Rebounding woes sink Milwaukee
The Milwaukee Bucks got throttled by turnover and offensive rebounding woes, losing 97-100 to the Houston Rockets. Giannis led the Bucks with 27 points, 10 rebounds, and six assists. The Rockets had 48 points combined by Jalen Green and Alperen Şengün.
Game Recap
Both teams traded buckets (and misses) in the opening minutes. Then the Rockets got a bit of separation behind buckets from Jalen Green and Alperen Şengün, but the Bucks got right back with crucial scores from (their own) Green and Giannis. At the first timeout, it was 26-20 Houston. Both teams went relatively cold from there, and the quarter ended with the Rockets up 30-25.
KPJ got the Bucks off the mark in the second with a pick-six into a dunk, followed by a Kuz wing triple, and another KPJ open-court steal to cap the Bucks’ electrifying 7-0 run to start the second. The Bucks then let themselves down a bit, allowing their fifth offensive rebound to give the Rockets yet another second-chance opportunity—the one major letdown of the game thus far. These missed rebounding opportunities were compounded by consecutive Rockets transition threes to increase the lead to 44-36. Crucially, Dame then made two transition threes off Taurean The Creator passes to respond. From there, the Bucks finished pretty damn well, leading 59-57 at half.
Both teams got off to slow starts out of the half, trading misses (and buckets) in the opening minutes. I swear Giannis got the chair pulled out from him while simultaneously being pulled down for, like, the third time in the game and the referees just refused to call it. Very frustrating. The Bucks then took two bad shots, leading to easy points down the other end, but the Rockets did the same thing, allowing the Bucks to go on their own 5-0 run, bringing the deficit to three at 75-78. AJ Green came up huge after that with back-to-back threes to wrench the lead back to Milwaukee. Game was tied at 85 at the end of three.
The fourth quarter lineup of KPJ, Trent, Kuz, Green, and Sims was rough. There were four turnovers and, like, three blocked shots in the space of the opening three minutes. Remarkably, the Rockets were equally as ugly, only registering three points during that stretch as Doc put an end to the suffering, calling a timeout. Giannis and Dame checked in with just over seven minutes to go to give the team its first score with 6:02 left (!) in the game. Holy moly. The Bucks immediately went on a 6-0 run, including an Amen Thompson flagrant two foul on Giannis. Then the game turned into a rock fight for the last few minutes and the Bucks just frittered away multiple great opportunities. Kuz had a bad turnover, a blown transition layup, and a missed open three. Then Giannis confusingly fouled Şengün down one with 30 seconds on the clock to gift the Rockets a three-point lead. That three-point lead was very notable because with about seven seconds left, Dame shot a half-court attempt knowing that the Rockets were trying to foul up three and the refs refused to give him three shots! Just one of the worst refereeing decisions I’ve seen, personally. Then the plot thickened once again, with Giannis and Şengün both called for a lane violation on a Dame free throw, leading to a jump ball at centre court where Dame got an open look to tie it, but missed. Bucks lose.
Stat That Stood Out
Both teams turned the ball over quite a bit; the Bucks had 13 and the Rockets had 15. But it was offensive rebounding that killed Milwaukee, giving up a total of 16, with six of them coming in the final frame.
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