Much to my dismay, and to the dismay of all true Bucks fans, Pat “Connaughtations” “Patty Ice” Connaughton has largely fallen out of the Bucks rotation, despite being the funnest player on the Bucks roster. Supposedly Sterling Brown has gotten a lot better and has taken a bunch of his minutes (I’m not really seeing it, but whatever), but the bigger problem for him has been that he can’t hit threes at all anymore. He just can’t do it. He made all of his shots tonight except for the first one, which was an airball three from way too deep. Listen bro, you’re not Brook Lopez. Stop taking them from five feet behind the arc.
And when you’re not hitting your threes, you’re useless to Budenholzer. He still has all those intangible-y things he does, like hustling and being white, but without the three-ball (and with him still chucking it), it’s hard to play him. He did play pretty much the whole fourth quarter last game as the Bucks tried to come back against the Thunder, but even then, he didn’t score any points.
Which makes these 16 points even crazier. He hasn’t been doing anything at all, and now he gets to drop 16 in non-garbage time? It seemed like he almost missed all of the layups he took, but hey, they went in, and you get two points every time that happens. Unless you get three or one. I haven’t quite figured out how that all works yet.