Pre-season kicked off for the Milwaukee Bucks on the road against familiar foes on Tuesday night.
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The Bucks are no longer underdogs.
He felt the players loosened up and got better giddy-up into their git-along in the second half.
This summer has been especially hard, seeing as the NBA’s usual summer-long run of free agent signings this year was limited to a three-day bonanza in which the vast majority of the open market got locked up early.
Milwaukee Bucks’ Johnny O’Bryant, (77), shoots against Chicago… But there is no need to rush things at this point in time.
Speaking of Monroe, the Bucks marquee signing was busy putting his defenders in a cement mixer down low. Bobby Portis had an energy filled debut with a few nice defensive plays, along with 14 total rebounds and a +20 plus minus rating. Butler scored 23 points in 25 minutes; Middleton had 10.
You have to wonder why it took until now for Jimmy Butler to conclude that teams might have designated scouting reports bent on stopping him. The Greek Freak forced Nikola Mirotic into respecting and biting on his shot, before driving at Joakim Noah with the intention of dunking, and then making a mid-air adjustment to lay it in off of his fingertip. And while they did it with four of the Bucks’ starters idle after halftime, they also did it with five rotation guys of their own not participating.
Jabari Parker, who is recovering from knee surgery, may still be a couple weeks away from playing for the Bucks. “We are not going to put a timetable on it”, Coach Jason Kidd said of his injury.
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And he’s still biding his time for that homecoming game. This system is breeding more confidence in McDermott and his teammates. After he struggled to lend much support in Chicago’s first round upset during the 2014 playoffs, he spent the whole of the offseason obsessively working on his game – improving his footwork, ball-handling, and shooting along the way.
