With a big win over the favorite Nets in the opener, the Bucks fired the first shot of the defending trip.
Originally, this should be a match-to-match match, and even considered a preview of the Eastern Conference Finals, the first 3 quarters of the game can also be seen, although it has been suppressed by the opponent, the Nets can always play small climaxes, to extend the score closer, but in the 4th quarter, with the outbreak of the Bucks bench bandits, the balance of the game also completely fell to the Bucks' side, Connaughton and Jordan Walla, the two together to get half of the team's last quarter 30 points, only 2 points less than the Nets.
Led by these 2 people, the Bucks instantly widened the point difference to more than 20 points, and the game lost suspense.
In this campaign, the Bucks showed a fairly strong overall strength, especially the bench, there is always someone to stand up and score, and the 4 players who play in regular time all have scored:
Connaughton, played 30 minutes, 8 of 13 shooting, 4 of 9 from three-point range, had 20 points, 3 rebounds, 2 assists, 1 steal and 1 block;
Jordan Walla, who played 26 minutes, shot 6-of-13 and 3-of-6 from three-point range, with 15 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, 1 steal and 1 block;
Jordan Hill, playing 23 minutes, 0-of-3 shooting, had 1 point, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 1 block;
Sanassis Antetokounmpo played 12 minutes, shooting 2-of-3, with 6 points, 4 rebounds, 1 assist and 1 block;
The four men scored 42 points, including Justin Robinson's 3 points, the Bucks' bench, and a total of 45 points in this game, shooting 8 three-pointers, almost twice as many as the Nets.
When the main force is equal, whose bench can stand up, who can become the winning party, especially at the moment, the strength between the championship teams, in fact, are relatively close, depending on whose bench depth is deeper, so every year in the offseason, the direction of everyone's reinforcement, almost the sixth person, sometimes even invested a lot of money, such as the Jazz, one of their Jordan Clarkson, salaries are more than 12 million, as well as the Nuggets' Barton, the Clippers' Morris, the Rockets' championship period Eric Gordon and so on.
On the other hand, the Bucks, as a team that does not have much presence in the NBA, although they have achieved very good results in the past few years, and this year they have won the NBA championship, but the market behind them, market value, and revenue are still the level of the middle and lower reaches of the league, so in terms of reinforcements, the Bucks have always been very cautious, in the 2019 offseason, in order to avoid luxury taxes, they even let go of Brogdon, resulting in too much reduction in the strength of the team, directly in the semifinals 1:4 crisp defeat to the Heat.
Although they are not willing to spend money, but fortunately they have a good vision, budenholzer, who is under Popovich, is also a manager who is good at tapping the potential of players, look at their 4 substitutes, Connaughton (4.94 million), Jordan Walla (900,000), Hill (4 million), Xanasis (1.7 million), the annual salary is barely more than 10 million US dollars, but the contribution on the court is equivalent to a superstar worth 30 million.
Especially Walla, this last year's No. 45 show, the performance at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends is quite eye-catching, three-point knife, very confident, the defensive end is to give Durant a big hat, although only 23 years old, but compared to the Nets bench 2 All-Stars Aldridge and Millsap, WallaBetti how practical, it is foreseeable that in the Bucks this year's defense road, Walla will play a very important role, and even become the "X factor".