Bucks end Warriors’ 24-game win streak
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin—The Golden State Warriors are perfect no more. Their 24-game winning streak to start the 2015-16 National Basketball Association (NBA) season came to end on Saturday night (Sunday morning in Manila) in Milwaukee, where they lost to the Bucks, 108-95.
Although the defending NBA champions have not lost a regular-season game since April 7, Saturday night’s result was not hugely surprising. Golden State was concluding a challenging seven-game trip and coming off a grueling double-overtime game at Boston on Friday night in which they held on for a 124-119 victory.
“Losing sucks even if you are 24-1,” Luke Walton, the Warriors interim head coach, said of the stunning loss to the lowly Bucks, the team at the bottom of the Central Division and an unlikely candidate to end Golden State’s winning run.
But Milwaukee got all-round effort from the team, converting 50 percent of its field goal attempts, including 6 of 14 three-point attempts.
In contrast, the normally sharpshooting Warriors struggled to find their range on Saturday, shooting barely 40 percent from the floor, including 6 of 26 (23 percent) from behind the arc.
“Nobody wanted to see it come to an end,” Golden State guard Stephen Curry said. “Thirty-three wins was within our grasp.”
Saturday’s loss stopped the Warriors short of the record of 33 consecutive victories, set by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1971-72 season. The Bucks also stopped the Lakers’ winning streak in 1972.
Curry, the reigning NBA MVP , had 28 points on 10-of-21 shooting from the field, and he went just 2 of 8 from 3point territory. Klay Thompson, returning after missing a game with a sprained ankle, was 4 of 14 for 12 points.
‘We ran out of gas’
“We didn’t have it tonight,” Walton said. “That’s why it’s so hard to do what these guys have done so far. Tonight it caught up to us.”
The Warriors coach said that the Bucks “looked like they wanted it a little more tonight. We looked like we ran out of gas.”
The Warriors trailed by 59-48 at half time, the fourth time this season that Golden State trailed at the half.
Both clubs were playing the back end of consecutive Friday-Saturday contests. But the Bucks were able to battle through the fatigue better than the Warriors, who were hoping to become the first NBA team to sweep a seven-game road trip.
Center Greg Monroe had 28 points and 11 rebounds for the Bucks, who led by double digits for much of the night before the Warriors cut it to a point a couple of times.
But the Bucks had an answer every time the Warriors threatened to take the lead. Monroe was 11 of 16, including a 3-point play with 2 minutes 51 seconds left for a 12-point lead.
Michael CarterWilliams, who had 17 points off the bench for Milwaukee, made a strong drive down the lane and dunked with 42 seconds left to put an exclamation point on Milwaukee’s night.
“We never wavered,” Monroe said. “We wanted to come out with a lot of effort and energy. We were at home, a packed house. It was a great opportunity for us.”
Bucks fans at the Harris Bradley Center, which was packed by 18,700 spectators, erupted with cheers after the final buzzer. A raucous Bucks cheering section proved prophetic after wearing green “24-1” shirts to the game.
“We showed some spurts to get back into the game,” Curry said. “We got some stops, but for 48 minutes, I don’t think anybody can say we played as hard as they did.”
Forward Dray- mond Green, who scored 24 points for the Warriors, said he felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders now that the streak was over.
“I’m not happy it is over because at the end of the day what we did was pretty cool. But it is almost like a sense of relief,” Green said.
“When you turn on the TV and all you see is Warriors streaking, Warriors making history. Who is going to stop them? You start to believe that. Through all this you get caught up and trapped inside of what is going on. Now we can focus on what we need to focus on,” he added.
Time to move on
Curry said the Warriors could be proud of their achievement, but he added it was now time to move on.
“We wanted every night to put another notch in belt of that streak,’’ he said. “But tonight it didn’t go our way. We ended up with our first loss, but we can appreciate what we were able to accomplish.”
Saturday’s loss also ended an emerging debate over how to calculate the Warriors’ winning streak.
Some were inclined to include the four straight games the Warriors won at the end of the 2014-15 regular season; others, with a more purist view, thought the streak should be measured in terms of games from the current season only.
Counting the four games from the end of last season, the Warriors won 28 regularseason games in a row, which would top the 27 straight won by the Miami Heat in 2013, the second most after the Lakers’ streak.