The Milwaukee Bucks face another Central Divison opponent on Monday night when the Detroit Pistons roll into Milwaukee.
The Milwaukee Bucks are out here raising fan hopes after a fantastic game against the Indiana Pacers on Saturday night. After a few rough losses being made much, much worse by the loss of Jabari Parker for the rest of the season, the Bucks seemed destined to struggle for a while.
That is, until they took the floor in Indiana. Milwaukee controlled pretty much the entire game, in part thanks to a new starting five that featured Thon Maker starting at center and John Henson not playing a single minute.
The Bucks found plenty of ways to score with the extra spacing provided by Thon, and the team flourished from three-point range. Jason Kidd has tried just about every possible tweak thus far, but it seems like he might’ve found a winner with his latest experiment.
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The Detroit Pistons might be another opponent who has trouble handling Thon as a stretch five. Detroit rarely plays small, which makes sense considering Andre Drummond is the Pistons franchise player, for all intents and purposes.
Drummond is a fantastic rebounder to be sure, and the young Thon could have lots of trouble keeping up with him on the glass. On the other hand, Drummond could well struggle trying to chase Thon around the perimeter all night.
There might be a bit of a chess match between Kidd and Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy on Monday. To figure out which team has a good shot of winning, we’ll look at major keys for both of them, plus highlight a Piston to watch. Finally, some predictions about the game will be made to wrap things up.