As a veteran of 158 playoff games as a player and 12 more as a coach last year, Jason Kidd has seen it all in the postseason.
So when his young, defensive-minded Milwaukee Bucks squad — many of them playing in their first playoff game ever — got off to a hot shooting start in Game 1 of their playoff series against the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night, Coach Kidd knew they were in for a rude awakening down the line.
The Bucks came out of the gates in Game 1 clearly amped, and climbed to a quick 10-4 lead after they knocked down four out of their first five shots and shot 59.1 percent from the field in the first quarter. But when the adrenaline from playing in their first postseason game since forming under J-Kidd wore off, they struggled to keep up with the veteran Bulls and Chicago ran away with a 103-91 win. Afterward, Jason characterized the hot start as “fool’s gold,” and lamented the predictable result.
“Yeah, that first quarter was fool’s gold,” Coach Kidd said. “We aren’t an offensive team, and that set a tone in a bad way for us in that first half giving up 60 points. We have to go back and look at the tape and see what we can do better.”
The Bucks are the youngest team to make the playoffs this season, carrying just an average age of 25, and just one player, Zaza Pachulia, over the age of 30. They’re also built to win with defense, so the last thing Coach Kidd wanted going into Game 1 was a scoring duel against another of the league’s best defensive teams. In fact, in the previous four meetings between the two teams no one had scored over 100 points. But Saturday night’s Game 1 turned into a shootout and the Bucks had no chance to keep up.
Milwaukee paired their supreme shot making in the first quarter with their tenacious defense—ranked second in the NBA—by causing Chicago to turn the ball over five times. But the turnovers were just indicative of the pace of the game, which favored Chicago.
An up-and-down tempo kept the game close throughout the first quarter, and after Jerryd Bayless hit a long two to put Milwaukee up 29-27 with about a minute left in the first frame, it looked like Milwaukee might escape the opening quarter with a lead. But Aaron Brooks grabbed a long rebound off a Pau Gasol missed three-pointer and banked in a leaning triple as time expired to give Chicago a 30-29 advantage lead going into the second quarter.
Milwaukee hit a wall in the second quarter, scoring just three points in the first three minutes. Meanwhile, Jimmy Butler and Derrick Rose were in full rhythm. Rose showed no signs of hesitation or fatigue as he slashed his way to 12 points in the first half, converting all of his field goals (6-for-6) in the painted area. Butler scored 17 points in the first half and finished with 25 by going 8-of-14 from the field.
“We’re not an offensive team,” Coach Kidd said. “We rely on our defense and we fell in a trap of scoring the ball in that first quarter and thought we were going to outscore Chicago with our offense and not play defense. That kind of put us behind there in the first half.”
However, despite the efficient play of the Bulls guards, Milwaukee hung in the game as it headed toward halftime and when Chicago’s Taj Gibson pulled down a rebound and threw a right elbow into the face OJ Mayo for a flagrant foul, Mayo’s two free throws, followed by a bucket from Pachulia put the Bucks back in the game, down by just one, 46-45 late in the first half.
The scrappy nature of the young Bucks kept them in it. They scored 17 points off nine turnovers in the first half to keep them within striking distance.
ESPN’s Israel Gutierrez spoke to Coach Kidd at halftime and he told Gutierrez that the Bucks “haven’t seen the aggressive version of Derrick Rose” in the two times they’ve faced him this season, noting that Rose was 5-for-23 in those two matchups.
Jason continued to explain to Gutierrez that the team was going to force Rose to shoot by laying off of him and stopping his drive. Milwaukee executed that plan to perfection, but Rose took advantage anyway, making the difficult task of guarding him seem like an impossibility in the third quarter.
As the Bucks gave him room to shoot, Rose refused to miss, and buried a barrage of three-pointers to thwart their plan to let him take jumpers. He connected on all three of his attempts from deep in the third frame.
“He made three threes late in the clock,” Kidd said of Rose’s third-quarter outburst, when he scored 11 points in 9 minutes. “You’ve got to live with that. That’s probably better than him laying the ball in during that first half. He showcased that he can do the layup very well. He got to the rim without resistance. Whenever you do that, going to shoot a jump shot, the basket is big. He knocked those down in the second half.”
On the other end, after their hot shooting start, the Bucks dealt with shooting woes the rest of the game as they struggled in the half court set against a stifling Chicago defense. During a stretch in the game after Milwaukee started 10-of-14 from the field, they went just 10-of-32 thereafter. As a result they finished with a 39.3 percent shooting clip for the game.
Despite their misgivings on offense, the Bucks didn’t let the Bulls pull away too far until the final six minutes of the game. The two teams were separated by just 10 points after the media timeout, but Chicago’s Mike Dunleavy followed it with a wide open three to extend the gap to 13. On the ensuing possession, Ersan Ilyasova hit a nice baseline jumper only to have it answered by another Dunleavy three, which seemed to take the wind out of the sails for Milwaukee.
“We were in a good seat. We had some great opportunities there to start the fourth quarter too, where we missed layups and we couldn’t convert on fastbreaks when we had the numbers in our favor,” Jason said. “There were some stretches where we thought we could get the lead down even closer to where we’d have the opportunity to steal one, but we didn’t. So now we have to go back and look, and figure out how to get one on Monday.”
The Bucks has balanced scoring, as Khris Middleton led the team with 18 points and Ilyasova tacked on 15 points points. Second year stars Giannis Antetokounmpo (12) and Michael Carter-Williams (9), both playing in their first postseason game, combined for just eight made shots on 26 attempts.
The battle of the bench scoring was pretty even. Brooks scored 13 points in 19 minutes and Gibson added eight points and 11 rebounds for Chicago. John Henson scored 12 and Bayless scored 11 for Milwaukee, but Mayo struggled, shooting just 1-of-7 from the field.
Going forward, Jason said he wants to see that advantage tip toward the Bucks, and he noted that also starts with better defense.
“Their backcourt was big tonight, even Brooks coming off the bench,” J-Kidd said. “But they’ve done that all season. For our backcourt and the guys coming off the bench, we’ve got to do a better job of keeping those guys in front of us and contesting their shots.”
NEXT UP
The Bucks have one of the shorter layoffs in the league between their first and second playoff games, with just over 48 hours separating Game 1 and Game 2 of the series in Chicago.
After a practice day on Sunday, the Bucks get right back to it on Monday night in the Windy City. Tip-off of Game 2 from Chicago’s United Center is scheduled for 7 p.m. CT and the game can be seen nationwide on TNT.
