After all, Milwaukee has spent much of the past couple regular seasons blowing teams out.

And then, once the plate bucks get to the playoffs.

Yeah, not great, Bob.

Once benches get shorter, teams face each other over and over.

Opponents have figured out how to exploit Milwaukee's predictability, its rigidity, the small but stubborn holes in Janice's game.

It's all gotten to the point that, really, no matter what the Bucks achieved this regular season, it was going to strike fear in the hearts of exactly No.

One, which in turn led to an interesting question for the Milwaukee brain trust.

Do you spend these 72 games trying to win each one above all else?

Chase the best record in the league again, and the top seed that goes with it, or this time around?

Do you spend the regular season instead experimenting, practicing, expanding, even if sometimes it gets ugly?

Well, we're nearly a third of the way through, and it's been clear the Bucks have picked the latter path, they've swapped out personnel.

They've toured with different ways to use Yanis leaning into him as a screener and a passer.

They've switched on defense.

No, really.

We have film of it.

And sometimes it has been, in fact, ugly.

Early in the season, the Bucks got clocked by the Knicks.

They lost to the Heat without Jimmy Butler.

Yanis has struggled at the free throw line to I mean, really struggled with the worst percentages of his career.

But that is the thing about change.

It is not supposed to be easy or pretty, and when you finally start to see all the little experiments paying off, it is all the more satisfying.

Which is why last night's win felt like so much fun to Milwaukee.

Yanis, in particular, was a stud and not know it wasn't because he dropped 40 because he didn't.

Instead, Yanis had just 21 points, but they came with razor efficiency as he went seven for eight from the field and yep, seven for eight from the line.

He also had 14 rebounds, 10 assists, assists that weren't all just dishes from the paint out to the three point line but real playmaking in the half court.

Check out this early in the second half.

Yanis, down low, could have tried to force his way through even after Myles Turner, who leads the league in shot blocking.

By the way, it came over to help.

Instead, though, you see that he found a cutting brook Lopez, streaking to the basket for two points here, was honest afterward, describing his mindset.

It's a new thing, you know, probably last year and the year before, in the year before that.

You now go to the in the game.

I'm just too stubborn, you know?

Thio not, you know, not be at my best every single night, you know?

And I tried to go through guys, you know?

You know, three guys are guarding me.

I still tried to get in the pain, you know, I know.

Oh, that.

I think this is just a step forward.

This isn't the way Yonas has often played previously, but it is likely the way he needs to at least be able to play more often for the Bucks to be the kind of multi multi dimensional threat that goes far in the postseason and Janice's willingness to embrace that change is impressive for someone who is famously competitive.

It can be hard to give up even an inch in the short term for the possibility of a mile in the long term, but he has buckled down and done it.

And last night he got to enjoy a little bit of the payoff as the Bucks went up by as many as 40.

Yes, 40 in the second half once, but pulled him for the night, Yanis grabbed one of the team photographers cameras and started using it.

Which I mean, if you're the Pacers, you probably feel some sort of way about that.

But the Bucks players loved it.

The team released some of the pictures afterward, and you know what?

These are actually pretty great Later, Yanis joke.

He wanted to take some pictures that finally made his brother Thanasis look good.

But honestly, it was the bigger picture that he and his team spent last night chasing.

Yeah, the Bucks scored another blowout last night, but it was not in the same old same old way.

And maybe that is going to really matter down the road when it counts.