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Nets role players shine in toppling Bucks 118-100

NEW YORK – The Milwaukee Bucks traveled to Brooklyn for the first time this season to take on the Nets and lost 118-100 at the Barclays Center. The Nets have won eight straight games and improved to 21-12 overall while the Bucks fell to 22-10.

Afterward, Giannis Antetokounmpo challenged his team to begin games with more urgency. In their last three losses – all on the road – the Bucks have scored 41 (Memphis), 42 (Cleveland) and 47 (Brooklyn) points in the first half while falling behind big.

“I don’t know – I think being complacent,” he began. “We are being comfortable. We just expect to, I don’t know, that people are just going to hand us games. It doesn’t work that way. We’ve got to go out there and kind of take. You’ve got to go out there and play good basketball, build good habits defend and kind of, you know, compete.

“At the end of the day I don’t think anybody’s going to give you anything in life. You don’t take things in life because you’re more handsome or you’re more smart than anybody, or you’re cooler than anybody. You have to go out there and grab it. This is what sport is about. About being competitive.

“I feel like sometimes we – I trust my team, I trust my teammates, I trust the guys, I trust what we do here – but sometimes I think there are plays that we just, I don’t know, we go out there and we’re like oh, they’re going to give us the game. And it doesn’t work that way.

“You have to go out there and take things. Take things that we want. Nobody’s going to give you games. Nobody’s going to give you a championship. Nobody’s going to hand you a trophy. Nobody’s going to give you credit for being good, for how cool you are and how good you’ve been playing.

“You have to go out there and play basketball. Don’t talk about it, be about it, play about it. But, as I said, I trust my teammates, I trust what we’ve built here and even though we lost twice in a row now I don’t worry. I don’t worry at all. Khris (Middleton) is going to be back. Guys gonna be healthy. As long as we leave the court healthy we always have a chance.”

Here are some takeaways from the game:

Nets’ role players shine around stars Durant, Irving

October 26 feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?

That was when the Milwaukee hosted Brooklyn at Fiserv Forum, a 110-99 victory in the third game of the season for the Bucks. The Nets had a different head coach (Steve Nash) and the game was sandwiched between Kevin Durant’s offseason trade request and Kyrie Irving’s tweet of a film with antisemitic views that ultimately led to a suspension.

Irving scored 33 points on 23 shots. Durant scored 27 points on 21 shots. They were a combined 1 for 11 from behind the three-point line and 21 for 23 from the free throw line. The rest of the Nets combined to go 15 for 42 (35.7%) for 39 points, including 2 for 20 from behind the three-point line and 3 for 8 from the charity stripe.

The two Nets stars got theirs, but they weren’t enough to overcome a nearly-healthy Bucks team – which was the plan.

Meeting again nearly two months later at Barclays Center, the Bucks came in with the best record in the NBA but the Nets were the hottest, having won seven straight.

Durant is in the MVP conversation (30.1 points, 6.6 assists, 5.3 assists) and Irving (26.1 points) is playing like an all-star again. Khris Middleton remained sidelined for the Bucks, this time with right knee soreness, but Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday are their MVP and all-star forward/point guard combination. Center Brook Lopez is currently the favorite to win defensive player of the year.

But the plan remained largely the same with Durant (especially) and Irving getting attention from multiple defenders.

In the first half, Irving was just 1 for 6 for three points with Jevon Carter on him and Durant had to take 10 shots for his 14 points, mostly against Holiday.

But the Nets were in control throughout the first half in taking a 60-47 lead because Nic Claxton made all six of his shots for 12 points and T.J. Warren came off the bench for 10. Royce O’Neale was 3 for 5 for eight points.

“They did a really good job of getting their other guys open and finding them and they did good job of knocking them down and scoring,” Bucks guard Grayson Allen said.

Unfortunately for the Bucks, they could not reverse the trend in the second half – even though Irving had just one point in the third quarter – as the Nets built up a margin of as many as 23 points. Claxton had his best overall game of the year in making 9 of 10 shots for 19 points. He also had eight rebounds and five assists.

And while Warren’s shooting cooled, he still was one of four other Nets to reach double figures around the 42 combined points Durant and Irving had. O’Neale hit 5 three-pointers for 17 points, Ben Simmons had 12 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists and Warren finished with 12.

“I feel like we did a pretty good job,” Carter said of the defense on Irving and Durant. “The other guys, they made shots and we couldn’t make any, so it hurt us tonight.”

Added Holiday: “I think we did solid, especially between me and Jevon. Jevon’s a dog. He made it real tough on Kyrie. Sometimes with ‘KD’ it’s kind of tough because he’s 8 feet tall but I think we did the best we could.”

Pat Connaughton noted the 24 fast break points the Nets had some easier three-point attempts off the transition following many of the Bucks’ missed shots and turnovers, along with some second-chance points by the Nets (11).

“It felt to me like for a game that we did not shoot the ball well, if we had done those little things I think we still could have found a way to stay in it,” Connaughton said. “I think it’s just a product of; we’ve faced teams who’ve switched, but they switch, they have length when they switch, and I think from an offensive standpoint we’ve just got to better about getting the ball side-to-side and making them guard and not just staying stagnant when a team switches and tries to load up on Giannis and Jrue and things of that nature.”

The Nets role players stepped up, and whenever it seemed like the Bucks got some momentum to close the gap, Durant or Irving were there for a key bucket to stem the tide.

Bucks offense continues to struggle

Despite being one of the best teams all season, the Bucks have struggled offensively to put up points, heading into the game in Brooklyn averaging just 112.9 per game – 17th in the NBA. The month of December has been particularly tough sledding for any Bucks player not named Giannis, as the Bucks have scored 112 or fewer points seven times in 12 games.

