The Bratwurst – Milwaukee Bucks Blog

Opening night: Orlando 102, Milwaukee 83.

The Bucks outrebounded Orlando 48-42.

That pretty much sums up the positive stuff.

I’m not going to get too much into this game, since I’m not really prone to overreacting to what happened on one given night, but there are a couple of things I wanted to mention.

Yi looked a lot lot lot better than I thought he would. Good coaching move by Krystkowiak by cross-matching Yi and Desmond Mason at the outset so that Yi guarded Turkoglu instead of Rashard Lewis. Hedo eventually lit it up, but not while Yi was on him.

I thought Yi looked pretty good on defense, and fairly tentative on offense but he took advantage of his opportunities. Yi shot 4-5 and two of his three turnovers weren’t really his fault — one was a travel when Mo gave him the ball in a bad spot on a fast break, and the other was either a great defensive play or a perfect example of what is wrong with the NBA and the way they call offensive fouls, depending on your perspective.

After how hot Orlando shot the ball in the 3rd quarter there was no way the Bucks were going to win, but I would have liked to see them fight back a little better. But it’s only one night.

But one night is all I need to be able to say that Bobby Simmons and Desmond Mason should not be splitting minutes. Simmons should be starting, finishing, and playing most of the minutes in between.

It’s not the end of the world. Teams wont shoot 55% from 3 every night, nor will they always make 26 free throws to your 22 attempts.