It isn’t quite Valentine’s Day, yet Milwaukee Bucks head coach received a love letter from team owner Peter Feigin that inspired him Monday night.
“I think it all started with our president, Peter Feigin, wrote a love letter to me before the game that made me chuckle. It had a big heart and it said ‘I love you’ and I thought it was kind of funny. It gave me a great idea that we needed to get back to having fun,” Kidd said. “Sometimes as a young team, or a team, at the halfway point you might get a little tired. Losing doesn’t help, you get a little frustrated and I thought we have to smile. We haven’t been smiling of late and having fun with one another and I thought our president set the tone tonight.”
Heading into Monday night’s matchup against the Houston Rockets, the Bucks were amidst a five-game losing streak, but they turned it around, topping one of the NBA’s most dangerous offenses in a 127-114 shootout.
“It can happen. You use the word pressing, but I think more or less we were searching, trying to figure out how to get out of the hole,” Jason said. “This league is never easy no matter who you play, no matter what their record is and you saw that today. We just took it quarter by quarter and the guys did a great job.”
The Bucks hung tough through the first half, scoring 68 points and taking a four-point lead into halftime. Both teams were limited to under 30 points in the third quarter, but the Bucks finished strong in the fourth, outscoring the Rockets 34-23 and winning the game 127-114.
Jabari Parker was reinserted into the starting lineup after coming off the bench for a game due to breaking team rules. Parker finished the game with 28 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and three steals.
“He was great. He’s been great for us all season. I thought he set the tone from the beginning all the way until the end. I thought his defense, he was communicating throughout the whole game and we need that from him,” J-Kidd said. “He set the tone defensively, coming up with some steals, rebounding the ball and starting the break.”
Kidd only chose to play four guys off the bench, but he specifically discussed all four after the game for making positive contributions. Greg Monroe led the second unit with a double-double of 17 points and 10 rebounds, while Jason Terry, Malcolm Brogdon and Mirza Teletovic contributed eight, six and two points, respectively.
“I thought ‘Moose’ was great. I thought our bench again got better today and we talked about that before the game. Our bench has helped us win a lot of games this season and I thought they were good,” Kidd said. “(Terry) was fresh. I thought his energy was high. I think he’s playing some of the best defense of his career for us. He came up with some steals for us and you mentioned it, but I thought his voice was loud for the whole game and that’s a lot to do. To be loud and engaged for over 40 games, him taking advantage of not playing in Miami as much as he wanted to, I thought he was fresh and gave us a big lift.”
It was a great team performance for Milwaukee, as they had more team assists, steals, blocks, fast break points, rebounds, points in the paint, free throw percentage and field goal percentage.
“The assists were high. We scored 68 points I think in the first half. The ball was moving, guys were making shots and I think we were taking the shots we wanted,” Jason said. “Houston can get you into a shooting contest, we didn’t fall for that this time around. We fell for it I think in Houston, but tonight we took our time, we got the ball in the paint and we finished.”
Houston did make 14 three-pointers; however, Kidd was very pleased with his team’s defensive performance against the high-octane Rockets.
“With Houston you’ve got to keep them off the line, that’s what they do. They’ll shoot 40 a game, so you have to be able to guard the three,” J-Kidd said. “I thought the defense was great. We did give up 114, but I think we did the right thing in protecting the three-point line. They made some, but we didn’t get discouraged when we gave up a layup, understanding they followed the game plan, so that falls on the coaches. We needed to take away the three, and I thought the guys did a really good job tonight with that.”
Up next the Bucks will host the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night.
