the little shooting we have yet again. Why is this so difficult for us? Kyle Korver is having one hell of a season offensively for Cleveland, yet he would be borderline unplayable for us.
-George is out and everything we did well the last 6 games goes out the window. Have to question both Russ and Donovan. Why did we start both the 1st and 3rd quarter with consecutive post up plays? Is this last season all over again when we posted up Adams? Why didn't we run some of the same stuff we do for George with Abrines? Everybody was just standing around yet again.
-

Huestis and Grant gonna combine for 50 minutes tonight.

Called it. I'm sorry, but this not the way to go if you actually want to contend. I don't even know if Huestis is an NBA player and Grant is still Grant (he has substituted shooting 40 % from 3 on low volume with finishing better at the rim this season).
-Recently we have created some bad habits defensively when it comes to covering the 3pt line. I don't know why, but we keep collapsing as a 5 man group on guys and leave opposing players wide open on the perimeter. We do this multiple times each game and it is costing us. Maybe we do this because we want to get the board, but you can't keep doing that.
-Our roster is unbalanced. In our current rotation, we have two point guards, one shooting guard, three small forwards (you can count Dre as shooting guard I guess), two 3/4 tweeners, one power forward and one center. Something needs to be done about this. In our current 10 man rotation, we're basically playing 5 Small Forwards in Roberson, George, Anthony, Huestis and Grant. Meanwhile, we don't get any real offensive production from the SG position and can't replace Adams at all.
-Adams can not get outplayed by Henson. Henson is a scrub.

Let's hope they come out on fire against the Mavs.

[Reign23]

I don't know why okc couldn't generate catch and shoot 3s for melo the last two games. back to iso long 2s...

[dakomish23]

A tough L but like most said they only have themselves to blame for the hole they dug.

Ended up being their grave.

Presti needs to fix this bench

[Funcrusher]

Adams wasn't in because the Bucks went extremely small. It was Bledsoe, Brogdon, Snell, Middleton, and Giannis.

Sub Melo for Adams and put him on Giannis. Huestis/Melo can't guard Giannis one on one. All you had to do was force him away from the paint.

Do you really want Adams guarding Giannis on the perimeter? That would have been just as disastrous. He's not quick enough, even though he's a great post defender.

But at least if Giannis beats him one on one you can bring Huestis to help Adams. And even if Adams guards Giannis at the perimeter, there's not much he can do outside the paint with 4 seconds left. Plus I'm pretty sure he inbounded the ball at the mid post anyway, so that point is moot.

[Thundershock88]

Sub Melo for Adams and put him on Giannis. Huestis/Melo can't guard Giannis one on one. All you had to do was force him away from the paint.

Do you really want Adams guarding Giannis on the perimeter? That would have been just as disastrous. He's not quick enough, even though he's a great post defender.

But at least if Giannis beats him one on one you can bring Huestis to help Adams. And even if Adams guards Giannis at the perimeter, there's not much he can do outside the paint with 4 seconds left. Plus I'm pretty sure he inbounded the ball at the mid post anyway, so that point is moot.

I orignally questioned the lineup, but it made sense with Dre hurt. The Bucks went small and ran iso. The defense we ran was fine. It should have worked. Russell was quick enough to help rim protect (he nearly blocked the damn thing), and he was quick enough to defend the perimeter if Giannis kicked it out. Adams wouldn't have been. It was fine. It worked, call (or lack therof) just didn't go our way.

[Funcrusher]

Do you really want Adams guarding Giannis on the perimeter? That would have been just as disastrous. He's not quick enough, even though he's a great post defender.

But at least if Giannis beats him one on one you can bring Huestis to help Adams. And even if Adams guards Giannis at the perimeter, there's not much he can do outside the paint with 4 seconds left. Plus I'm pretty sure he inbounded the ball at the mid post anyway, so that point is moot.

I orignally questioned the lineup, but it made sense with Dre hurt. The Bucks went small and ran iso. The defense we ran was fine. It should have worked. Russell was quick enough to help rim protect (he nearly blocked the damn thing), and he was quick enough to defend the perimeter if Giannis kicked it out. Adams wouldn't have been. It was fine. It worked, call (or lack therof) just didn't go our way.

Nah you right.

[Thundershock88]

Welp, here it is. Anyone feel better? http://official.nba.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/12/L2M-MIL-OKC-12-29-2017.pdf