Will Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton have bounce back games for the Milwaukee Bucks?
It’s almost hard to believe that the Bucks beat the Nets while Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday combined for 35 points on 33.3 percent shooting, but that’s just how good Giannis Antetokounmpo was in that game.
You can somewhat understand them having tough offensive games considering they were defending Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant for stretches, but they’ll still need to rebound tonight against a Clippers team that they’ve had success against already this season.
Holiday, in particular, had a massive game with 27 points on 76 percent true shooting to go along with 13 assists as well as five rebounds and two steals. Middleton didn’t have that kind of game (he didn’t need to with Bobby Portis chipping in 24 points) but 17 points on nearly 60 percent true shooting is pretty darn solid.
The Clippers do have a lot of rangey wings that profile as guys who can give Middleton trouble (including Paul George) so I’ll be keeping an eye on how they look to free him up for better looks.
They will each likely take turns defending George as I mentioned already, but the defensive burden won’t be as stressful as what they went had to do against the Nets.
This, of course, is assuming they both play. Middleton was ejected against the Nets for a flagrant-2 foul, so there could be supplementary discipline coming but, we also can’t forget about the vaunted rest day!