The Milwaukee Bucks will need more out of their bench tonight
If there was one thing that held back the Bucks in their mini-series against the Charlotte Hornets, it was the bench. More specifically, the lack of scoring from the bench.
Milwaukee got a combined 15 points over two games from their bench players, shooting 5-of-38 from the field (13 percent). Antetokounmpo had nearly five times that many points over the two games (69).
If they are going to beat the Warriors and succeed during this tough five-game stretch, then that can’t happen again. Sure, part of it is that they were missing Holiday, Allen, and Hill for both games as well as Connaughton and DiVincenzo for the first game, but they both combined to go 0-of-14 in their most recent loss.
As I mentioned, Allen will be back tonight so that will shift either Jordan Nwora or Matthews to the bench and provide a boost and there’s no way that Connaughton and DiVincenzo will shoot that poorly again, right?
It’s never easy to rely on role players and reserves for scoring, but it’s also more than fair to expect that they’ll score more than 15 points over two games.
The Warriors have players coming off of their bench (Wisconsin-native Jordan Poole, primarily) that can light it up. The Bucks have the bodies to match that, but it depends which version of the bench shows up tonight.
They say role players perform better at home and, well, it’s hard to perform much worse than they did in Charlotte.
If players like Connaughton, DiVincenzo, Matthews, or Nwora chip in alongside Antetokounmpo, Middleton, and Portis, then the Bucks will have a great shot at knocking off one of the best teams through the 2021-22 regular season so far.