For most of two quarters on Sunday night, Jason Kidd’s Milwaukee Bucks hung with a similarly young Utah Jazz squad that’s on the cusp of the playoff race in the Western Conference.
But late in the game, Utah (34-36) closed like a team in the playoff race should, and in the process they left Milwaukee (30-40) in their dust. The Jazz used a last-second three to take a one-point lead into the break, then pulled away by outscoring the Bucks 31-18 in the third quarter on the way to a 94-85 victory. The loss was Milwaukee’s second in their last three games, following a three-game winning streak where things appeared to be looking up.
Afterward, Coach Kidd lamented his team’s lack of urgency in the second half, where the Bucks allowed the Jazz to dictate the pace of the game and ultimately earn a much-needed victory for their playoff hopes.
“I think you have to give Utah credit,” Jason said. “They came out after halftime and we were kind of flat. They came out with energy
[knowing] the importance of what this game meant for them. Scoring 31 points and we only scored 18. This was a low-possession game for us. We knew the pace was important, but we could never get the pace of the game in our favor.”
Utah’s pace troubled Milwaukee early as well. After Jerryd Bayless opened the game with a try to make it 3-0 in favor of the Bucks, the Jazz scored 12 of the next 14 points to seize control. Utah led from there until late in the quarter, when the efforts of a bench crew led by the frontcourt duo Miles Plumlee and John Henson allowed Milwaukee to briefly pull ahead.
Plumlee and Henson each had four points in the final five minutes of the frame, and Plumlee was active on both ends, grabbing a pair of rebounds and swatting a shot as well. Henson sank a pair of free throws with less than 90 seconds left in the frame to give the Bucks a 22-21 lead, but Utah’s Derrick Favors answered with pair of his own from the stripe and the Jazz led by one after one.
Milwaukee and Utah traded baskets in a second quarter that saw three ties and three lead changes, but neither team was able to establish much control or separation. The Bucks scored the first two baskets of the frame to take a three-point edge, but the Jazz answered with a 10-2 run to open up a five-point lead. After the game, Jason said the lack of energy in the game on both sides led to what ended up being a 19-19 second quarter and that the Bucks had a number of opportunities with Utah struggling in that second quarter to take control of the game and put the Jazz on the ropes, but never got the push necessary to do so.
“This game was a very plain yogurt-type situation. It had no flavor, no excitement. There was no juice,” he said. “We have to do a better job, not just relying on the crowd, but when it’s a 7-0 or 10-0 run, of maturing. How do we stop it? Getting to the free throw line. Even if we get a wide open shot, make or miss, those are the good things that can get your defense going. Tonight, we just couldn’t get anything going.”
Unfortunately for the Milwaukee, Utah finally did get something going in the final ticks of the first half and carried momentum into the locker room.
In the final three minutes of the half, the game finally got a jolt of excitement with all three ties and two of the lead changes coming in that span of time. It started with a jumper from Jabari Parker, who finished with a game-high 19 points to even the score at 35-35. Utah had the answer with an alley-oop dunk from Shelvin Mack to Favor putting the Jazz ahead.
On the other end, Giannis Antetokounmpo cut to the basket and took a feed from Greg Monroe up for a jam to tie it once again. The ensuing Utah possession resulted in another bucket, this time by Trey Lyles, but once more the Bucks had a response, with Parker cutting to the bucket and finishing an Antetokounmpo with a flush to even the score. Milwaukee then got a stop, thanks in part to a block by Antetokounmpo and on their ensuing possession, Khris Middleton got to the hoop for a layup to give Milwaukee a lead with 32 seconds left.
However, that lead was short-lived. On the other end, Lyles misfired on a trey, but Favors grabbed the offensive rebound and the ball made its way back to Lyles who buried a triple with 0.7 left in the half to allow the Jazz to carry the lead into the break. The clutch board by Favors was one of 16 corralled off the offensive glass by Utah, compared to just two offensive and 27 total rebounds grabbed by the Bucks. The stark difference was backbreaking for Milwaukee according to Coach Kidd, as it allowed the Jazz to continue to dictate the pace of the game.
“Right before halftime, they get an offensive rebound that leads to a three that gives them the lead,” Jason said. “They’ve got two bigs that go to the boards every time and that kills your pace, especially if [they] come up with the offensive rebounds. They had [16] of them. That slowed the pace down and gave them second and third opportunities.”
The Bucks did manage to briefly pull back ahead in the opening minutes of the third, thanks in large part to the early efforts of Monore and Antetokounmpo. Giannis scored or assisted on the first eight points of the half for Milwaukee with a bucket and three assists in the first three minutes of the quarter. Two of those three dimes went to Monroe, who scored a pair of big baskets, including one to give the Bucks the lead and another to make it 49-44 in favor of the Milwaukee just 2:39 into the frame.
However, once the Jazz got going midway through the quarter, the Bucks had no answer. Utah star Gordon Hayward was the catalyst for a 17-2 Utah run that gave the Jazz a double-digit lead. That run included a 13-0 spurt by Utah and a span of nearly seven minutes without a bucket for Milwaukee from Monroe’s score with 9:21 left in the quarter until a jumper by Jerryd Bayless fell with 2:23 remaining in the third. During that span, the Bucks scored four points from the free throw line but went 0-for-5 from the field and turned the ball over five times.
After the game, Jason said that even though the shots weren’t falling the Bucks should’ve found other ways to stop the bleeding and didn’t do enough to get to the free throw line. When asked what he could do as a coach to prevent such runs in the future, Coach Kidd said it’s his job to put the players in position to succeed and pointed to Monore’s exit with 4:54 left in the quarter, which was followed by seven straight Jazz points as a possible factor.
“You’ve just got to be supportive. You give those guys plays that they’ve all run and hopefully the ball finds a way in or you get to the free throw line,” he said. “I should’ve put Moose [Monroe] in there, the way we were scoring the ball, to go extremely big.”
After the Bayless bucket pulled Milwaukee within nine, Utah kept coming, pushing their edge as high as 16 before settling into a 14-point lead after three. The Bucks opened the fourth with four straight points to pull within 10, but back-to-back threes by Joe Ingles quickly erased their momentum and the hole was just too deep to dig out of despite a late run to make the deficit slightly more manageable.
Searching for positives after the game, Jason pointed to the recent performances of Henson and Plumlee as a silver lining for the Bucks, as they try to build a frontcourt that can compliment their talented young duo of Antetokounmpo and Parker going forward. The next step might be seeing how Henson and Parker mesh with Monroe and if the Jazz can utilize the frontcourt trio in any future lineups.
“Those two were good tonight, being able to protect the rim and being able to rebound,” Jason said of Henson and Plumlee. “We’ve got a game tomorrow, so we’ll probably see those two, if not those three [with Monroe] at one point…we’re going to play everybody and we’re going to see how guys handle different situations. We’re going to look at different guys from here on out and try to win every game but also see how guys handle different situations.”
NEXT UP
The Bucks (30-40) finish their back-to-back with the first game of a three-game road trip as they head to Monroe’s old stomping grounds in Detroit to take on the Pistons (36-34) Monday night at the Palace of Auburn Hills.
Milwaukee is just 9-26 on the road this season, including 102-95 loss to the Pistons in Detroit on Dec. 4. Monday marks the final game of the season between the Central Division rivals. The Pistons hold a 2-1 advantage in the season series and come into the contest as winners of two straight after beating the Kings and Nets in back-to-back games Friday and Saturday.
Tip-off from The Palace is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. CT and the game can be seen on Fox Sports Wisconsin.
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