In the first half of a weekend back-to-back at Fiserv Forum, the Milwaukee Bucks snapped a four-game losing streak, taking out perhaps the most unabashed tankers in NBA history, the Utah Jazz. In his most extensive action since returning Monday from a calf strain (27 minutes), Giannis Antetokounmpo poured in a game-high 27 for the victors. Keyonte George paced the visitors with 22.<\/p>\n
A jumbo starting lineup, including Ousmane Dieng and Kyle Kuzma, began this one on a 10-3 run. Giannis\u2019 initial shift was his longest since January at just under eight minutes, and in that time, he got to the line seven times. It was 23-8 when he subbed out at 4:35, but the second unit couldn\u2019t extend what was then a 13-2 run any further. In fact, Milwaukee didn\u2019t score a point for over three-and-a-half minutes as Giannis sat, though Utah couldn\u2019t get closer than 10. They\u2019re that bad: the Bucks went ice cold, and all the Jazz managed was five points. With a quarter in the books, it was 24-13 Bucks. Gripping stuff.<\/p>\n
The Jazz finally started to find nylon in the opening stages of the second, amid the Bucks\u2019 continued offensive struggles. A 10-2 Utah run made it a two-point game just over three minutes in, and Giannis re-entered perhaps sooner than anticipated. Still, the Milwaukee offense remained sluggish as Utah tied it at 35 just past the midpoint. It wasn\u2019t until the last three minutes that they strung together some makes and re-established the double-digit lead, ironically after Giannis checked back out. The home team went to the locker room ahead 51-44.<\/p>\n
Much like in their Wednesday defeat, the Bucks opened the second half poorly. Two early turnovers shrank the Bucks\u2019 halftime advantage to one, and thanks to early foul trouble, they barely managed to stay in front\u2014by no more than six\u2014for the next few minutes. Once Giannis exited, Utah grabbed their first lead of the game inside the five-minute mark. Basket-trading followed, including AJ Green\u2019s first three of the night (he had been 0\/4 overall prior), then another shortly after. That, plus a Jericho Sims fastbreak dunk, seemed to break Milwaukee out of it a bit. Closing the period on a 9-2 run, they led 83-76 through three.<\/p>\n
Bobby Portis took matters into his own hands with a pair of early buckets as the Bucks soon went up 11. He even added a block to his six quick points. That bought some more time for Giannis, who was reinserted with 7:30 left, up six. Utah closed within one, though, and it appeared the usual Jazz tanking mass exodus wasn\u2019t coming. Giannis went to work with a personal 6-0 run, but Milwaukee struggled to stop Utah on the other end without fouling. It was 97-95 inside five minutes, but then the Bucks finally got serious and put the game away as the Jazz misfired just enough. They finished on a 16-4 run.<\/p>\n
The Bucks were just brutal at the line, and it made this game a lot closer than it needed to be: 16\/28 at the charity stripe is just 57.1%. Until Giannis made a few as they made their closing run, Milwaukee was under 50% for the game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the first half of a weekend back-to-back at Fiserv Forum, the Milwaukee Bucks snapped a four-game losing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,52326,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-646471","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-bucks-scores","11":"tag-milwaukee","12":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","13":"tag-milwaukeebucks","14":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116191635946572444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646471","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=646471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}