Milwaukee Bucks: Takeaways From Loss To Denver Nuggets
By Adam McGee
In the presence of franchise royalty, a hapless Milwaukee Bucks team came up well short against the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday. What were the key takeaways, though?
As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bob Dandridge watched on, with both legends’ banners hanging over the court, the Milwaukee Bucks showed little to no signs of inspiration in a comprehensive loss to the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday.
When the two teams met in Denver not long before the All-Star break, the Bucks put on a spirited performance in a loss that at least showed the potential for them to break out of a long losing streak at that time.
On this occasion, Milwaukee may not have been in an equivalent spin in terms of results, but the product on the court was perhaps even more desperately in need of a turnaround than it was at that meeting a month ago.
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That was perhaps the spark for Jason Kidd‘s decision to initiate yet another lineup change (more on that later), but unfortunately the results were arguably even worse than they had been before it.
Having recorded his first career triple-double against the Bucks at the start of February, Nikola Jokic again took Milwaukee to task on Wednesday. On the night, he looked comfortably the best player on the floor (that includes Giannis), and his final line of 13 points, 14 rebounds and 10 assists in 30 minutes gifted him his fourth triple-double of the season.
Although the Bucks got stellar performances from Khris Middleton, Malcolm Brogdon, and even Matthew Dellavedova; it wasn’t close to enough as the damage had been done early on.
Milwaukee got a nice spell of play from an ultra small group of Brogdon, Dellavedova, Jason Terry, Middleton and Greg Monroe to finish the third and start the fourth, which was mostly responsible for ensuring that a deficit that was once as high as 31 points looked far more respectable at the finish.
Let’s dive even deeper into the action, though, and identify some of the key takeaways from the loss.