We’re still waiting on that elusive 20-burger from Donte DiVincenzo. This is the fate of many a role-player in the NBA, to go from dropping 20 literally all the time in high school, to doing it sometimes in college, to never doing it in the NBA. Has he been to the G-League yet? I don’t think so, but he totally should. Stats accumulated there don’t mean anything at all, but if he wants to do some real scoring, that would be the place to go.
In the meantime, a game like this is probably the best chance for DiVincenzo to get some scoring in. No Giannis, that’s the most important thing, not like he’s a chucker or anything but he uses up a lot of possessions and gets to have the ball a lot (notice how a ton of DiVincenzo’s points came right as he was advancing the ball up the court). Also Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe were sucking, necessitating someone else stepping up. Add in the Bucks going down big early, meaning that there was no pressure to shoot “good shots” and instead pressure to just put the ball in the basket, and you end up with the closest thing to a 20-burger that is possible without it actually being a 20-burger: a 19-burger.
I still maintain the the Bucks in general were more fun when they sucked. This doesn’t apply to DiVincenzo, since he wasn’t around for that, but he’d be doing a ton better if he were on some of those Bucks teams from a decade ago. Winning and having championship potential and MVPs and stuff is fun and all, but what I really want is role-players scoring 30 (shout out to Carlos Delfino) and getting triple-doubles (shout out to Drew Gooden, begrudgingly). And that just doesn’t happen very often for the Bucks anymore.