NEW YORK — By the time Giannis Antetokounmpo finished his full postgame routine — weight lifting, stretching, icing, showering — following the Milwaukee Bucks’ 140-106 loss to the New York Knicks on Sunday, the locker room had cleared out. As is often the case, Antetokounmpo was the last player remaining in the Madison Square Garden visiting locker room.
The same situation played out Nov. 8 following the Bucks’ 116-94 loss to the Knicks in the ninth game of the season. That loss dropped the Bucks to 2-7, and Antetokounmpo gave an impassioned rant calling out his team’s inability — or, potentially, unwillingness — to compete on a nightly basis.
Overall, things have improved since that moment. The Bucks have gone 18-10 since Antetokounmpo called out the team. They went to Las Vegas and beat the Oklahoma City Thunder to win this season’s NBA Cup. On Friday, they beat the Orlando Magic and moved into fourth place in the Eastern Conference.
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But one thing hasn’t changed: They still haven’t beaten one of the three best teams in the Eastern Conference. With Sunday’s 34-point drubbing, their biggest loss this season, the Bucks are now winless in eight tries against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics and Knicks.
“Yeah, we’re horrible (against those teams),” Antetokounmpo said bluntly on Sunday. “We’ve gotta get our stuff together, simple as that. We did not beat Boston. We did not beat the Cavs. We didn’t beat the Knicks. We had better luck against Orlando, but those are the top three teams and we played horrible against them.”
On Sunday, the Bucks had a chance to move five games over .500 for the first time this season and get their road record to .500 for the first time since they were 1-1 following a disappointing loss to the Brooklyn Nets in the season’s third game. Instead, they couldn’t keep up with the Knicks’ second-ranked offense and got blown out in Madison Square Garden for the second time this season.
The loss dropped the Bucks to 20-17 and to sixth in the Eastern Conference, which puts them in the same group as the Magic, Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks. Just 2 1/2 games separate the fourth-place Magic (23-18) from the ninth-place Hawks (19-19).
“It definitely matters,” said Khris Middleton, who was one of the Bucks’ only bright spots on Sunday with 16 points (7-of-9 shooting) and five assists in 25 minutes. “We’ve gotta win. We can’t just beat the OK teams, the not-so-good teams; we have to beat all teams — the great teams, the good teams, in between everything. It’s a long season … we’ve gotta figure out a way to beat the better teams. I think we will.”
While the Bucks’ first loss in New York was a rout from the very beginning, Sunday’s beatdown took more time to unfold. The Bucks trailed by three points after one quarter, despite Jalen Brunson going off for 23 points in the first 12 minutes. The Bucks withstood the Knicks’ offensive onslaught to start the second quarter, as well. They may have only been trading baskets with the Knicks, but they were scoring just as efficiently to stay in the game.
Eventually, the Knicks pulled away by scoring 39 points in the second quarter to take a 13-point lead into halftime.
“We were being physical,” Antetokounmpo said. “We were competing. We were getting to our spots. We were getting into the paint. And then there was a stretch, I think in the second quarter, they went on a run. After that, it was hard for us to get back in the game.”
Then, all hell broke loose for the Bucks to start the third quarter.
On the third possession of the second half, OG Anunoby caught a kick-ahead pass from Brunson directly in front of Bucks head coach Doc Rivers. After catching the ball inside the 3-point line, Anunoby moved back outside to get into a dribble-handoff play with Brunson. Andre Jackson Jr. slipped underneath a screen set by Anunoby and stuck with Brunson. Bucks center Brook Lopez did the same thing.
As Brunson jumped in the air to find Anunoby rolling out of the unplanned trap by the Bucks’ defenders, Rivers got up from his seat and made his way to the nearest official. As Anunoby rose for a dunk, Rivers signaled for a timeout. The Knicks had scored the first four points of the second half in less than a minute.
Out of Rivers’ timeout, Damian Lillard committed a turnover, and Brunson knocked down a 3-pointer over the top of Jackson on the next possession. Antetokounmpo attempted to answer Brunson’s shot with a 3 of his own, but he missed, which led to a Knicks transition 3 for Karl-Anthony Towns.
