Raptors’ recent dominance left in the past
By finishing sixth in the Eastern Conference, the Milwaukee Bucks avoided the defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers and the top-seeded Boston Celtics in the first round. However, the Toronto Raptors, the team they’ll face beginning with Game 1 at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Air Canada Centre, have been the riddle the Bucks have had the most trouble solving in recent years.
Over the past four seasons, since Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton arrived in Milwaukee and became the foundation for the franchise, the Bucks have compiled a 2-13 record against the Raptors, their worst mark against any Eastern Conference squad.
Those numbers might be daunting, but among the Bucks they’re hardly meaningful. What’s past is past and regardless of their first-round matchup, everyone in the Milwaukee locker room knew they’d be going in as underdogs — a position they have embraced all season.
“I didn’t know that,” Antetokounmpo said of the 2-13 record. “I haven’t thought anything about that . ...
“All regular season that’s what it’s been for us, just chasing. I love when we — as a team — we love when we chase. Just coming in there just chasing — chase people down and try to get as much as we can from every game.”
The Raptors swept the fourgame series during the regular season in 2013-’14 then took the first two matchups the next season before the Bucks won the last of a three-game set. That
win, which came in February 2015, was the last Bucks win over the Raptors until March 4 of this year.
Toronto went the length of the 2015-’16 season as the only Eastern Conference team to go undefeated against the Bucks.
This season, Milwaukee ultimately ended a seven-game skid to the Raptors with a 101-94 win on March 4. That victory, it’s worth noting, came with Raptors all-star point guard Kyle Lowry sidelined by a right wrist injury that kept him out for 21 consecutive games in the second half of the season.
“They’ve got some talented players,” Bucks coach Jason Kidd said when asked about Milwaukee’s struggles against Toronto. “Talent always wins . ...
“They’re a tough opponent, they know how to play and they’re well
coached.”
Regardless of who was or wasn’t on the court in March at the BMO Harris Bradley Center, the Bucks see plenty they can draw from that game. To them, the first three matchups this season, which came on Nov. 25, Dec. 12 and Jan. 27, occurred ages ago. Since then the Bucks turned a corner, going 14-4 in March and 21-15 overall since the last time they lost to the Raptors.
“We feel good about ourselves,” Anteto- kounmpo said. “In the second half after the allstar break, we played great basketball, team basketball. A lot of people expect a lot from us, to do better than two years ago.
“We will as long as we stick together, do what we do, our team habits, the things we worked on in training camp and just believe in ourselves.”
As much as the Bucks have struggled against the Raptors, there’s someone in the locker room they can look to for advice. That someone is Kidd, who in his first year as a head coach in 2013-’14, piloted the sixthseeded Brooklyn Nets to a 4-3 series win over the Raptors in the first round of the playoffs.
“We’ve already talked about the atmosphere in Toronto — it’s like no other, it’s pretty cool to be involved (with),” Kidd said. “We’ve talked about the noise and the communication that everybody has to get on the same page.”
While past results can be used to project any particular matchup, the Bucks aren’t getting bogged down by their lopsided results against the Raptors during this season and those in the recent past. To them, the beauty of the playoffs is they represent a clean slate where anything can happen.
In a season where Milwaukee has routinely defied expectations — from Antetokounmpo starting in the All-Star Game to the Bucks weathering major injuries to Middleton and Jabari Parker to second-round pick Malcolm Brogdon being in the rookie of the year conversation — the Bucks are looking forward to another opportunity to turn heads.
“People don’t expect us to beat the Raptors,” Brogdon said. “People didn’t expect us to make the playoffs after we lost a few games during the regular season. We’re going in with an underdog mentality to prove people wrong. I feel like we’ve proven people wrong up to this point and we’re going to continue to do so.”