Monday Morning Media Roundup: September 11th, 2023

Astute readers of the MMMR will know that I generally do my best to have these things scheduled and ready to go for publishing at 6:30 AM (CT) any given Monday. The ideal is that you wake up, brew your cup of stimulant, open your device, navigate over to Brew Hoop (née Brewhoop née BrewHoop), and make sense of whatever the hell I typed up the day before. If major media outlets avoided hitting “send” on a Bucks-related article while I was asleep from Sunday to Monday, we consider that week’s MMMR a win.

You’ll note that today’s article is going up late — so late, in fact, that Gabe already has his Ranking the Roster piece for Bobby Portis up. So you’ve my apologies.

While we were between MMMR editions, Team USA went ahead and completely imploded in the FIBA World Cup. Not content to just crash out to the Germans (in a close 111-113 loss), they did themselves one better and lost the third-place game against Canada to boot (118-127 in OT).

Interestingly enough from a Bucks POV, Bobby Portis would end up logging 20 minutes of play while the likes of Brandon Ingram, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Paolo Banchero were all out due to illness. His 14 points (5/8 from the floor, 4/4 from the line) and six rebounds were quite obviously not enough to overcome the execution disparity. While the US would edge out Canada on overall FG%, the syrup folks shot 17/37 from three compared to the US’s 10/27. Overtime itself looks like it was a foul fest with three late turnovers by the US giving Canada the chance to pull out themselves out of range. Congrats to Canada!

Bobby will almost assuredly not be invited back to Team USA for the 2024 Olympics. The nation thanks him for his service in this tournament.

Let’s roundup!

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30 teams in 30 days: Bucks decide to run it back once again with championship core (NBA.com)

“Instead of a dynasty, it was a die-nasty.” Lol. No editor read this and said let’s rework that line? OK.

Nothing all that enlightening in this piece otherwise. Even if the Bucks end up standing still relative to the competition, the floor for the top talent is high enough to keep them in the mix. One question I was thinking about this past weekend is what MPG philosophy Adrian Griffin will adhere to. Coming from the Nick Nurse School of Starters Playing 40 MPG Night In, Night Out suggests one direction; a player-friendly countenance suggests another. He may have no choice but to keep things dialed back due to the age of the roster’s core.

Giannis Antetokounmpo and Family Invest in Greek Wine Companies (Greek City Times)

As I’ve prepped for an upcoming trip to Greece myself, I found myself thinking about how rarely I’ve come across Greek wines over the course of my extremely limited experiences with the beverage. Perhaps all the industry needs is a seven-foot tall goof who hawks candy care packages and online medicine to come aboard and bring it to the shores of the Midwest?

There was actually a semi-recent piece in the Financial Times about how Greek producers have trouble breaking into foreign markets because the national association avoids labeling which vineyard made which bottle of wine at tastings (both abroad and domestically). Here’s hoping having Giannis’s face on bottles will guide Boutari Winery to great success.

The Show on Riverwest Radio: Erin Monfre (Milwaukee Record)

I know what you’re thinking: What the heck is this doing on the MMMR? I’d have thought the same until I read the description a bit. From the Record:

Erin Monfre joined The Show to talk about her basketball career at Marquette, how she met Wes Matthews and became his trainer, training the wives of the Milwaukee Bucks players at Giannis’s house five days a week, her gym Black Box 100, the importance of physical/mental/spiritual well-being, and much more.

Sounds like just the kind of mix between woo woo and Milwaukee Bucks that the MMMR strives to capture week in, week out.

Team USA Just Wasn’t Good Enough (The Ringer)

A lot of good points in here for those who, like me, haven’t watched many of the games outside of the extended highlights. I’d quibble with Pina’s anointing Daniel Theis as an all-time great, but I like to believe he was being a bit tongue-in-cheek here.

Also enjoyed the sprinkling of hubris at the end of the article that once we get some old dudes or some dudes with long injury histories into the squad for Paris, then it's on For Real.

Fan Post of the Week

Very excited that we have a pair of posts to promote here. For being the ur-post that spawned the follow-up, G may will be taking home this week’s FPOTW award for “Book club”. An invitation for you, fellow BH readers and commenters, to post what you’ve been reading (even if it really has no bearing on the Bucks or other subjects we touch on around here). Think of it as a forum for you to post and others to react to.

Then, we have our first installment of the Brew Hoop Book Club (ignoring my former boss’s comment on G may’s post) in stoneAge’s “September 2023 - Book Review - Marcus Aurelius”. The work in question is, naturally, Aurelius’s Meditations. It has experienced a sort of renaissance in the digital age, and its hefty nature leads almost naturally to discussions of its applicability to any number of subjects — the Bucks included.

The Social Media Section

A cool initiative to get behind

Last time I looked at a map, New Berlin isn’t Milwaukee. But that’s okay, too.

Right

I fully expect to be blocked by MarJon at some point in the future

This sort of faded lime green is not his color. Watch seems nice tho.

Let’s check in with James Harden

One of these years this dude will put it together and have a stay longer than 2 seasons with a single organization

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I’ll be off on another continent soon, so don’t be surprised if the next few editions of the MMMR are somewhat truncated. Slamming out 1K+ words on my old crappy iPhone will almost certainly be too great a challenge to overcome. Still, the column will continue as usual to help you bridge the final gap between now and preseason basketball.

Happy Monday!