Bucks vs. Jazz: All gas, no brake in Salt Lake

Milwaukee has little trouble with a tanking team

The Milwaukee Bucks turned down the Utah Jazz on the first night of their back-to-back, winning 125-110. Giannis had 35 points, 18 rebounds, and eight assists. Damian Lillard matched Giannis with his own 35-piece, along with eight assists, while Khris Middleton bounced back with 22 points and three assists in 27 minutes. for the Jazz, Lauri Markkanen and Collin Sexton each had 19 points, while four others ended the night in double digits. Read our full summary of the game here and catch a six-minute audio recap on the Bucks+ podcast Bucks In Six Minutes below.

What Did We Learn?

That the big three is still a big three. We know what Giannis and Dame are going to give you on most nights, but Khris looked back to himself last night. And yes, the Jazz defence has many holes and it was much easier to score than it was against the Clippers. However, people forget that Middleton has been playing quite well for a while now, me included. Since December 20, he’s averaging 13.3 points, 4.6 assists, and 4.2 rebounds on 50% from the field and 39% from three in nearly 24 minutes per game (excluding last night’s game). Granted, I have personally noticed that he does sometimes struggle and against big, switchable teams because he’s not a speed player and can’t use his size as effectively, but you take those stats any day of the week. Here are the responses from Doc and Khris about the trio combing for 92 points:

“I just thought they scored it organically through sets. None of them really forced it. It wasn’t like they were trying to [do it]. It was good, though. You could see Khris had live legs tonight and that was good.”

“I thought a lot of it was organic. We played within the flow of the game. Not many forced actions or shots or whatever. I thought those two guys did a great job of just playing the game. And we lean on them a lot to create problems, create havoc, bad closeouts for different guys and they did that and scored, so it was great.”

Three Awesome Plays

Sharin’ the sugar.

Great teams always make the extra pass to go from a good shot to a great shot. This eight-pass possession is an example of this team hopefully getting to that place:

The “all-in” team basket.

For those who didn’t watch the game, Andre Jackson Jr. made a really silly play turning the ball over trying to do too much in the open court a few minutes before this. And he didn’t drop his head after he presumably got quite the serving in the timeout; he just focused on the next play, leading to this work of art:

Giannis baptises Potter.

Yeah, this pick-and-roll defence from Utah is… not great. But this GA dunk on former Wisconsin Badger Micah Potter was insane:

Bonus Bucks Bits

More evidence that the big three is gelling better this season:

This was a fun moment from Playback last night, including Van’s Simpsons episode explainer:

This Bucks fan captured an awesome courtside angle of Dame putting Kyle Filipowski on skates:

Up Next

Milwaukee backs up tonight against the Portland Trail Blazers at 9:00 p.m. CST in Dame’s second time returning as a Buck. Watch the game on TNT, FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin, or stream it on our Playback and YouTube channels.

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