It's game day in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as the Bucks get ready to host another one of the East's best.

Previewing Bucks versus Nix on today's locked-on crossover episode of Locked-on Bucks.

You are Locked-on Bucks, your daily Milwaukee Bucks podcast, part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.

Welcome in for a special crossover episode of Locked on Bucks, Locked on Nix.

I'm Camille Davis, host of Locked on Bugs, joined by Gavin Shaw, host of Locked-on Nix,

here to preview the Bucks and the Nix going to battle in Milwaukee on Friday.

The 27th of February, these two teams haven't seen each other in quite some time, Gavin.

So my first question that I want to ask you about the Knicks is who is this team now at this point in the season?

Because the last time we spoke, it was still very early in the Mike Brown experience.

There weren't a lot of things that you could really dial in on and looking at like the raw numbers.

The Knicks team seems like they're in a similar place to where they were last year, especially with like the four factors and all those different aspects. But where are the Knicks right now in this season? It's so funny. It was the exact same first question for you. And I was like, yeah, Milwaukee's just like completely different. I wish I had, that was almost being procrastinating because I don't have a great answer for you. We just did like a 30-minute episode yesterday being like, what's this team's identity?

And I think the core problem keeping them as a very good but very inconsistent team, especially

against the best teams in the league, is that they haven't really developed a core identity

to lean into for two seasons in a row.

Like I think you have to go back to 23, 24, like post the OG Ananobe trade, pre the Julius Randall

injury, or maybe even after, like they had an identity after that.

But for the last time, they had like a really clear-cut identity where it was like, hey, we're

building this team around Jalen Brunson being able to score in a phone booth, relentless offensive rebounding, relentless physicality, Julius Randall's a second creator, Dante DiVincenzo spacing for him. And it was like, all right, we know exactly what this is. We know exactly what this is supposed to look like. They put together the perfect roster for Tom Thibodeau. And since then, there have been questions where they trade for Carl Anthony Towns. And it's kind of felt like a square peg in a round hole only in the sense that like the Knicks didn't really want to adjust to him. And him and Jalen Brunson, which a familiar story for Bucks fans, Dame Lillard and Yannis, on paper was like, all right, how do you stop that? Like at least offensively, defensively, teams know what to do. But offensively, like, is there an answer to that? And it turns out the answer is just self-sabotage on the next end where for whatever reason, like they're currently coming off a game as we're talking, where a cat made every shot he took,

but he only got to take five of them. And they got blown out by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

He only takes one shot in the entire second half. And that is not an anomaly. Like a gamer

OG and an OB. It scores in single digits coming off an injury. That is not an anomaly.

He's four for his last 25 from three.

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