After a tough defeat to one of the Eastern Conference’s top teams, the Toronto Raptors, Jason Kidd was left wanting more from his Milwaukee Bucks on the defensive end.
The Bucks were strong offensively, but couldn’t stop the Raptors in a 122-100 defeat.
“It was everything. You could say we didn’t show,” Coach Kidd said. “Offensively we score 100 points, but you’re not going to beat one of the best teams in the league if you don’t rebound the ball, if you don’t guard the three-point line or make them do something different and tonight we just didn’t do that.”
The Raptors ended the first quarter with a 10-point lead and pushed it to a 20-point advantage at halftime.
“It was easy the whole night, no matter threes, layups, they were in character the whole night from the start, we weren’t, we just didn’t put up any resistance,” Jason said. “Our defense was non-existent and the thing is we came out of that third quarter, got it down to 10 and then their leaders took over the game and they went from there.”
Jason’s squad made a push in the third quarter and cut the deficit to 10, but the Milwaukee defense faltered again in the fourth.
“We can look at the third quarter and understand that we were in desperation mode and we need to be desperate from the beginning of the game. With that type of attitude, we have to be desperate and we got desperate there coming out of halftime. It wasn’t about offense, it was about getting stops and that’s how we cut the lead down to 10.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo finished the game with 30 points, eight rebounds and five assists. Jabari Parker added 27 points and three rebounds.
Ultimately it was the three Raptors stars, Demar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry and Terrence Ross who stole the show. DeRozan finished with 30 points, Lowry added 18 points and seven assists and Ross came off the bench to score 25 points while shooting 4-of-6 from beyond the arc.
“Ross was already going off, DeRozan was doing what he does best and Lowry was doing what he did best and so for us we had no answers defensively,” Jason said. “They got any shot there in that first half, I think they got eight or nine threes, they were all uncontested and so you’re not going to beat Toronto that way.”
