The Milwaukee Bucks put on a show coming out of the break, beating the New Orleans Pelicans 139-118. Ryan Rollins led the Bucks on both ends, dropping 27 points (on a career-high seven threes), six assists, four steals, and two blocks. Special mention to Kevin Porter Jr. and Cam Thomas, who dropped a combined 52 points. The Pels were led by Zion Williamson, who dropped 32 points on 13\/17 shooting.<\/p>\n
The Pels got out to a quick start, making a bunch of easy looks at the rim. Ryan Rollins, however, was saving the Bucks\u2019 bacon, nailing several contested long-range shots to have the game even at 10 apiece. Then, the Bucks went on a 5-0 run, featuring Kyle Kuzma punching it reverse-style twice in a row. Milwaukee would make a move to go up 26-18; there must have been something in that bayou air because this run featured a Bobby Portis putback slam. The Pels would respond with a 7-0 run, though, punctuated by the Milwaukee native Jordan Poole nailing a bomb in transition. Zion Williamson really flexed his muscle to end the period, scoring a bunch of times to put New Orleans up 38-33 after one.<\/p>\n
Cam Thomas, who did not score in the opening frame, got the Bucks the lead back to open the second with a three and an and-one. Unfortunately, Zion would snatch the lead right back for the Pels, already scoring his eighth bucket from 10 tries early in the second. Remember when I said Cam Thomas hadn\u2019t scored until the second quarter? Yeah, well he was up to 16 on 6\/9 shooting less than halfway through the period, making a bunch of ridiculous shots to put the Bucks at 53-49. I\u2019ll be honest with you, neither team played a lick of defence to close the half, with both sides turning it over in the open court a number of times. The visitors were up 71-65 going into the locker room.<\/p>\n
The Bucks were scoring at a solid rate to open the second, with KPJ, Rollins, and Portis boarding the tough-shot express. That said, the Pels were scoring at the same rate, able to keep the margin at the 6-9-point mark throughout the opening four minutes. New Orleans got it within two a few times, but the Bucks had an answer (often Rollins or Thomas) on every occasion. And in Rollins\u2019 case, I don\u2019t just mean on offence; this dude had four steals and two blocks at the end of the third, making huge plays to save easy baskets under the rim. Bucks up 103-96 after three.<\/p>\n
Like clockwork, Thomas opened the fourth with a few buckets to bring him to 27 on the night. Pate Nance then got in on the act, nailing a corner three and a tough layup to force James Borrego into a timeout\u2014visitors up 113-104 with just under eight minutes left. The Bucks would go on a 7-2 run right out of the timeout, forcing yet another timeout from the Pels (and more KPJ dance moves). For all his flaws, KPJ is a bucket when he gets in that mode (and trust me, he was in that mode throughout the fourth). From there, it was all academic; Milwaukee beats their pick-swap nemesis.<\/p>\n
The Bucks rank fifth in the NBA with a 48.1% shooting percentage. They shot a ridiculous 59.8% tonight. Good golly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Milwaukee Bucks put on a show coming out of the break, beating the New Orleans Pelicans 139-118.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3796],"tags":[7,52326,6,478,470,4073,4072,675],"class_list":{"0":"post-615068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-orleans-pelicans","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks-scores","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-new-orleans","12":"tag-new-orleans-pelicans","13":"tag-neworleans","14":"tag-neworleanspelicans","15":"tag-pelicans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116106630567200178","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}