Without their best player for much of the week, the Milwaukee Bucks won two out of three games. Many players stepped up in the absence of Giannis Antetokounmpo and three worthy candidates will be discussed at length.
Playing two important games against potential playoff teams is never an easy task. It is an even more difficult task when you are missing your best player and you play those teams back-to-back. That is essentially what happened to the Milwaukee Bucks this week.
Giannis Antetokounmpo missed the first game of the week with an illness and then participated briefly in the the second game of the week before discovering that he was just too sick to perform to his best.
Those games were against the Washington Wizards at home and the San Antonio Spurs on the road respectively. The Bucks lost to the Wizards like you would imagine they would but they unexpectedly took down the Spurs.
Finally the Bucks played and defeated the Miami Heat at home in their last matchup of the week. Giannis participated in that game and did his usual, insane Giannis things.
But this is all the time we have for Giannis talk on this occasion. Since he missed basically two full games he will be excluded from the player of the week rankings. This means his consecutive streak of number one wins will end at 11.
This is a bitter sweet situation. On the one hand we will get a ranking without Giannis which will give a new Buck some time in the spot light but on the other hand Giannis loses an opportunity to keep up his dominant stretch. Luckily for Antetokounmpo, he still has enough season left to break his 11 week win streak.
Winning on the road against the Spurs without Giannis is a major achievement for the Bucks. The team proved that they are not a one trick pony this week. So many players contributed to the nice week the Bucks had. It is a shame we can not speak about them all. But with that comes glory given to the top three, it is a real balance.
Four players looked like worthy candidates for the rankings this week. Two of them were battling it out for the top spot. It was a really close call between them both but one had to settle for second. Additionally, there was a pretty competitive race for third. However, the man in third was an easier decision to make.
Let’s get to the rankings and see who fell in to the third spot!