SPORTS LINE
The Bucks.
The first five or so games of an NBA season can only give you so much numerical data about how the next 77 or so will go. The Bucks are 1-5, winners in Philadelphia on the second night of the season and then losers of five straight, with double-digit losses to the Bulls and Nets in there. They lost a heartbreaker to the Cavs on Saturday as Donovan Mitchell nailed a tough game-winner. When Milwaukee fired Adrian Griffin last January to call up Doc Rivers from the ESPN NBA desk, the Bucks were 30-13. That’s an impressive record for a new coach in his first season. The problem is that all the easy games were in the first half of the season. Griffin had quickly revealed himself to be out of his depth, and nobody in the locker room seemed to like him.
The thought was that Rivers could simply be an adult in the room, a guy who could clean up the small stuff like transition defense and get the team’s two theoretically coherent pick-and-roll superstars to, you know, run a pick and then maybe roll. Then the late-offseason pairing of Damian Lillard and Antetokounmpo kept them from ever syncing up, the sort of thing a full offseason could accomplish, a necessity for both the on-court success of the team and the general contentment of its franchise player. The Bucks have gone 20-28 since Rivers came to town. It is somewhat shocking how much worse they are on defense now. The depth issues and the bad defense can be fixed if the team’s three good players play to their potential and everyone else plays hard. When one of them is off, as Lillard was against Memphis, it’s super ugly. Outside of Lillard and Antetokounmpo, the Bucks struggle to find additional scoring. We know this team has championship potential. We just need Rivers to be a coach and the players to bring their best.
The Packers.
The NFC North is at the center of the NFL world in Week 9 as the Detroit Lions headed to Green Bay to face the Packers. With Week 9 serving as the official halfway point of the NFL season, this matchup is one of the most pivotal up to this point. The Lions won 24-14. The Packers struggled the whole game with holding onto the football, featuring five drops. Jordan Love was pressured and tried to scramble, but with his injuries, he seemed unable to kick it into gear. Instead of eating the ball and taking the sack or throwing it away, he opted to flip it up and ended up throwing a 27-yard pick-six to Kerby Joseph. This marks Jordan Love’s seventh straight start with an interception. The Packers have been guilty of eight penalties and dropped four passes in the first 25 minutes.
Coming late in the third quarter with the Packers failing to score a touchdown in a red-zone opportunity, highlights a bobbled snap from Jordan Love, showcasing the team’s ongoing issues. The Packers trail 24-6 early in the fourth quarter. Jayden Reed makes a great play on the ball on fourth down, securing an impressive catch to keep the Packers’ hopes alive in the fourth quarter. However, Jordan Love threw incomplete to Dontayvion Wicks on third-and-1 from the 9 and Josh Jacobs was stuffed on fourth down. Let’s hope their next game isn’t as sloppy as this.
