Milwaukee Bucks: Takeaways from loss to Dallas Mavericks
In their first preseason tilt, the Milwaukee Bucks took on the Dallas Mavericks and lost a nailbiter 106-104. With that, we take a look at how the team looked and which players stood out for their respective performances.
After a few long months, Milwaukee Bucks basketball is officially back! Well, sort of, or more unofficially back, I guess.
Following this year’s Media Day as well as the team’s first week of training camp, the Bucks got their first experience of game action on Monday night taking on the Dallas Mavericks in a hard fought affair, given the circumstances. Unfortunately, the team didn’t get the result they wanted as they lost 106-104 in a game that went down to the wire.
The Bucks entered the game shorthanded, with star Giannis Antetokounmpo away from the team after the untimely passing of his father as well as second-year player Thon Maker sidelined with a reported ankle injury.
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Going in with a modified starting lineup, Bucks head coach Jason Kidd gave players from up and down the roster a good, but limited amount of run to get back into regular season form, save for two exceptions in veteran Jason Terry and training camp invitee James Young.
By going with that deep of a rotation, it was essentially a tale of two halves for the Bucks, both defined by their experience and inexperience based on the personnel on the floor.
While it’s safe to say all Bucks fans came into the game with generally low expectations, despite their excitement to experience Bucks basketball once again, there were certain elements of the team’s performance that everyone could have seen coming, like the smooth stylings of Khris Middleton, the quiet, tough defensive display of Tony Snell and so on.
With that said, there were performances or factors that came as somewhat of a surprise, for both good and bad reasons, as we’ll go into shortly.
Of course, the caveat hanging over all of this is this being the preseason, but that won’t stop us from remarking on what stood out and maybe throwing in a mild take or two, as we like to do here at BTBP.
So without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at how certain Bucks fared in the team’s first preseason game and much, much more.