Learning from Christmas Day
As far as the other side goes, the Bucks will certainly be aware of how their first meeting with the Sixers transpired six weeks ago back on Christmas Day.
Philadelphia ran through the Bucks’ league best defense that Wednesday afternoon at the Wells Fargo Center and made a season-high 21 3-pointers on a 47.7 percent clip that day, per NBA.com/stats. And as a result of their struggles slowing down the 76ers’ 3-point outburst, their 124.7 defensive rating that day stands as the second-worst mark of the season for the Bucks, standing behind their loss to the San Antonio Spurs last month.
Bucks All-Star swingman Khris Middleton reflected on what stood out from that awful loss from the Bucks’ side of things as he talked about it with Matt Velazquez of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before Thursday night’s clash:
"“They beat us,” Middleton said, thinking back to the first matchup. “As a player, as a competitor, you never want to lose one game, you never want to lose two times in a row to a team.” “They had a great game against us last time,” Middleton said. “Hit some tough threes, hit a lot of threes, somehow we’ve got to figure out how to contain the paint and get out to the shooters that they’ve got.”"
Certainly Philadelphia couldn’t turn in a better 3-point shooting performance than the kind they had Christmas Day, but we’ll just have to see whether Milwaukee can learn from their mistakes that fateful day.