Bud’s bizarro Bucks
Things got weird on Monday night, as Mike Budenholzer blindsided everyone with a drastic shake-up of his starting lineup and rotation, albeit almost certainly for one night only.
Only Wesley Matthews featured out of Milwaukee’s usual first choice lineup, and even beyond that only Pat Connaughton, Robin Lopez, Ersan Ilyasova, and Kyle Korver have been able to rely on regular minutes out of those who saw the floor on Monday.
Giannis Antetokounmpo continued to nurse his knee, while Eric Bledsoe also missed out through a knee injury, and George Hill was sidelined with an adductor contusion. But the real surprises were that Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, Donte DiVincenzo, and Marvin Williams were all healthy scratches.
Considering the Bucks were playing short-handed on the second night of a back-to-back, it would have been reasonable for Bud to simply decide against putting undue strain on the players he would otherwise have needed to lean much more heavily on. Giannis’ injury essentially put paid to the prospect of 70 wins, and with the only goal now being to be healthy and prepared for the playoffs, a conservative approach in this kind of situation was logical.
But as it turns out this may not simply have been an act of managing minutes, or a stunt to protest having to play the second game of a back-to-back at altitude in Denver. Speaking after the game, Brook Lopez revealed that he had slept through a team meeting earlier that morning.
I followed up, asking Brook if the other guys who sat slept through the meeting:
— Matt Velazquez (@Matt_Velazquez) March 10, 2020
“No," Lopez said with a laugh. "I think other guys were there. I don’t know. But I don’t know, maybe he'll double it up somehow, too. I’m sure he has other evil ideas in his head besides just this.”
Either way, a night off won’t have done any harm for the Bucks’ key pieces, and it certainly made for an eventful night whatever the motivation for Bud’s changes were.