The Milwaukee Bucks were on a tear to start off their Tuesday night matchup against the Los Angeles Lakers until they entered double overtime and the LeBron-Less Lakers were able to bounce back in a huge way, defeating Milwaukee 128-124 at Fiserv Forum. The Bucks’ head coach Doc Rivers was able to explain their upsetting loss in simple terms after his team blew a 19-point lead.
Milwaukee Bucks’ Doc Rivers: “We got burned.”
After leading by as much as 16 in the first quarter and 14 as they entered the fourth quarter, it was looking as though the Bucks were going to take this home game against LA fairly easy. However, even without LeBron James playing for the Lakers, they were able to take down Milwaukee. Rivers said to reporters following Tuesday’s loss that they got burned, they let their foot off the gas.
“We let our foot off and we got burned,” Rivers said. “That’s all that is. When we played right at the beginning of the game, it was beautiful basketball. We stopped playing right and thought we could still win and we couldn’t.”
It should’ve been an easy win for Milwaukee, but the Lakers had other plans.
“We gotta trust our defense to play without fouling,” Rivers added. “But, give them credit. They were attacking. They were aggressive. And they’re smart.”
Giannis Antetokounmpo recorded a triple-double with 29 points, a season-high 21 rebounds, and 11 assists. Damian Lillard recorded 27 points and Malik Beasley added another 21 for Milwaukee. The Bucks led as much as 19 points in the fourth quarter until the Lakers went on a 9-0 run and the Bucks were only able to score seven more points in the quarter.
Milwaukee had an opportunity to take the game in the fourth quarter, but a failed shot by Antetokounmpo after Khris Middleton went for an inbound pass to him would ultimately cost them the game, and put them in a difficult situation heading into overtime.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” Antetokounmpo said to media on Tuesday. “I think Khris threw the ball. I went up to get the ball. I really don’t want to get fined. I went up to get the ball. For some reason I wasn’t able to get the ball and wasn’t able to end the game.”
Anthony Davis was unstoppable for the Lakers, recording 34 points, 23 rebounds, and four blocks in a whopping 52 minutes of play. D’Angelo Russell added 29 points and 12 assists, Austin Reeves had 29 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 assists, all in which helped the team greatly as they dominated through double-overtime.
“I think it was more on us for the most part,” Middleton said. “Just gotta be better, man. It was one of those games. But, it’s a great game to learn from.”
The Bucks were called for 26 personal fouls compared to the Lakers’ 13. Overall, they shot 17 free throws, making 11 of them (64.7%), where as the Lakers were an impressive 30 of 32 (93.8%) from the free-throw line. A couple of players did think that the number of fouls they received were ridiculous, but they weren’t about to throw blame on anyone but themselves.
“I did feel like it was a few times where we got called for a foul and I was just like man, it’s been a long tme since they called something like that,” Lillard said. “There was a lot of those type of calls. But regardless of what I think we were up 19 with under 8 minutes to go in the game. For the team we are, we gotta go ahead and wrap that up and win this game.
“Sometimes the ball just bounces different and when you don’t stay disciplined and do the things that go into how we built that lead, those leads can go away quick in this league with the shooting that’s in this league, like they did tonight. And that was what happened.”
The Milwaukee Bucks still sit in second in the Eastern Conference with a 46-26 record, and are 14-12 under the direction of Doc Rivers. They’ll hit the road to take on the Pelicans on Thursday night with a tip-off scheduled for 7:00PM.
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