Both teams tried hard to lose, but someone had to win
In a game that Adam Silver will surely want to burn all evidence of ever happening, the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Houston Rockets, 100-97. Giannis was the Bucks’ best offensive source with 27 points, 10 rebounds, and six assists. Jalen Green had 25 points and eight rebounds for the Rockets, while Alperen Şengün had 23 and 11. 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?
The hypothesis that trading Khris will leave a gaping playmaking hole on the team proved correct in this one. Not to say it was necessarily the wrong move—reasonable minds can differ on that—but it did leave the team with just two guys you feel comfortable creating a good look against any team. I mean, the offence when Giannis and Dame were off the court was rough. The defence was good, to their credit, but you have to be able to put the ball in the hoop. Postgame, Doc said the following about the team’s night on that end overall:
“Offensively, we didn’t play as well as we can. We’re a better team than that offensively. This is one of those games that’ll keep you up at night. It really was.”
Three Observations
Offensive rebounding killed the Bucks.
Sure, there were some long rebounds, but I thought Houston was way more ferocious in pursuing offensive boards than Milwaukee was in securing defensive boards. The Rockets got 16 O boards to the Bucks’ four. Houston has the highest offensive-rebounding percentage in the NBA at 36% (granted, some of this has to do with the fact that they have the 26th-worst shooting percentage, but I digress.) It really felt like the Bucks let themselves get pushed around and often just hoped or assumed the ball would land in their lap.
I was unsure if Kyle Kuzma should have finished the game.
I’ll start off by giving Kuz credit for his defence, which I thought was good yet again last night. But the offence was a bit of a struggle. I mean, 4/10 isn’t too bad (don’t love three TOs), but him being on the end of three great opportunities late and blundering them all was tough. There was the possession where they didn’t appear to try all that hard to get the ball to Dame or Giannis, which should be priority number one, and then Kuz dribbled around on the right wing/corner and stepped out of bounds in the process. There was his decision to try and lay the ball up off the Giannis steal and get blocked at the rim. And finally, he had a wide-open corner three and missed. Look, I understand keeping him in for a multitude of reasons—it’s not like there were options aplenty on the pine—but I will say this: Kuz should not be a shoo-in to finish games on this team. If he struggles in the playoffs, you hope Doc can put the politics aside and make that adjustment.
The Kevin Porter Jr. honeymoon came to a screeching halt.
Apart from that early second-quarter cameo, Porter was rough in this one. He went 2/7 with four turnovers in 11 minutes. Part of me feels like it’s unfair to put all of the blame on KPJ because in non-Dame/Giannis lineups, he is asked to create because nobody else can really do it. But my note in the Playback stream to our Morgan Ross was that you can get away with asking Kevin to do that against bad defensive teams (such as Washington) and maybe even middling ones (such as Miami); but asking him to anchor your offence against a top-five defence like Houston’s is just unrealistic. They do seem to be trying to pair Dame and Giannis (I assume the minute restrictions for those two have something to do with it as well), but it sure would’ve been nice to have one of them out there as an option to go to.
Bonus Bucks Bits
- Credit to Bucks Film Room for this, but Milwaukee went scoreless for 7:38 from the end of the third to the middle of the fourth.
- Houston is the ultimate “if you don’t move the ball against them, they’ll get every stop possible” team.
- Jericho Sims had some awesome defensive possessions on Şengün. Wall of Jericho!
- This was genuinely one of the ugliest basketball games I’ve seen, LOL.
Up Next
The Bucks play the Denver Nuggets back at Fiserv on Thursday. Watch at 7:00 p.m. Central on TNT or stream it on our Playback and YouTube channels.
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