Coming off an inspired win against the LA Lakers, the Milwaukee Bucks look to find gold with a rare win in Denver when they take on the Nuggets at Ball Arena tonight. A win would give the Bucks a 3-1 record to conclude the West Coast road trip and a 7-3 record over their last ten as they inch back towards .500 and, more importantly, the playoff picture. The Nuggets, meanwhile, are coming off a 110-87 loss to the Atlanta Hawks, as they continue to battle the injury bug that has decimated their team.<\/p>\n
The Bucks have turned the corner recently, thanks in large part to Giannis\u2019 return from injury. In fact, when Giannis plays, the Bucks have gone 14-10 this season (.583), a winning percentage that would have them fifth in the Eastern Conference\u2014right about where we expected them to be prior to the season starting. Over the last five, there\u2019s even more reason for optimism as Milwaukee ranks eighth in offensive rating (117.8) and has a top ten net rating (3.6) on the back of their scoring efficiency (7th in effective field goal percentage and 8th in true shooting percentage). Overall, the team is perhaps at its most cohesive point of the season, with a largely clean bill of health enabling Doc Rivers to run consistent rotations.<\/p>\n
The Denver Nuggets were lauded for their offseason moves and have proved the praise was rightfully given with two winning streaks of six or more games and a 25-13 overall record\u2014good enough for third in the vaunted Western Conference. They aren\u2019t a one-man band either, going 3-3 since Nikola Jokic has been out recovering from a hyperextended knee. Jamal Murray will surely lose his \u201cbest player to not make an All-Star team\u201d moniker this season, as he\u2019s having a career year, putting up 25.3 PPG, 4.7 RPG, and 7.5 APG while shooting 44% from three (all career highs). Peyton Watson is also in the midst of a career year\u201413.0 PPG, 4.9 RPG, 1.6 APG, 1.0 SPG, 1.0 BPG\u2014and has upped his play even more in Jokic\u2019s absence, averaging 24.5 PPG, 6.7 RPG, 2.5 APG, 1.3 SPG, and 1.0 BPG without the all-world centre. So, despite their extended injury list, these Nuggets will be anything but a cakewalk for the Bucks.<\/p>\n
For the Bucks, Taurean Prince (neck) remains out, while Kevin Porter Jr. is listed as probable following the left hip contusion he suffered against the Lakers.<\/p>\n
The Nuggets are without Nikola Jokic (knee), Cam Johnson (knee), Jonas Valanciunas (calf), and Tamar Bates (foot). Christian Braun (ankle) and Aaron Gordon (hamstring) are probable, and Jamal Murray (ankle\/illness) and Spencer Jones (ankle\/illness) are questionable.<\/p>\n
Myles Turner remains a conundrum for the Bucks. With Milwaukee holding opponents to just 45.7 PPG in the paint on the season (4th best in the league), he\u2019s surely having a positive impact on defence, yet what\u2019s often more apparent is how easily he\u2019s pushed around, evident in his inability to rebound the basketball, where he\u2019s posting a career-worst 9.2% rebound percentage (for comparison, Giannis\u2019 is 17.2% and Bobby Portis\u2019 is 13.5%). Moreover, Turner is often invisible in games. This is especially apparent on offence where he\u2019s relegated to standing behind the three point line as a floor spacer. Part of this falls on Rivers, but Turner isn\u2019t helping himself either, converting a paltry 58% of shots at the rim\u2014in just the 18th percentile for bigs this season and well below the >70% he\u2019s posted the prior four seasons (per Cleaning the Glass). It\u2019s part of a larger pattern of struggle for Turner as he gets closer to the rim. His mid-range conversion is also at a career low (38%, 30th percentile), but it\u2019s the short mid (34%, 24th percentile) that\u2019s most glaring, as his long mid game is still strong (48%, 76th percentile). Altogether, this\u2014the rebounding and rim conversion struggles\u2014points to a physicality issue that Turner absolutely must resolve. With the Nuggets missing both Jokic and Valanciunas, Turner has a prime opportunity to go against Denver\u2019s third string centre, 6\u20199\u201dDaRon Holmes, and start to right the ship. If he can\u2019t, don\u2019t be surprised to see him lose minutes to Bobby Portis once again.<\/p>\n
FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin at 7:00 p.m. CST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coming off an inspired win against the LA Lakers, the Milwaukee Bucks look to find gold with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,1660,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-529748","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-bucks-game-previews","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","13":"tag-milwaukeebucks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115877263885594415","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529748\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}