Raptors throttled by Bucks

MILWAUKEE ROUTS RAPTORS 104-77 TO TAKE GAME 3

Game 3 will go down as the massacre in Milwaukee.

Khris Middleton scored 20 points, while Giannis Antetokounmpo added 19 points to power the Bucks to a 104-77 rout of Toronto on Thursday that saw the Raptors dig themselves a first-half hole the size of Wisconsin.

The Bucks, who are making their first post-season appearance in two years, take a 2-1 lead in the best-ofseven opening round series into Saturday’s Game 4 in Milwaukee.

Kyle Lowry scored 13 points to top Toronto, while DeMar DeRozan managed just eight points — on 0-for-8 shooting — before the three-time allstars took a seat for good midway through the fourth quarter.

Delon Wright had 13 points off the bench, while Jonas Valanciunas had 11 points and seven rebounds.

Moments before tipoff, Raptors coach Dwane Casey had talked about the “hostile environment.”

“We’ve been here before in a hostile environment,” Casey said. “You’ve got to make sure you come here and play to your identity. You can’t get rattled and get caught up in the crowd or caught up in the game and do something you normally don’t do. Play within yourself. Meet their intensity.”

The Raptors, who were introduced to the theme song from “Barney,” did the exact opposite.

The Bucks’ motto is “Fear the Deer,” and the hardcharging Bucks, with a young starting lineup that includes two rookies and a 22-year-old star in Antetokounmpo, had the Raptors running scared from the opening tip-off. They looked completely out of sorts, unable to make a shot or a pass — DeRozan uncharacteristically fired a pass to nobody that was caught by a fan.

The Raptors, who are notoriously slow starters anyways, managed just 12 points in the opening quarter, the second lowest in franchise playoff history. (They managed just nine points versus Detroit in 2002).

The massacre stretched into the second, and when Middleton scored on a free throw late in the first half it put the Bucks up by a whopping 32 points. Wright drained a three-pointer two seconds before the break, and the Raptors trudged into the halftime break down 57-30. Their biggest halftime deficit in playoff history was 31 points last year in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals against Cleveland.