Rivers promptly rose from his seat and took another timeout. The Knicks’ 13-point halftime lead had quickly ballooned to 23.
“They just scored four straight times and we turned it over twice, so the game was still in the balance,” Rivers said of his two timeouts to open the second half. “I would have used them all if I had to, because if you can get back in the game somehow, you’ve got a chance. I was just trying to get our guys to see that they had a chance to win the game, and we never got to that point.”
Throughout the season, the Bucks have struggled with slow starts coming out of halftime — and Sunday was no different. After the Knicks’ opening salvo built a sizable cushion, the Bucks never shrunk the deficit under 16 points the rest of the game.
Antetokounmpo scored 24 points, grabbed 13 rebounds and dished two assists, and Lillard tallied 22 points, three rebounds and five assists, but they were no match for Brunson and Towns on Sunday. Brunson put the Bucks’ perimeter defenders in early foul trouble and put up 44 points, five rebounds and six assists, while Towns added 30 points, 18 rebounds and four assists.
The Bucks simply couldn’t keep up with the Knicks offensively — and that might be the biggest difference between Milwaukee and the top three teams in the East. After a rough early start on both ends of the floor, the Bucks have improved, but they still find themselves just 13th in offensive rating and 14th in defensive rating, according to Cleaning the Glass. While the top three teams in the East play varying levels of defense, they are all elite offensively, occupying the NBA’s top three spots in offensive efficiency.
| Team | OFF RTG (Rank) | DEF RTG (Rank) |
|---|---|---|
|
123.0 (1st) |
111.4 (8th) |
|
|
121.0 (3rd) |
111.0 (7th) |
|
|
121.8 (2nd) |
113.6 (16th) |
|
|
114.2 (13th) |
113.5 (14th) |
Despite strong individual seasons from Antetokounmpo and Lillard, as well as the NBA’s second-most accurate 3-point shooting (38.6 percent), the Bucks have been unable to consistently score points at the same rate as the league’s best offenses. In eight matchups against the Cavaliers, Celtics and Knicks, the Bucks opponents have averaged 119.1 points per game while managing only 106 points per game.
The Bucks have not been fully healthy in their eight matchups against the East’s top three teams. Regardless, no matter what qualifiers are used, they still are winless in those games.
“(Zero) and 8,” Lillard said. “But if you watch the games … against the Knicks two times, they just outplayed us both times. I think a couple of times against Boston, we had games we should have won. We definitely should be at least 2-1 against Cleveland, but I mean, 0-8 is 0-8.
“I think for us, we’ve just got to understand how a lot of these games have gone. Against New York, we’ve struggled. Against Cleveland, I feel like we’ve played really well. … Against Boston, we’ve been in all of those games. A possession here, a possession there, we could have won all of those games. I think it’s a long season, it’s a journey. When we look at our matchups with those teams, we’ve just gotta understand what it was.”
Lillard was quick to remind reporters that his 2018-19 Portland Trail Blazers team went 0-4 against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the regular season before beating them in five games in the first round of the playoffs on their way to the Western Conference finals. While Rivers was upset at the start of the third quarter and throughout the game as the Knicks rained down 43.9 percent from 3 (18 of 41), he took a similar tone to Lillard when asked about the Bucks’ winless record against the East’s top three.
“I literally could give — I mean, I’m being very honest — that’s more written stuff,” Rivers said. “You know, (they’ll) go on TV and (say), ‘They haven’t beaten the …’ Coaches laugh at that, I’m being honest, because we know you’re playing well in the playoffs, you play those same teams, you can beat those same teams.
“Right now, the way we’ve played the Knicks, that’s probably very true, because they’ve kicked our butt twice and you’ve gotta live with what they’re doing. I gotta do something better. The team’s gotta do something better, but we feel comfortable against anybody.”
That level of confidence may be good for a coach to show in his team, but the results thus far suggest it may be foolhardy to believe that the Bucks can currently contend with the teams atop the Eastern Conference.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
