Milwaukee Bucks vs Oklahoma City Thunder Preview
The (45-25) Milwaukee Bucks take on the (48-20) Oklahoma City Thunder Sunday Night in downtown Milwaukee. The Bucks are in the “home stretch” of their season with 12 games remaining. This has been a much better team at home than on the road. Milwaukee is (28-7) at home.
This will be the first time these two teams have played this season. They will play again, in Oklahoma City, on April 12th. That contest is Milwaukee’s second-to-last game of the 2023-2024 NBA regular season.
OKC last played against Toronto on Friday night. They won (123-103) vs Toronto in Canada.
For the Bucks this game is a (#2) vs (#1) match-up: Milwaukee is the number two seed in the Eastern Conference while Oklahoma City is statistically tied with Denver as the number one seed in the Western Conference.
Both teams are looking to start to get things set-up for a hopeful deep playoff run.
Milwaukee Bucks Keys to Victory
Have Khris Middleton do Khris Middleton things
Middleton has struggled with some injury issues all season. But that is not a new statement; he has struggled with injury issues the past few seasons. He has played in 45 game so far this year. Middleton is scoring 15.1 points a game across 26.4 minutes.
For Milwaukee to be successful he needs to get back to scoring and scoring threes. When Middleton scores it takes so much of the pressure of Damian Lillard and Giannis.
You don’t have to look back too far to see Khris Middleton doing Khris Middleton things. Against Dallas on February 3rd Middleton played 38 minutes. And while he only scored 13 points on 5/15 shooting, the Bucks won handedly because he helped spread everything out.
Get to the line and covert
Milwaukee is shooting 77.6% from the charity strip. That ranks them at 18th in the NBA. OKC leads the league in free throw shooting percentage shooting 83.1%.
The Bucks need to hit their free-throws.
While OKC leads the league in free-throw-shooting percentage, Milwaukee leads the league in free throws attempted per game (24.8). That is a lot of opportunities to score points.
Milwaukee needs to convert on those opportunities.
The Opponent: The Oklahoma City Thunder
This is a franchise and a team that is on the “up and up”. I’m not sure anyone thought the Thunder would be in the running with Denver for the number one seed in the West this quick.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is no joke. He can flat out play and is currently 2nd in the NBA in scoring (30.9) , right in front of Giannis (30.7). (Luka Donic is first right now, averaging 34.1 points a game.) Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t shoot a ton of threes (3 per game) and is a slasher-scorer type. The comparable here seems to be Scottie Pippen.
Jalen Williams is having an awesome season. He is shooting over 53% from the field and is averaging 19.2 points per game.
Chet Holmgren has been healthy and has been playing well. The 7’1” center is averaging 17.1 points per game and leads the team in rebounding (8.0).
If there is any knock on this team, it is simply that they don’t have much size or rebound well. They are 27th in the NBA in terms of team rebounding. As a point of comparison, Milwaukee is 13th.
Things to tell your buddies as you are watching the game
- James Harden, Kevin Durant and Russel Westbrook on the same team: you betcha! In 2012 OKC made the NBA finals with that trio.
- OKC was once the Seattle Supersonics and was owned by the Starbucks “main dude” Howard Schultz. The team relocated in 2008 to Oklahoma City. In their first regular season game they took on the Milwaukee Bucks. The Bucks won that game 98-87.
- Damian Lillard is a career 37% shooter from behind the arc. This season Lillard is shooting at 36% from three.
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