The Bucks have come back down to earth after the electricity of the season’s opening week and a half, playing just .500 ball over their last eight games. But the momentum shifting plays? They haven’t gone anywhere. For better or worse.
@ Pacers
The Bucks are behind enemy lines and it is
hostile—Myles Turner’s return breathing life into the zombie Pacers. Boos chorus from all corners of Gainbridge Fieldhouse but Turner revels in the vitriol, swatting three shots and splashing two threes in the first.
Has he finally arrived? The thought crosses every Bucks fan’s mind but fades as quickly as the lead and suddenly it’s a dogfight at the half. Deep in the third, threes from Giannis and Ryan Rollins bookend a pair of Pascal Siakam free throws, and the Bucks pull away, leading by 10. Finish the quarter strong, and the starters can rest in the fourth to prepare for Toronto. Just a stop and a score—it’s time to break their backs. AJ Green does his job, forcing Spicy P into an isolation miss, but four Bucks fail to put a body on Isaiah Jackson, and the rebound slips away. Soon enough, so does the lead—and seemingly the game—until Giannis sticks a dagger in Aaron Nesmith’s eye at the buzzer. The Bucks win, but Giannis is right: thumbs all the way down.
Win probability following Rollins’ three: 87.2%
Win probability after the Bucks fail to grab the rebound, leading to Jarace Walker’s score: 82.6%
@ Raptors
SEGABABA, back in the Toronto mud. The first quarter opens with a shootout—a combined seven threes without a miss. But it’s the way the quarter
closes that makes all the difference. 2:07 on the clock, Kuzma’s at the line down 28-31. The beginning of the end. He splits the free throws, and Sandro Mamukelashvili nets a three. He misses a transition left-handed floater off glass—and Gradey Dick hits a trey of his own. Then he turns it over on a drive-and-dish. The effort is there, but it’s all haphazard. Down 29-37, the Bucks get a stop late. There are 24 seconds left in the quarter. Time to run a play, get a quality look. Take some momentum into the second. Instead, Kuzma catches in semi-transition—20 ticks on the clock—and launches a 25-footer from the wing. Iron. The Raptors learn the lesson, walk it down. Set a play. Scottie Barnes catches it at the free throw line, turns, and faces. Two dribbles into Bobby Portis’ chest—pow, pow—then hits a step back on the buzzer. Raptors by 10. And it just gets worse from there.
Win probability when Kuzma splits the free throws: 43.4%
Win probability after Barnes’ buzzer beater: 24.1%
vs. Bulls
NBA Cup, time to defend the throne. It’s late in the final term, a back-and-forth vs. the second-in-the-East Bulls, winners of six out of seven. Matas Buzelis scores on a feed from MIP candidate Josh Giddey and cuts the lead to five. 104-99, Bucks. There’s 5:29 left to play—clutch time in everyone’s book besides the NBA’s. The Bucks walk it down, a Turner screen forcing Nikola Vucevic to switch onto Giannis. Vucevic concedes the perimeter, the clock winding down: 5:20, 5:19, 5:18. The Freak backs it up, gets his rhythm, checks his toes. Releases from three at 5:17. Time slows, the parabola cinematic. Then, as 5:16 becomes 5:15, it’s water—the crowd, the splash. Giannis clasps his hand over his mouth. Pounds his chest. And the words echo through Fiserv: “Don’t you know I’m a 60% three-point sniper?!” There’s 5:14 left on the clock, but this one’s
done. Smash to black, roll the credits.
Win probability after Buzelis’ layup: 86.2%
Win probability after Giannis’ three: 92.3%
vs. Rockets
It’s a matchup
full of moments. In the second, Gary Trent Jr. turns into a pickpocket, leading to transition threes for Anthony and himself a minute apart. With 31.8 to go, Kuzma hits a three of his own to give the Bucks a two-for-one opportunity, end the half on a high. To start the third, Turner commits a moving screen—wiping away a Green three—and then cops a Kevin Durant trey in his grill for his troubles. Six-point swing. Later, Giannis Dream shakes his way to a left-handed poster on four Rockets, and Kuz gets back into it with a sequence that raises Wisconsin’s collective saliva quotient: a three and a stop on Durant. In the fourth, the moments keep coming. Anthony gets an and-one on Alperen Sengun—his fourth personal foul. Reed Shepherd flashes back to Trent in the second: two steals, two buckets. Two-point game. Rollins and Portis also have moments of their own, as do KD—an absurd hoop-and-the-harm—and Sengun. Amidst it all, Giannis loses his mind in what is arguably the worst two-minute stretch of his career.
But none of these are the game’s defining moment, not really. It’s a subtler one that’s most telling—way back in the first. Sengun catches between the high post and the three-point line, faces up. He dribbles twice—the second between his legs—and pulls the trigger on the J. It air balls, only for Steven Adams to collect the board. Adams misses the put-back, then grabs it again. Misses, then grabs it again. Toys with the Bucks—“Thanks, bro!”—and finally decides to tip it home. All in three seconds. It’s a harbinger of things to come. 20-7 on the night. If you know, you know. Here, the Rockets’ lead is just two, and the Bucks actually have the upper hand for most of the night. The game remains close down the stretch, but like a ball caroming off the defensive rim, the Bucks just can’t get a hold of it, and the Rockets haul in the victory.
