Late bucket, block help LA win a thriller
LOS ANGELES – The Milwaukee Bucks suffered a heartbreaking last second loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday night at Crypto.com Arena, falling 123-122 in the final moments.
D’Angelo Russell’s floater gave his team the lead with 5.9 seconds remaining, and Damian Lillard’s step-back attempt was blocked by Spencer Dinwiddie.
“There was only four seconds left, so Doc (Rivers) drew the play up for me to get a catch and pretty much get downhill and attack,” Lillard said of the final play. “Got the catch, I lined him up, crossed him up, got to my right hand and he was on the side of me and he was coming downhill like he was trying to recover and I went into a step-back. He just made a good play on the ball.
“Usually guys, you know, they’ll kind of plant when they’re going one direction and try to recover but his feet never stopped moving when I looked at the replay. He was going this way and his feet just kind of kept crawling up underneath me. Usually, I would shoot that shot a little bit quicker, but I felt like I had a little bit more space than I did and he just made a good play on it.”
An official review of Giannis Antetokounmpo’s shot just after the buzzer confirmed Dinwiddie’s block indeed ended the game.
“Oh, give the ball to the best closer in this game today,” Antetokounmpo said of the Bucks’ final play with Lillard. “He’s going to make a play. Whatever the outcome of that play is, you gotta live with that.”
Russell’s 44 points helped offset the absence of LeBron James for Los Angeles, who got 22 points from Anthony Davis and 18 from Austin Reaves. The Lakers improved to 34-30.
The Bucks (41-23) were led by Antetokounmpo’s 34-point, 14-rebound, 12assist triple-double. Lillard had his ninth double-double of the year with 28 points and 12 assists while Malik Beasley (14) and Brook Lopez (11) also reached double figures for the Bucks as starters. Pat Connaughton had 17 and Bobby Portis 14 off the bench.
After a relatively quiet start to the game with five points in the first quarter, Russell scored 11 of his team’s 40 points in the second quarter to help Los Angeles take control of the game. Russell and Reaves combined to go 5 for 6 from behind the three-point line while Jaxson Hayes and Cam Reddish got behind the defense for attacks at the rim. Reddish made a layup while Hayes had a dunk and made 4 of 6 free throws.
“Gotta go watch film and see what mistakes we made,” Antetokounmpo said of the second quarter. “I feel like there was a couple times that our low man wasn’t early in the paint, was able to get into the paint, get to the free throw line, get some dunks and then when we were early they kicked it out. We were playing so much in the gray area that cost us, maybe like 10, 15 points. That’s from the top of my head.”
In the third quarter Taurean Prince was the Los Angeles role player who took advantage of the Bucks as he scored eight points, including 2 threepointers.
But Russell continued his hot shooting into the fourth, knocking down two early threes to improve to 7 for 8 from behind the three-point line. He then scored his 30th and 31st points of the night on a tough floater over Lopez, becoming the first guard to score 30 or more on the Bucks since Devin Booker did it for Phoenix on Feb. 6.
Russell then shook free to knock down his eighth three-pointer of the night in front of the Bucks bench to give the Lakers a 108-103 lead with 5:31 to go.
The guard then took his game to the rim, drawing a blocking foul on Lillard for a three-point play that cut the Bucks lead to 122-121.
“I thought the biggest play for them was the three-point play; that was a crusher,” Rivers said.
“You live with contested twos, you know? He made ‘ em. But you would rather have that than the other shots. I’ll live with that. I still want to watch it. I think the first half they were shooting almost 60%, so I didn’t think we had a great defensive night tonight. I thought in the first half they killed us on their rolls and that should’ve been covered. We usually have a low man there, we didn’t tonight.”
After the Lakers forced a stop, Lakers head coach Darvin Ham kept the ball in the hot player’s hands.
First, Russell worked on Beasley before he forced a switch to draw Lillard. Russell then worked the Bucks’ guard to 13 feet and knocked down another onehanded shot to give his team a 123-122 lead with 5.9 seconds left.
It proved to be the winner.
“We had a lot of, just miscommunications,” Lillard said. “I was on the ball, they called Brook up to get a switch to put Brook on the ball, they got the switch, Brook called the switch, it’s one of our coverages – when Brook gets put in that type of situation on the perimeter we run somebody at the ball and we just double the ball, make ‘em throw it out and we rotate. I knew the clock was winding down, so once I saw Brook on the wing by himself I went to double and I was coming from the side of him, so when I came over to double Brook backed out and he kind of started going downhill and he ended up shooting a floater. It was just a miscommunication at the wrong time at the end.”
Rivers acknowledged maybe he could’ve have Pat Beverley in the game in that instance, but if the Lakers shot missed Rivers wanted Lillard on the court for those final offensive seconds.
Russell scored 21 of his 44 in the fourth quarter. He also had nine assists and six rebounds.
“I think a player like you that you gotta get into him, be a little more physical,” Antetokounmpo said. “I feel like he was playing freely out there, was able to get to his spots. He was shooting jump shots. Obviously he did have the great game, led his team all the way to the end, won the game for them, made great passes, made great shots, great decisions. He was incredible for tonight.
“But for players like that you know they’re going to be more aggressive than usual, you gotta be more physical. Sometimes there’s gonna be plays that you gotta maybe deny them, get into them, send them to the paint, just make it a little bit tougher, take them out of their comfort zone. At times we were able to do it, but we didn’t do it enough.”
Davis had a typically strong game with 22 points, 13 rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots, but without LeBron James other players had to step up on the offensive end. Russell was the one who ended up with the lion’s share, but Hayes, Reddish and Prince (24 points on 7 of 13 shooting) made key buckets when needed.
Antetokounmpo set a career high with his eighth triple-double of the season when he found Connaughton open in the corner for a three-pointer that put the Bucks up 114-112 with 2:25 to go in the game.
Antetokounmpo continued distributing in the clutch after that, setting up a Lillard four-point play off and then finding Connaughton cutting baseline for a lay-in that gave Milwaukee a 120-115 advantage.
The Bucks’ MVP candidate recorded his career best triple-double in his 61st game this season. He had seven tripledoubles in 61 games in 2020-21.
Entering Saturday he was fourth in the league in triple-doubles behind Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis (22), Denver’s Nikola Jokić (20) and Dallas’s Luka Dončić (15).
It is the 43rd career triple-double for Antetokounmpo, tying him with Fat Lever for No. 12 all-time.