Milwaukee Bucks news: Defense wins championships. This has been the age-old saying, which true enough, has proven to be accurate year after year.
On Monday night against the reigning champions Denver Nuggets, the Bucks had to step up on the defensive end as they matched up against Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, and the rest of the Nuggets squad. It was a massive task for Milwaukee, but they delivered in a major way.
This resulted in a marquee victory for the home team, 112-95.
Milwaukee Bucks Flipped the Switch
Perhaps the most important stretch of the game came early on. During a critical period at the end of the first quarter and the start of the second, the Bucks prevented their opponents from scoring a field goal for a full 5 minutes and 19 seconds. That’s nearly half a quarter, which resulted in a 16-point swing in favor of Milwaukee.
After the game, Giannis Antetokounmpo spoke out about how his team locked in on both sides of the floor during this crucial stretch:
“I think guys were playing hard, closing gap, obviously trying to make it as tough as possible, make the non-shooter shoot, make the shooters put the ball on the floor, show crowd as much as possible,” Giannis said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “At the end of the day, they have a team that everybody’s going to push the ball – show crowd early, make them make that extra pass, make them make that extra effort. Eh, we obviously, probably, got lucky. It was a stretch for them that we were making it tough and the wasn’t able to probably score the ball.”
As much as the Bucks deserve a ton of credit for their strong play during this point in the game, there was also some level of luck involved. The Nuggets are one of the best teams in the league and it’s not often that they go on these brutal stretches, which ultimately, cost them the game.
From that point on, the Bucks did not look back as they handed the defending champs their second straight loss.
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