Milwaukee Bucks vs. Minnesota Timberwolves Preview: Into The Grey

The Milwaukee Bucks close out their season series against the Minnesota Timberwolves tonight in the Twin Cities. The Timberwolves will also be debuting their “City Edition” jerseys which are much better than their lime green walking nightmares. The last time we saw Milwaukee in action was Monday night where they picked up a great victory over the Philadelphia 76ers and kept Joe Prunty’s head coaching record perfect.

Bucks Update

The Bucks are riding high on a four game streak and a win tonight would give them their longest winning streak of the season. Since the Phoenix game from two Monday’s ago, the Bucks have posted a 115.5 offensive rating and a 97.4 defensive rating, both squarely in the NBA’s top-five over that span. Giannis Antetokounmpo has played in three of those games and averaged 33 points and 13 rebounds. It looks like the Greek Freak has legs back under him which is something the Bucks will need as they mounted a furious comeback the last time these two teams faced off. The Bucks outscored the Timberwolves by 15 points in the fourth quarter to emerge victorious. After logging nearly three minutes on Monday night, Eric Bledsoe is listed as doubtful for tonight’s contest with left ankle soreness. With tonight’s game being the front end of a back-to-back, it will be interesting to see how many minutes Bledsoe gets, or if he even sees the floor at all. (Update: Bledsoe has been ruled out, so he will get zero minutes)

Player to Watch: John Henson

Throughout the course of the current win streak, Henson has been as consistent as ever. He is converting on 62 percent of his shots and averaging 12 points and six rebounds the past four games. Last time against Minnesota, he made all seven of his shots and finished with a +13 rating. Unfortunately for Henson, his counterpart, Karl-Anthony Towns, dropped 22 points and went 4/8 from beyond the arc. Luckily, Minnesota is near the bottom in the league in three-point attempts.

Timberwolves Update

Minnesota currently finds themselves the losers of two straight and four of their last five, with the most recent being a close loss to the Toronto Raptors. The Timberwolves’ All-Star duo of Jimmy Butler and the aforementioned Towns, have taken the T-Wolves to fourth place in the Western Conference. In the previous meeting with Milwaukee, Butler, Towns, and Andrew Wiggins all scored 20 or more points. Unfortunately for Minnesota, that was about all they could muster that night as far as offensive consistency was concerned.

Player to Watch: Andrew Wiggins

At the Bradley Center, Wiggins drained four three-pointers and made half of his overall shots from the floor. It was one of those patented “of course this poor shooter is getting buckets against the Bucks” type of performances. Wiggins has struggled mightily as of late, however. In his last five games, the former Kansas Jayhawk is shooting 42 percent from the field and 26 percent from three-point range, both below his season averages (44 percent and 32 percent, respectively). If he goes off tonight, he may find himself on the All-Bucks Beater team.