On January 9, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued, and the defending champion Bucks challenged the Hornets away. After four quarters of intense fighting, the Bucks eventually lost 106-114 to their opponents, their third defeat in their last four games. After this wave of losses, the team's overall record reached 26 wins and 16 losses, slipping to fourth place in the East.
As the team's two most All-Stars, Alphabet Brother and Middleton both played well, the former appeared in 37 minutes, shot a game-high 43 points on 11-of-20 shooting, and picked up 12 rebounds to deliver 3 assists and 3 steals; the latter contributed 27 points, 10 rebounds and 9 assists on 9-of-17 shooting, and the two scored a total of 70 points, including 7 three-pointers. However, even such an efficient performance still can't help the team to win a victory, and some reasons may be found from their performances on the bench in recent games.
In today's game against the Hornets, the Bucks bench had a total of 5 players to play, 4 of them did not score, only this year's second-round Sandro scored 5 points on 4-of-2 shooting, while the other four Hood, Galloway, Ogerley and Alphabet Brother 4 totaled 13 shots and 0, all of them scored 0-of-13, and the opponent Hornets bench, 4 people got the opportunity to play, all of them scored points, a total of 33 points, only Oubre alone scored 18 points on 7-of-17 shooting.
Embarrassingly, a second-team situation like today's blowing up by an opponent has become the norm in bucks games this season. So far this season, the Bucks have averaged just 27.9 points per game on the bench, ranking third from the bottom of the league and outperforming the Raptors (24.4) and Bulls (27.0 points).
A second team with enough depth not only increases the competitiveness of the team, but also allows the starters to get enough rest time to reduce the risk of injury. Although after entering the playoffs, each team will try to compress the lineup and reduce the number of rotating players, but in the annual playoffs, there is also a lack of bench players to play the miracle and play key performances. With the Bucks' current roster depth, it's clearly impossible to sustain them in achieving their goal of defending their title!