I’ve said before that I think I enjoyed the Bucks more when they really sucked, when all their players sucked, and when every win was an occasion to be wildly celebrated instead of accepted as the norm. I don’t know what I was thinking when I said that, because losing SUCKS. And what sucks even more than losing is losing when you shoot like 3 percent from the field and you get your butt totally kicked by some team who is making you look like you’ve never played organized basketball before. That’s what happened to the Bucks all the time in the old days (Earl Barron being the high-scorer in a game where the Bucks scored 56 will live on in my memory forever), and that’s what happened in this game.
And it sucked.
The Bucks couldn’t get anything going from the perimeter, while the Heat absolutely could. That’s the secret sauce to beating the Bucks: stop one of the three-chuckingest teams in the league from making any threes, and then make at least 15 (preferably 20) of your own. And there you go! Easy win! It also helps if you have a dude who can make Giannis work extra hard for his points.
On a night like this, where the threes aren’t falling and Giannis is as neutralized as it’s possible to be for him, that’s when you need to let Brook Lopez go to work in the post. Before he became a floor-spacer, he did his work in the paint, in the post. He knows how to get buckets down there. It isn’t always pretty, but he has a nice array of hooks and fadeaways and stuff that seem to go in more often than not.
In fact, could we just forget about him shooting threes for the time being? Only the existence of Jordan Poole makes him not the worst high-volume three-point shooter in the NBA. Who cares about spacing, just plant your butt in the paint along with Giannis and make other teams deal with the overwhelming girth.