@MichiganPacker2 posted:I agree with most of this, but Middleton is not worthless. He's a borderline all-star that gets misused by Bud against elite teams.
Bud's schemes work against crappy teams, but it's really just iso ball. Middleton would be most effective if you used him like Klay Thompson is used and not like Kevin Durant. Let him run off picks or put him in screen and roll. Limit his dribbling. He's a great shooter, but when they get to the playoffs every play called for him is isolation. He's not an elite athlete by NBA standards, so he really has to work to get open against good defensive players.
As for Giannis on offense, I mean what can you even say at this point? Most of this game was him standing outside of 15 feet and when he got the ball he just settled for jump shots over and over. He was stoned by Blake Griffin. The same guy who he dominated when he was with the Pistons and even at the beginning of Game 1 of this series.
How many times did Jrue Holiday initiate offense tonight? Why not use him to initiate the offense, back his guy down low, and force double teams?
What happened to the pick and roll with Giannis/Khris, Giannis/Holiday, etc? How many times did the Bucks actually swing the ball tonight? Force Durant to work on defense? It was like if you were going to design a defense to make one of the greatest players in history as comfortable as possible, this is what you'd do. Durant could sit and rest on defense with no ball reversal or forcing him into pick and rolls and he could stand around on offense until he got the ball in a space against the zone and shoot uncontested shots. Any uncontested shot within 25 feet is like a layup for most players, and yet he got about 6-8 of those tonight.
He's shooting 30% in the series. We can talk about Bud's misusing him until we're blue in the face. When the ball is in Khris' hands, and he's tossing the little brownish-orange sphere in the air, trying to put it into the little ring, he's failing miserably. That's on him. He doesn't have Dennis Rodman on him. He's getting open looks, and doinking 7 out of 10 shots he takes. He gets paid millions to be a shooter. His job is to get separation, and put the ball in the hole.