Win probability after Sengun’s air ball: 37.4%
Win probability after Adam’s tip-in: 34.9%
@ Mavericks
Heavy legs, tired minds—back-to-backs are tough. But good teams find a way. Split them at the very
least. Down 13 at the 10:35 mark of the fourth, having not scored in the quarter, the Bucks aren’t looking particularly good. In fact, this is burn-the-tape bad. Hire the guys LeBron did to erase that Jordan Crawford poster kind of bad. If only they could find a spark. A moment. Enter Kyle Kuzma. The possession is stilted, Giannis catching it on the left block with just seven seconds left on the shot clock. He drives middle, collapsing the defence—four defenders in the paint. The usual. Then he flicks it to Rollins at the top of the three-point line, who immediately swings it to Kuzma on the wing. Kuz pump fakes, sidesteps to the corner, releases from three—all of it decisive. Splash. A minute and a half later, after a tough Rollins reverse, an AJ Green technical free throw, and a Giannis jam, Kuz splashes another one, and it’s a four-point game. The action reverts to junk—both sides making boneheaded plays—but the Bucks do enough and find a way, just like good teams do.
Win probability at the 10:35 mark of the fourth: 5%
Win probability after Kuzma’s second three: 26.6%
@ Hornets
The omens are there from the start. Kon Knueppel and Ryan Kalkbrenner—Hornets’ rookies—school the Bucks in the first, and Moussa Diabate licks his lips as soon as he enters; he gets straight back to where he left off last year. The score remains in reach through much of the first half, but the Bucks find themselves in a 14-point deficit with just 3:24 left in the second. To the Hornets. The 3-7 Hornets. Without LaMelo Ball
and Brandon Miller.
Despite the score, Turner and Rollins are giving it their all and combine to go on a 10-3 run that looks like it might breathe life back into the squad. Restore order. All they need is a dagger heading into the half. It’s the final possession—at least for the Bucks—and Rollins takes command. 1-4 flat. Green sprints from the baseline, becomes a screener, and Rollins moves right, finding the angle. Collin Sexton gets physical with Green, disrupting the action momentarily, but Rollins gets downhill and forces Sexton to help. Simultaneously, Turner comes from the far corner to set a gorgeous pick on Sexton—who’s now scrambling—and Green finds himself all alone at the top of the three-point line. He rises—you know the image—and the scorers sharpen their pencils. Start to write it in. Except they can’t. Because the shot is short, and what would have been a six-point deficit remains nine. It ends up at 11 by the final horn.
The season’s only 12 episodes in, but the reruns are already in syndication: 50-34 disadvantage on the boards, inability to defend without fouling, and limited shot creation. Still, even without Giannis, the Bucks absolutely should have won this one. Perhaps “good team” was premature after all.
Win probability before the game: 51.4%
Win probability after Green’s three-point miss: 21.3%
vs. Hornets
Sometimes momentum comes when there is none. Giannis is back and the Bucks are at home, playing on the best-looking court there is—it’s the NBA Cup at Fiserv. Turner hits three threes in the first, and the sequence is almost enough to claim tonight’s moment. But it’s
these Hornets against
these Bucks and—with help from an oh-so fitting offensive board bouncing straight to Knueppel for three and a
very questionable Giannis hero-ball shot at the buzzer—it’s OT. Anyone’s game.
The Bucks open overtime with a patient set, Green curling around a Giannis screen and into the paint, drawing just enough attention from Diabate to free up Turner for a wing three. Butter. Exactly a minute later, Turner moves into Rollins’ eye-line at the top of the three-point line—his spot—and it’s butter again. The lead is four, but Turner has already scored more than the Hornets ever will in the extra period. The Bucks get the dub, Wisconsinites get to sleep a little easier, and Turner makes every writer smile—those first-quarter threes foreshadowing all along.
Win probability to start overtime: 50.0%
Win probability after Turner’s second three-pointer in overtime: 76.2%
vs. Lakers
Both sides are on the second leg of a back-to-back, but it’s the Bucks who are most affected. They just can’t hit
anything—34.8% and just 18 points in the first. Meanwhile, the Lakers follow their leader, play their methodical game, lull the Bucks to sleep, and build a 16-point second-quarter lead with 10:55 on the clock. The Bucks cut it to eight—38-30—and when Giannis comes out of nowhere to reject DeAndre Ayton rolling to the rim off a Luka Doncic no-look dime, the pulse gets stronger. Portis secures the board and feeds Anthony in transition, who crosses behind his back, finds Green wide open on the left wing. Green catches it in rhythm, rises, and lets it fly. But it rims in and out—the crowd exhaling a collective groan.
The Bucks are stuck on 30 for the next two minutes, then on 31 for two more. In the same span, the Lakers put up 14 points, pushing their lead to 19, then to 29 at the half. Green tries to redeem himself in the third, hitting four threes, and the Bucks push like a mother during labour, but the C-section is inevitable and the cut is permanent. Bucks lose, 119-95.
Win probability after Giannis’ block: 30.8%
Win probability after the Lakers’ 14-1 run following Green’s missed three: 5.2%
Volume 2 preaches, but what does it say? One, it’s a requiem for the three; the long ball giveth and taketh away. Two, to paraphrase the late great John Thompson, you can dribble too much, you can pass too much, and you can shoot too much. But you can’t rebound too much. Guys, it’s time to get in the trenches.
