When Jason Kidd’s Milwaukee Bucks have played well this season, they’ve leaned on two key factors: defense and bench play—and those two things gave them an enormous Game 4 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night.
The Bucks first shut down the Chicago offense and forced a Derrick Rose turnover on the visiting team’s final possession. Then Jason called a quick timeout and drew up the game-winning play. With just 1.3 seconds to go, he had one reserve player, Jared Dudley, inbound to another in Jerryd Bayless, who dropped in the game-winning layup at the buzzer of the Bucks’ 92-90 triumph.
“It just popped (into my head),” Coach Kidd said of the heads-up timeout. “It is just understanding the moment. We have a low percentage of Khris (Middleton) getting down the court in a second and whatever the change was. Being able to have timeouts late (is important). Getting the steal and the stop was the most important thing. We got the stop and the timeout to be able to advance the ball.”
Tenacious defense and strong play carried Milwaukee throughout, not just in those waning seconds. The Bucks feasted on 28 Bulls turnovers, leading to 39 points. Milwaukee made 20 steals, led by six from starting center Zaza Pachulia. OJ Mayo led the team in scoring with 18 points off the bench, while Dudley scored 13, Bayless had 10 and John Henson added six.
The Bucks four reserves outscored the Chicago bench, 47-13, bringing back memories of earlier in the season when Milwaukee had one of the top scoring benches in the league.
“We thought we got better tonight. We found ourselves with a `W,” J-Kidd said.
The Bulls jumped ahead by four after the first period, but the Bucks second unit battled back in the second, combining for 27 points to tie the game at 50 going into the locker room. The Bucks then forced seven turnovers, including three Pachulia steals, in the third frame to take a two-point lead into the fourth.
The lead changed hands 13 times throughout the night, and the score was tied on 10 separate occasions, but the Bucks never trailed in the fourth.
With reserves Bayless, Mayo, Dudley and John Henson playing well in a unit with Middleton, Kidd sat starters Giannis Antetokounmpo, Ersan Ilyasova, Zaza Pachulia and Michael Carter-Williams the entire fourth quarter.
“That group was going (well) and we were going to ride them as long as they could stand,” Jason said. “Khris had some great looks that normally go down. I thought (Mayo) and Bayless were great.”
It was Mayo who hit big shots down the stretch, including at the 3:00 mark in the fourth quarter Mayo shot a deep three-pointer with the shot clock winding down. As the ball went straight through net, the Bucks and it’s fans thought the shot gave them a 90-81 lead, but after review the officials waived off the shot after seeing it was still in Mayo’s hands as the buzzer sounded.
The rollercoaster of emotion got worse after the basket didn’t count; Chicago’s Jimmy Butler hit a triple on the ensuing possession to make it 87-84. Butler had 33 points in the game, including five threes.
But Mayo didn’t let the shot clock ruling, or Butler’s three get him down. With 1:42 left, Mayo hit a three-pointer that counted after Milwaukee gathered three offensive rebounds in the same possession.
Things got scary for Milwaukee down the stretch. After Mayo’s three-ball the Bucks were up comfortably 90-84 with 1:09 left in the final frame.
Derrick Rose came down and hit a trifecta, cut it to three, then followed that up with an assist to Pau Gasol who was diving to the basket. Gasol converted a shot in the paint as he was fouled and completed the three-point play at the line to tie the game at 90 with 38 seconds left.
On the ensuing possession, Bayless had a shot at a driving layup, but it missed its mark, giving the Bulls a chance to win it with the shot clock off. But as Rose drove the lane, Middleton picked his pocket and began racing the other way. With two defenders between Middleton and the basket and almost no time left, Jason called a quick timeout.
When J-Kidd called the play, he sent Bayless under the basket, and Mayo up top for the other option, and Bayless wanted to make sure that Dudley would look for him on the cut.
“I was curious,” Bayless said. “I wanted to know, ‘Are you really going to look for this?’ One of the things coach Kidd stresses to us is that every cut is live. On that play, obviously it was a game-winning play, I was like, ‘Duds, let me know if you are going to do it or not so I can be prepared.’ The other part of the play was for Juice to come up and he could have shot the ball, as well. I was like, ‘If you are going to look for it, I’m going to cut hard.’ He told me he was. He made a good pass.”
Dudley not only saw Bayless, but he hit him with the perfect pass. Bayless beat Rose on a back cut, and Dudley lobbed it perfectly over the former MVP’s shoulder. Bayless caught it in stride, used his body for protection and dropped in the winning bucket high off the glass, sparking pandemonium at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
NEXT UP
With the series set at 3-1 in favor of Chicago, Milwaukee will be up against elimination once again Monday night. But Coach Kidd loves the strides his team has made throughout the postseason—where no body thought this team would reside when the season began.
“It is probably next to nobody picking us to make the playoffs,” Coach Kidd said when asked where winning a playoff game ranks in the rebuilding process. “Everything we do from here on out is a bonus. Most of you guys sitting here didn’t have us here. For us to learn and grow as a young team, every minute we are on the floor is for us to get better. We want to get better each game.”
The next chance for improvement, and for a victory, will come Monday night at Chicago’s United Center. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m. ET and will air on TNT.
