https://youtu.be/Ki6Ks-f6tQo
I’m pretty sure, no, I’m almost 100% certain that what the Bucks did last night violated some kind of league rule. There’s no way that resting Giannis, Middleton, Holiday, and DiVincenzo all at the same time is in any way allowed. Adam Silver is probably shaking with rage and pounding shots of whiskey while turning to random pages in the NBA franchise agreement trying to find the maximum dollar amount that a team can be fined for punting on a random regular season game. He’s also berating the low-paid assistants who aren’t bringing him additional bottles of liquor fast enough and aren’t polishing his shiny bald head with enough vigor.
I really don’t care who gets fined or for how much. All I care about is that this blatant lack of willingness to field a competitive team resulted in unbelievable career highs for two Bucks players, Thanasis Antetokounmpo and Jordan Nwora, and paradoxically resulted in a strangely competitive game against a Randle-less Knicks. I mean, the Bucks should still absolutely face fines for this, because there’s no way they could have expected this end-of-bench scrub squad to even be marginally competitive, but it’s cool that the game wasn’t a top-to-bottom blowout.
Jordan Nwora has looked okay in limited minutes for the Bucks, so if you had forced me to pick a bench player would find some success in this odd game, I would have picked him. His bucket-getting ability at the end of blowouts is much more respectable than some other scrubs of the Bucks’ recent past. Nwora doesn’t yet have tons of experience playing “meaningful minutes”, but now I guess he does, because he just played 36 meaningful minutes in a game that Adam Silver probably should have forced the Bucks to forfeit straight up.
If Coach Bud tries to pull this stunt again, though, I really want him to prioritize a player other than Nwora. I think it’s Axel Toupane’s turn to score twenty.