Milwaukee Bucks: Takeaways from loss to Utah Jazz

LAS VEGAS, NV - JULY 14: Eric Griffin
LAS VEGAS, NV - JULY 14: Eric Griffin
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LAS VEGAS, NV – JULY 14: Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz speaks with Tony Bradley
LAS VEGAS, NV – JULY 14: Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz speaks with Tony Bradley

Where are the players?

Adam Silver really needs to get going on fixing the NBA’s Summer League rest problem. Thon elected to work out instead of even playing in Summer League, and plenty of players picked not playing over playing.

Most notably in this game, the Jazz chose not to play electrifying rookie Donovan Mitchell at all. Mitchell had been dominating his Summer League competition thus far, and was one of the main draws for watching the game on Friday night, until he didn’t play. It’s not like Utah really needed him to, though.

The Bucks also played it safe with minutes. Most of the Summer Bucks did participate in this game, besides Thon of course, but none of the four players projected to be on Milwaukee’s roster next year (Vaughn, Gary Payton II, D.J. Wilson, and Sterling Brown) got more than 18 minutes of action, and Vaughn got only 14 minutes.

As boring as that might be to fans who watched the game, considering injury scares that have happened to both Markelle Fultz and Brandon Ingram already this Summer League, it’s hard to argue with the idea of not pushing guys too hard in an especially meaningless Vegas game.