Coming off one of their best performances of the season\u2014a 116-101 win over the red-hot Boston Celtics\u2014the Milwaukee Bucks will look to win two in a row for just the third time this season when they play the Brooklyn Nets tonight at Barclays Center. Despite a record of just 6-18 on the season and a loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Friday, the Nets are actually in the midst of a relatively hot stretch, having won three of their last five games. In their only other meeting this year, the Bucks beat the Nets 116-99.<\/p>\n
The trick-or-treat Bucks continue to confuse everyone. One moment, they\u2019re beating the Detroit Pistons and the Boston Celtics\u2014upper-echelon teams in the league\u2014and the next they\u2019re losing to the Washington Wizards. There has been one constant, though: Kevin Porter Jr. has been exceptional. Over the last five, he\u2019s put up 25.2 PPG, 5.4 RPG, 8.0 APG, and 2.4 SPG\u2014even greater production than Jon Horst could have envisioned in the offseason. In fact, the Porter, Ryan Rollins, AJ Green, Giannis, and Myles Turner five-man lineup has a +25.9 net rating (which increases to +53.0 if you swap Rollins for Gary Trent Jr.). More than anything, this points to the frustration of this season\u2014the talent and cohesion are there, but the Bucks just haven\u2019t been able to get any sort of lineup consistency. Of course, with Giannis still out, this remains an issue, and so the Bucks will look to see if Kyle Kuzma and Bobby Portis can replicate their performances against Boston. Following his other two 20-or-more-point scoring efforts this season, Portis has only put up single-digits, shooting a combined 6\/25 from the field. Kuzma has been similarly hot and cold, averaging just 8.8 PPG in games following his 20-plus outings (on a combined 11\/33 from the field).<\/p>\n
As mentioned, the Nets are in their best form of the season, winning three of their last five, and much of this can be attributed to the play of their frontcourt, starting with offseason acquisition Michael Porter Jr. (more on him below). Around him, the Nets have seen growth from both Noah Clowney and Nic Claxton over this stretch. Clowney has upped his scoring to 17.6 PPG, shooting 44% from three, while Claxton\u2014already improved as a passer\u2014has dished out a team-leading 6.6 APG in addition to his typical production elsewhere. Off the bench, Danny Wolf\u2014who showed some teeth against the Bucks last time with 22 points, four rebounds, and four assists\u2014has also played a key role, putting up 11.8 PPG and 6.2 RPG, shooting 50% from three (on four attempts). All this frontcourt shooting has been absolutely huge for the Nets. Despite converting threes at just 34.5% on the season (seventh worst in the league), they\u2019ve upped their three-point shooting to 38% over their last five, hitting a sixth-best-in-the-league 15.6 per game. Let\u2019s hope Doc Rivers and his team have scouted with due diligence, and the Bucks come prepared out of the gates.<\/p>\n
For the Bucks, Taurean Prince (neck), Giannis (calf), and AJ Green (shoulder) all remain out.<\/p>\n
For the Nets, Cam Thomas (hamstring), Haywood Highsmith (knee), and Ben Saraf (illness) are all out.<\/p>\n
Michael Porter Jr. has been on an absolute tear for the Nets, and if the Bucks don\u2019t actively strategise against him, it could easily end in another disappointing result for the team in green. Porter was inactive for the Nets\u2019 loss to the Utah Jazz, but in the two games either side of that, he put up no less than 33 points, averaged nearly six made threes per game (hitting 54%), crashed the boards (7.5 RPG), and even facilitated (3.8 APG). These aren\u2019t empty stats either\u2014his +11.3 plus\/minus is seven points better than his closest teammate\u2014and at 6\u201910\u201d he has the sort of size on the wing that has troubled the Bucks this season. Kuzma seems the logical match-up, though with the Nets\u2019 starters having size across the board\u2014Terance Mann is their shortest starter at 6\u20196\u201d\u2014and their frontcourt on a heater from three, the Bucks certainly have their work cut out for them.<\/p>\n
FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin at 5:00 p.m. CST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coming off one of their best performances of the season\u2014a 116-101 win over the red-hot Boston Celtics\u2014the Milwaukee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,30299,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-70318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-bucks-game-previews","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}