I’ve been fairly pleased with the acquisition of Wesley Matthews by the Bucks, but just for fun, check out some of these statlines:
0 points, 1 rebound, 0 assists, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 18 minutes
0 points, 0 rebounds, 0 assists, 1 steal, 0 blocks, 20 minutes
0 points, 1 rebound, 1 assist, 1 steal, 0 blocks, 17 minutes
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting some SERIOUS Tony Snell vibes here. Why would we get rid of Snell if we were just going to sign a guy to do basically the same thing except be slightly quicker on the trigger when shooting threes? I loved Snell. Correction: I love Snell. Him not being on the Bucks any more will not change that.
But even when Matthews isn’t scoring, he’s playing pretty good defense (at least as far as I can tell, but I’m a horrible judge since everyone knows I don’t care at all about defense). And his spacing, you know, it helps out Giannis, who needs all the space he can possibly get. So during those do-nothing games that Matthews has, I’m not getting mad. He just blends into the background.
He did more of the same tonight, except that during the third quarter he decided it would be a fun time to start making some shots. He ended with 14 in the quarter to give him 19 in the game. Everyone’s going to pay attention to Giannis’ 50-burger, but it would still be a big fat L if Matthews didn’t come in and start providing some of the shooting that we were told he possessed.