Don’t panic.
Not yet, anyway.
The Bucks wrapped up their 6-game road trip with a 116 to 101 loss to the Mavericks on Thursday night.
Giannis was sidelined once again with a nagging knee injury.
While having your star sidelined for any meaningful period of time is concerning, it’s not time to panic quite yet.
A couple of things are at play here…
- I’d rather have this happen now, then say, in a month, when the playoffs are about to begin.
- That being said, this hurts the Bucks chemistry on the floor. They’ve now gone extended periods of time with both Giannis and Jrue Holiday, who missed a month with COVID-19, out.
- The Nets and Sixers aren’t slowing down. The Bucks are 3.5 games back with 21 games to play.
The last two seasons are evidence that regular season seeding doesn’t really matter.
But it is important for the Bucks to challenge for the top seed, so they don’t have to go through both Brooklyn and Philly on their way to The Finals.
Oh, by the way, if the season ended today, they’d play the Heat in the first round.
I don’t think anybody wants that.
The Bucks play Philly back-to-back on April 22nd and 24th, then the Nets back-to-back on May 2nd and May 4th.
Giannis has to be back healthy for the those games.
In the meantime, the Bucks just need to stay afloat.
If he’s not back by then, well, we’ve got a whole different conversation.