Of their 11 lowest scoring games of the season, six have come this month and Milwaukee is 7-5 in December.

“We’ve had some tough three-point shooting games as a group, so that always makes it tough,” Allen said. “We’re a team that we score a lot in the paint, post-ups and stuff like that, but when teams really load up and make us shoot threes and you don’t hit ’em it’s tough to score. We’ve got a team of good shooters so I think it’ll come around.”

A clear through-line in the season struggles has been the unavailability of Middleton, who missed the first 20 games after offseason wrist surgery and has missed another five with ankle and right knee issues since his Dec. 2 debut.

Pat Connaughton (first 15 games) and Joe Ingles (29) also missed big parts of the early going of the season, too.

“I think a little bit is rhythm, too,” Connaughton said. “We’ve got a lot of guys back. I think we’ve got a lot of guys playing different minutes with different guys and different things and I think we’re still trying to put that together and make sure that guys can figure out where their roles are and where their shots are going to come and what plays do we run, quick-hitters that we run that work best with what combinations and things of that nature.

“As much as we would like that to not be the case because we returned 15 guys or whatever it was, there is still some learning curve. It’s still basketball. We still have to get some continuity. Guys come back from injuries like, the injury doesn’t go away right when you come back. You’ve got to learn to play with the guys who have played a certain way for the last month. I think for us, it’s similar to past years where we’ve had to learn throughout the regular season and we’ve had to make sure we utilize the negatives of the regular season as learning lessons to come up from on the back side.”

While that’s been happening the team has had to rely heavily on the scoring of Antetokounmpo on a night in, night out basis. Lopez has had a resurgent year as an offensive player and Holiday is averaging nearly 20 points per game, but overall the team has struggled to make three-pointers and free throws.

They’ve also been a victim of turnovers, cutting down on their chances to get shots up and allowing opponents transition opportunities. The Nets scored 21 points on 17 takeaways Friday night, outscoring the Bucks by 11 in that area (when the starters were in the game).

In the first half, when the Nets took control of the game, Antetokounmpo was 6 for 7 for 16 points while his eight teammates who also played combined for 31 points on 12-of-36 shooting (33%) and only made three of their 15 threes (20%).

Lopez ended up with 23 points and Holiday had 18 and five assists, but no other regular rotation player had more than eight points before the starters were pulled. Bobby Portis finished with 10 points and 12 rebounds.

Antetokounmpo finished with 26 points on 9 of 13 shooting, 13 rebounds and seven assists but while he made 9 of his 13 shots, the rest of the Bucks made just 37.9% of theirs. The Bucks as a whole made just 20.5% of their three-pointers (7-for-34) when the starters were in.

“I think particularly on this road trip, we probably need more ball movement,” Portis said. “Playing a lot of one-on-one a lot. So, move the ball a lot more. I think making shots is a big thing, too. I don’t really think we’ve shot the ball well. Even the win against the Pelicans we really didn’t shoot it well, we just won the game. Last three games, been highs and lows throughout the game but still things to clean up and still things just to take away from the loss.”

Five numbers

1 Technical foul on Middleton, who was in street clothes when he jumped off the bench to protest an offensive foul call on Holiday at the 8:15 mark of the third quarter. Irving made the free throw and then Royce O’Neale made a three on the free possession, giving the Nets not only four points off the tech but a 72-52 lead the Bucks couldn’t come back from.

2 Games in a row the Bucks have lost. It is also just the second time this season that has happened (Nov. 11 at San Antonio and Nov. 14 vs. Atlanta).

4 Losses in their last five on the road for the Bucks, who dropped to 8-7 away from Fiserv Forum. They were one of just seven teams entering play that had a winning record on the road this year.

6-2 Bucks’ regular season record against the Nets when Antetokounmpo and Durant play. Durant played his first season with the Nets in the 2020-21 season. Brooklyn won the only regular season matchup when Durant was out. The Bucks beat the Nets in seven games in the 2020-21 Eastern Conference semi-finals en route to winning the title that year.

Bucks’ last game:Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 45 points not enough in Milwaukee’s loss to Cleveland

More:How Bobby Portis and Grayson Allen used the Bucks’ playoff loss to the Celtics to improve their games

Play of the game is Giannis’ dunk after hand injury

Early in the second quarter Antetokounmpo took a hard foul from Brooklyn’s O’Neale, and he landed awkwardly on his right hand. It appeared his fingers bent awkwardly on contact, and it took him some time to get up and then before he attempted two free throws. He made one of those, and had a turnover after the fall, but he then put back a monster dunk off a Holiday missed shot less than a minute later – and gave a mean mug to accentuate it.

Video of the game is Holiday’s fadeaway into the crowd

In the closing seconds of the first quarter, Holiday raced down court against Durant and angled onto the low block only to step-back on the Nets’ 7-footer and jump so far toward the baseline that he lofted up a high 13-footer over the top of the backboard. Holiday’s step-back is a lethal move, and he’s now routinely hitting shots over the backboards, from nearly any angle.

Bucks injury report

  • Giannis Antetokounmpo (left knee soreness), probable
  • Khris Middleton (right knee soreness), out

Who do the Bucks play next?

Milwaukee’s season-long road trip continues Sunday on Christmas Day for a showcase against the Boston Celtics at TD Garden at 4 p.m. It is the first time the Bucks will play the Celtics since losing in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals last year. After some offseason controversy that saw head coach Ime Udoka suspended for the year, the Celtics have been one of the best teams in the league behind MVP candidate Jayson Tatum, all-star running mate Jaylen Brown and former Bucks guard Malcolm Brogdon.

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