It’s a great late show
Offense gets in gear down the stretch
The Milwaukee Bucks started slow. They struggled to find consistent offense for most of the night, with none of their go-to scorers shooting particularly well.
Thus, with 3 1/2 minutes left on Tuesday night they found themselves in a tie game — after entering the fourth quarter up by 13 — with the Atlanta Hawks, the team at the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings.
But for as sloppy as the game had been for both teams, the Bucks flipped the switch for a decisive run to earn a 9790 victory at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
“Just had to dig deep and make plays on both sides of the ball,” Khris Middleton said in an on-court interview after the game.
It started with Giannis Antetokounmpo, who to that point had been limited to 5 of 14 shooting and was hampered by foul trouble. When the Bucks needed a big shot, though, he delivered.
With the shot clock ticking down out of a timeout at the 3 1/2-minute mark, Antetokounmpo nailed an 11-footer. Then, after a missed three-pointer by Ersan Ilyasova, Middleton lobbed an entry pass to Antetokounmpo, who collected it before popping up for a dunk.
Following another missed threepointer by Ilyasova, Middleton tossed a pass ahead to Eric Bledsoe on the break for a dunk, which he threw down
emphatically over Ilyasova prompting a timeout.
Thon Maker, who had 12 points on 5 of 7 shooting while starting in place of John Henson (right hamstring soreness), added a dunk off a feed from Bledsoe following a Hawks timeout to cap an 8-0 run that put Milwaukee ahead for good.
Antetokounmpo, despite his struggles against Atlanta’s packed-in defense, finished with 15 points and 15 rebounds in the victory. Middleton led all scorers with 21 points, including 13 in the second half after going 2 of 8 from the field in the first, and center Tyler Zeller chipped in 14 points and 8 rebounds off the bench in his Bradley Cenetr debut as a Buck.
BEHIND THE BOX SCORE
Old friends: When Bucks coach Joe Prunty started his NBA coaching career as an assistant video coordinator for the San Antonio Spurs in 1996, Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer was also on San Antonio’s staff. In fact, Budenholzer had been the video coordinator for the previous two seasons and as a recently promoted assistant coach who still handled video coordination, he worked closely with Prunty.
The two spent each season working closely together until 2005 when Prunty moved on to an assistant coaching job with the Dallas Mavericks. On Tuesday, the two men coached against each other for the first time with each sitting in the head coach’s chair.
“He’s got great attention to detail, he’s one of the most organized people I’ve ever been around,” Budenholzer said. “He was integral to me surviving in San Antonio; I would’ve been lost without him . ...
“When you’re the video guy in San Antonio — and at that time I made that next step to assistant coach — there were a lot of demands on he and I to make sure things were organized and presented. Those are his strengths and I don’t know if they’re mine. I just know he was incredible to work with and did an amazing job. There’s a lot of times where he was covering my (behind), covering all of ours. He was very much well-respected in San Antonio and has gone on and done a lot of great things since then.”
UP NEXT
Teams: Milwaukee Bucks (32-24) vs. Denver Nuggets (30-26, entering Tuesday).
When: 7 p.m. Thursday.
Where: BMO Harris Bradley Center. About the Nuggets: Like the Bucks, the Nuggets have been hot since late January. Entering Tuesday when they hosted the Spurs, the Nuggets had won seven of their past 10 games, including victories over the Thunder and Warriors in consecutive games to start February. Nikola Jokic, a 6-foot-10 forward/center, has been steady for Denver, averaging 16.6 points and team-highs with 10.4 rebounds and 5.6 assists per game.