In a stark contrast from Game 1, Jason Kidd’s Milwaukee Bucks got exactly what they wanted in Game 2 of their first round playoff series against the Chicago Bulls on Monday night.
But they couldn’t finish strong enough to send the series back to Milwaukee tied at a game apeice and instead fell into a 2-0 hole with a 91-82 loss in Game 2.
After one quarter in Game 1, the score read 30-29, and Coach Kidd lamented his team’s ability to control the pace of play. Game 2 was better: The Bucks led 16-11 after the first frame and through three quarters at the United Center, the Bucks seemed to have made the adjustments necessary to put themselves in position to swing the series back their way.
It was a back-and-forth physical fight, just like Milwaukee wanted. The game was littered with seven technical fouls, the lead changed hands a dozen times and was tied another nine, with neither team leading by more than 10. But a 14-point fourth quarter on a 31-point night from Jimmy Butler was too much for the Bucks to overcome in their nine-point defeat.
“I thought we played a pretty good game on the road, giving ourselves an opportunity to win,” Coach Kidd said afterward. “I think we were 2-for-15 going down the stretch, and Butler was a one-man show being able to shoot the three and also get to the basket.”
The Bucks shot just 21.7 percent from the floor and didn’t knock down a single shot from beyond the arc in the fourth quarter, and Butler matched their 14 points single handedly to carry the Bulls to victory.
“We’ve got to make open shots and finish at the rim,” Jason said. “We missed a lot of bunnies in the paint.”
Though a lack of execution plagued Milwaukee late, it was a problem that seemingly crept up out of nowhere. Early on it appeared as though the Bucks players had taken their coach’s message about the pace of play after Game 1 to heart and implemented a new, more favorable strategy immediately, slowing the pace and making the game ugly.
The Bucks turned the Bulls over three times in the first five minutes of the game and they forced six turnovers in the opening frame while limiting Chicago to an abysmal 4-for-17 from the field—a huge credit to Milwaukee’s scrappiness. It seemed that the Bucks were planning on dirtying things up to keep it close, and it was apparent throughout the game.
“That’s the game we wanted; that first quarter wasn’t pretty,” J-Kidd said after the game. “Both teams probably would say it wasn’t the defense; we missed shots, they missed shots. But that was our pace. It was slow. It was ugly.”
It was the fewest points Milwaukee has allowed in a single quarter of a playoff game since 1983. The Bulls had never before recorded fewer first-quarter points in a playoff game during the shot-clock era.
The pace quickened slightly in the second frame, and after back-to-back buckets by Jerryd Bayless in the first minute pushed the Milwaukee lead to nine, the Bulls mounted a 9-0 run over a span of less than three minutes to tie it 20-20. From there, the second frame was a knock down, drag out battle. Milwaukee clung to a one possession lead for several minutes, and even got it up to five briefly, but over the final three-and-a-half minutes of the half, the game was tied twice and the lead changed hands on five separate occasions.
Despite the best efforts of the Bucks to take some momentum into the halftime break, for the second game in a row, Chicago scored a basket in the final seconds to hold the advantage at the half. In Game 1, it was Aaron Brooks leaning bank three-pointer, and Monday night it was Nikola Mirotic’s ball fake and layup in the lane that allowed the Bulls to take a 39-38 lead into the locker room.
However, their were plenty of positives for the Bucks to take into the break, most notably their defense and particularly the way they handled dynamic Chicago point guard Derrick Rose. After Rose tallied 23 points in Game 1, he was nowhere near the same player in Game 2. In fact, at halftime, Rose was 0-for-7 from the field with zero points.
Rose did redeem himself by scoring 15 points in the second half, including five points early in the third to help establish a six-point Chicago lead, but a 6-0 run by Milwaukee tied the game and the contest again went back and forth from there, with five more ties and four more lead changes in the third.
Eventually it was the Bulls who pulled ahead and took a three-point edge into the final frame. The Bucks bounced back in the early stages of the fourth and when Mayo hit a floater in the lane two minutes into the fourth, it gave Milwaukee a 72-71 lead. But it was followed by a 13-0 run by Chicago that essentially put the game out of reach.
During Chicago’s stretch the Bucks missed eight shots in a row. All series long, the difference between the teams has simply come down to Milwaukee’s inability to knock down open shots. They outscored Chicago in the paint 36-30 on Monday, and committed just four turnovers the whole game, but shooting just 35.6 percent from the field wasn’t good enough.
The Bucks did have some bright spots. Khris Middleton was the marquee scorer for Milwaukee. He tallied 12 points in the first half, including two three-pointers and finished with 22 points and six rebounds for the night. O.J. Mayo came off the bench with one of the most balanced floor games of anyone Monday night. Playing smart and methodically, Mayo recorded eight points, three rebounds, three assists and committed no turnovers. The Bucks bench was strong, as John Henson and Jerryd Bayless each scored eight in reserve.
On the other side, Butler was the Game 2 star for the Bulls, pouring in 14 points in the frame to match the total scored by the Bucks as a team in the fourth. And Rose put the game on ice when he buried a huge jump shot from about 18-feet, extending the Chicago lead from seven to nine, with under a minute left. That shot ended up being the final basket of the game.
“They’ve been in the playoffs before so they understand this moment,” Jason said. “For us, it’s to make it hard for everybody. Pau — we’re trying to make it hard on him. Rose, Dunleavy, it doesn’t matter who it is. Butler got going there. We just couldn’t slow him down.”
The game also got chippy in the last stages. Bucks center Zaza Pachulia was ejected with 2:48 remaining after picking up his second technical foul. He and Bulls forward Nikola Mirotic got into a shoving match on the floor after fighting for a loose ball. Less than two minutes earlier Pachulia received his first technical for an elbow that connected with Mirotic.
Despite the late marks on the game, Jason was happy with the way his team competed throughout the night, even through the litany of technical fouls.
“It’s playoffs; it’s going to be physical,” Coach Kidd said. “Both team are competing to win. There’s nothing more, nothing less. They competed, both teams.”
NEXT UP
The series now shifts back to Milwaukee for Game 3 on Thursday night and Game 4 on Saturday at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
The Bucks are still looking for their first postseason win in five years and, to keep their season alive, they’ll need to get it at home, where they went 23-18 this season. The two teams met twice in Milwaukee during the regular season, a 95-86 Bulls win there in November, and a 95-91 Bucks victory in April.
The close proximity between Milwaukee and Chicago usually leads to a large showing from the Bulls fanbase at the Bradley Center, but Jason expressed hope that Bucks fans pack the house to support their squad.
“I think we saw that, throughout the season when we played them here, there were a lot of Bulls fans…we would love to have our fans here at home,” Coach Kidd said. “But for us
[we have] to execute our game plan, come with the same energy and effort we came in Game 2, minimize the mental mistakes and put ourselves in position to win.”Game 3 between the Bucks and Bulls tips off at 7 p.m. CT and can be seen locally on FS-Wisconsin or nationally on NBATV.
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