The Bucks don’t especially need Wesley Matthews to be especially good. They’ve got a lot of talent arranged neatly on their roster, enough where any of their players (maybe even Giannis) could get in a month-long slump and they would just keep winning games.
I say “month-long” because it feels like it’s been about a month that Matthews has been slumping. He still hits a few threes, but his scoring is a far cry just from where it was last year with the Mavericks. He averaged 15 per game for them before getting traded! That’s a lot of points! The Bucks could use some of those points, even if they don’t really need them! Matthews still gets to start every game, and I still appreciate his defensive capabilities, but I was getting sort of sad for him. He had a three rim out the game previous to this that just about ripped my heart out.
Tonight was a happy occasion for Bucks fans. Giannis dominated Zion Williamson (except for that whole rebound-getting-ripped-right-from-his-hands thing), Khris Middleton almost had a triple-double, Pat Connaughton dunked hard, and Matthews scored a decent amount of points. I’m looking forward to another few weeks of single-digit performances from him after this, but it’s nice to see that he can get at least a little hot at least a little bit of the time.