Honestly they looked fine. Like, not top 5 defense good, but adequate for the offensive output they’ll have. Philly was flaming hot making super deep 3s all game. The fact that we still won was encouraging to me. But Giannis has to be better. Like way better. He basically almost lost us this game with his decision making on offense.
Thoughts on this game from an excited but slightly apprehensive Bucks fan:
Dame is fucking amazing. Seriously, a complete legend, one of the best and most clutch offensive players of all time. I knew this already, of course, but it just hits differently seeing him do it for your team. especially when your team’s biggest weakness is FT shooting and be goes 17/17 in a one point win. Absolutely NO way we win this game with last year’s roster
defense was fairly solid, they made a fuck ton of 3s but a lot of them were very deep and some of them were contested, I don’t expect a team to make those shots from deep at such a high clip on the regular
Giannis was so bad… so fucking bad. It’s very clear that it’s not Dame that needs to develop chemistry so much as it’s Giannis who needs to understand how to effectively function as the second option on offense and not bring the ball up the court every possession. His defense was solid tho
thought we made some solid adjustments on defense and some good subs at pivotal moments, but I am starting to think think our previous 4th quarter stagnant offense is not necessarily a Bud problem as much as it is a Giannis-initiating-the-offense problem. That fits half of the 4th quarter looked eerily familiar until Giannis got subbed out for a bit. He really needs to figure out how to function off ball better
Nick Nurse is a hell of a good coach and you can see how he coached the 76ers to outplaying their potential here, especially on the defensive end and against Giannis. There will be many nights against lesser teams, lesser defenses, and lesser coaches that Gianni’s will absolutely go off
Giannis is rusty and needs to get back into the flow of things, he will absolutely do better
Middleton barely played but looked very good while out there. Whole team will level up when he’s at full speed
Brook was great
Beasley and Beauchamo looked spry defensively
Fuck Kelly Oubre that is all
Nice to see that coming from a heat fan, feel like I’ve seen so much salt from heat flairs, nice to see someone just appreciating Dame’s talent lol