Friday night was a tale of two halves as Jason Kidd’s Milwaukee Bucks fell to the Atlanta Hawks 114-110.
The Bucks dominated the first half, and with a 20-point halftime lead, looked like they were going to cruise to victory; however, the Hawks responded with a 40-point third quarter and 70-point second half to steal the victory from the Bucks’ grasp.
“Yeah again I don’t think we came out with that same intent in that second half. They did. In that first half they just missed shots. In that second half they made the shots that they took,” Jason said. “Again, 40 points in that third, and we score 28, but for them to score 70 in the half, that’s not what we’ve done in the past here two weeks, and so being up 20 doesn’t mean the game is over and so this is a good lesson for us.”
Jabari Parker led the Bucks in scoring with 27 points.
It was a rough night for Giannis Antetokounmpo, who played most of the game in foul trouble and finished with only 14 points and six rebounds.
“Foul trouble has bothered him and he has to learn how to play with fouls,” Kidd said. “And so tonight again he was in foul trouble and we tried to play him with four fouls as long as he could so that he didn’t pick up a fifth, but we’ve got to look at some of the fouls he’s committing.”
While it was a tough night for Giannis, it was a terrific night for the Bucks bench. Michael Beasley, Malcolm Brogdon, Greg Monroe and Jason Terry combined for 49 points off the pine.
“You look at Jabari’s shots, Tony knocks down a big three there for us, again the ball has to move and when the ball moves we’re at our best and when the ball sticks we’re just as bad as anyone. Understand our bench, they were good tonight,” Jason said. “Our defense as a whole was bad for the second half. We’ve got to get better and we play tomorrow against another team that’s going to try and score a lot of points so we’ve got another chance to try and slow someone down.”
Dennis Schroder was the star of the night for the Hawks, finishing the game with a career-high 33 points.
Atlanta took the lead for the first time since early in the first quarter late in the fourth on a three-pointer from Kyle Korver.
“I believe when they’re in trouble and need help I will call a timeout. Tonight we got a timeout without using a timeout with Tony’s bleeding, we come out and we score,” Kidd said. “Understanding the game of basketball is about runs and tonight in that second half they had a lot more runs than we did. We had the runs in the first half.”
Parker got the lead back for Milwaukee on a three of his own, but the Hawks quickly answered and held on to the victory.
“We had opportunities,” J-Kidd said. “We shot four threes coming down the stretch so calling a timeout is not going to do anything because they had already determined that they were shooting the three, so that’s something we have to get better at is we don’t have to rely on the three when you’re up one or down one. The paint is where we have success and we just didn’t get there tonight.”
