Paolo Banchero scored 34 points against the Milwaukee Bucks in his first game back after a long layoff but when he met them again, Doc Rivers had a plan against him. And it worked.
The Orlando Magic star scored 22 points, just slightly lower compared to his season average, but that is a good sign for the Bucks because they learned their lesson from the time they allowed him to go off.
The Bucks won against their visitors on the second night of a back-to-back and key to it was disrupting the young star’s flow.
Banchero took 21 shots in their encounter last Friday and converted 11 of them. He took almost the same number of shots in the Wednesday rematch but only made eight. He also went just 2 out of 7 from the three point line.
The Bucks made the game out of Magic’s reach the entire game with Giannis Antetokounmpo not needing to play heavy minutes come the fourth quarter.
The Greek Freak snatched a double double of 26 and 11 while Damian Lillard led everyone with 30 points, five rebounds, four assists, and four steals.
Doc Rivers on Paolo Banchero
Banchero is a big bodied forward who can navigate his way to the basket using that. That’s what Rivers tried to address when it comes to defending the one-time All-Star.
Instead of putting on him someone as big as him, he put a more agile player.
“I thought we attacked his dribble more. That was one of the things because we were switching a lot and we we were going to have a smaller guy (on him),” he said.
And we kept giving hin a cushion and we were showing them on film. ‘Paolo is big, so he’s not going to dance. He’s just going to take up the space and now you’re in trouble.’ And today, I thought whenever he put it on the floor, you could see your guys, we attacked the dribble.”
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