Milwaukee finishes West Coast trip at 1-3
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Bay Area – and the West Coast – were not kind to the Milwaukee Bucks over the last eight days as they concluded a four-game road trip in California with a 129-94 loss to the Sacramento Kings Tuesday night at the Golden1 Center. The Bucks were blown out by 35 points at Golden State to start the trip on March 6 and by 35 against the Kings to end it.
The Kings (37-27) won for the third time in four games while the Bucks (4224) finished the trip 1-3. They went 2-7 on their two West Coast trips. The Bucks return home to face Philadelphia on Thursday at Fiserv Forum.
“Listen, it’s going to say they shot 53% — and listen, Malik (Beasley) had some wide open shots, so did Pat Connaughton — but that’s all fool’s gold,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers said after the game. “The ball didn’t move tonight. We took difficult shots. Sacramento overhelps a lot because they have to, and we didn’t take advantage of it at all. A few times we did it, we did get good shots. But I thought the way we played offensively I thought we chased points all night. Everybody. First play of the game I think a player pump faked, got in the paint. We told ‘em they run at you, kick it out. We take contested twos.
“So, we deserved it tonight. My fault. I didn’t get them prepared the way they should mentally. I thought our shootaround, guys talking about planes and leaving. As a staff we talked about it after shootaround. It was like, if our focus is not better than this morning, it’s going to be a long day and it was a long day. So, that’s on us.”
On their final night of the trip, it was clear early on it wasn’t going to be the Bucks’ night.
Not only did the Kings shoot 68% from the floor overall and 72% from behind the three-point line in the decisive first half, the Bucks couldn’t buy a bucket. Malik Beasley saw open corner threes rattle in and out. Damian Lillard went 1 for 7 in the first half and Brook Lopez was 1 for 4. Milwaukee trailed by 20 at the break, and that was with Giannis Antetokounmpo scoring 22 points and the Bucks shooting 17 more free throws than the Kings.
“A couple things we just weren’t sharp enough so they got of to a good start,” Lillard said. “We also knew that to kind of take them out of transition and being able to play with that pace that they play with we had to play good offense and execute so they weren’t just getting it off the rim, pushing it at us and our defense was kind of off balance. We just didn’t play good offense either. The ball didn’t move. We didn’t do the things that we’ve been doing when we’ve played well for reach other, the extra passes, the screening, our execution where we’re just kind of leaning on each other. We weren’t good at that on either end of the floor.”
Milwaukee trailed just 38-30 after one, but Sacramento put the game out of reach in the second with a 37-point quarter.
It didn’t get much better in the second half, at least offensively, for Milwaukee. Sacramento’s shooting came back to earth but the ball wasn’t finding the net for the Bucks for them to mount any real comeback.
Antetokounmpo led the team with 30 points and 13 rebounds. He was 10 for 17 from the floor and made 10 of 14 free throws. Alex Len fell into Antetokounmpo’s surgically repaired left knee in the final seconds of the third quarter as the two battled for a rebound, but after grabbing at it reflexively after the play Antetokounmpo finished out the quarter. He returned for a few minutes of action in the fourth.
No other Bucks player reached double figures in scoring until 1 minute, 49 seconds remained in the third quarter when Bobby Portis scored his 10th and 11th points on a floater. Portis finished with 11.
Lillard had 10 points on 2-of-12 shooting, including a 1-for-6 mark from behind the three-point line. Beasley was just 3 of 11 from behind the three-point line in scoring 11 points and Lopez scored seven on 2 of 7 shooting. Pat Connaughton was 1 for 7 from behind the three-point line and AJ Green was 1 for 4.
Milwaukee shot just 20% from behind the three-point line (7 for 35) before the starters were pulled with 6:37 remaining and Sacramento leading 111-83.
“Gotta move the ball but ... I get it. I get why it’s happening,” Antetokounmpo said of the lack of ball movement. “Especially,
for example, when you get double teamed every single time in the post, you want to play. You want to impact the game. You cannot just be passive and just passing the ball. You gotta impact the game in a way. Sometimes you gotta beat the double team. Sometimes you gotta make something happen. When they’re blitzing Dame every single time, sometimes he’s going to hold the ball, try to see if he can find a crack, try to make something happen. I get why it’s happening.
“But, we have to work on it. We’re going to see that in the next game we play against Philly. We’re going to see to see that in the next game we’re gonna play in the playoffs. We gotta be able to beat the teams from the post when they double team us. We gotta be able to beat teams when they blitz us. Find the right outlets, guys get to the middle of the floor, try to spray it out to the corners, guys making shots. You have to find ways to be effective no matter what the defense does. Do I believe the ball was sticky tonight. One hundred percent it was sticky. Again, we didn’t make shots either.
“... When you’re the leader of the team what do you do? When you’re Dame what do you do? When you’re Giannis what do you do? You just keep on giving it or you try to make something happen? So that’s the struggle of being a leader of a team. ... Maybe next game we can be better, we can make shots. It’s easy when everybody’s feeling the ball and everybody’s making shots and the ball is moving.”