MU wins but Bucks fall
Marquette beats Harvard to advance in the NIT; Orlando handles Milwaukee.
ORLANDO - The Orlando Magic scored just 72 points and got wallopped by 36 in San Antonio on Tuesday night and didn’t land in Orlando until 2:36 a.m. Wednesday. The team arrived with one of the worst records in the NBA and is in its sixth straight season with nothing to play for down the stretch.
That all said, the Milwaukee Bucks — a team in the thick of the Eastern Conference playoff race with everything to play for — made the Magic look like a world-beater Wednesday night. Orlando held the lead for much of the night and hit a franchise-record-tying 18 of 34 three-pointers on the way to handing the Bucks an embarrassing 126-117 loss at Amway Center.
“Terrible loss,” said Bucks all-star Giannis Antetokounmpo, who scored 38 points, grabbed 10 rebounds and dished out seven assists. “Obviously we’ve got to play harder. We can’t accept or allow a team that played last night to score 126 points.”
Coming off a pair of wins and a day off, the Bucks set the wrong tone early. They didn’t move the ball offensively or get out to Orlando’s shooters, daring them to hit open shots.
That’s exactly what they did, embarking on a 13-0 run to take command midway through the first quarter. Even when the Bucks scored to break up that run they didn’t do much to stem the tide as the Magic nailed a trio of three-pointers in a row late in the first and took a 36-20 lead after one quarter.
Jonathan Simmons hit two of those three-pointers, helping him on his way to a career-high 35 points. A career 32.5% three-point shooter, Simmons stayed hot all night in making 7 of his 12 attempts. D.J. Augustin played Simmons’ wingman, putting up 32 points and making 6 of 9 three-pointers.
“Horrible effort,” Bucks coach Joe Prunty said of his team’s play before addressing his team’s issues against the three-pointer. “Get out to them. In an effort to not make the effort, they actually hit every shot in our face.”
As poorly as things went early, the Bucks had their chances. They battled back to within three late in the second quarter before the Magic punched back, punctuating the half with a Simmons three-pointer before the buzzer to lead by nine at the break.
In the third quarter, the Bucks rode their three main scorers — Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Eric Bledsoe — to a comeback that actually got them over the hump. Bledsoe hit a pair of three-pointers and scored 10 of his 20 points in the period while Middleton contributed seven of his 22 and Antetokounmpo had seven of his 38 to help push Milwaukee ahead.
The Bucks’ took their first lead since early in the first quarter when Bledsoe, who had four steals, picked off a Vucevic pass and turned the takeaway into a dunk. After recording block on the next defensive possession, Bledsoe hit John Henson for a dunk to cap a 10-0 run that put Milwaukee ahead, 80-77, with 3 minutes 57 seconds left in the period.
That was the last the Bucks scored in the third quarter. With Antetokounmpo on the bench, the Magic answered the Bucks’ run with a 10-0 spurt of its own over just two minutes.
With the loss, the Bucks slipped back to eighth place in the Eastern Conference with 14 games to play.
UP NEXT
Teams: Milwaukee Bucks (36-32) vs. Atlanta Hawks (20-48).
When: 5 p.m. Saturday.
Where: BMO Harris Bradley Center. About the Hawks: Atlanta kicks off a six-game road trip with its final visit to the Bradley Center. The Hawks own one of the worst records in the NBA.