Bucks vs. Nets: Letting it slip away

Bucks get outscored 19-8 in final 4:52 of the game

The Milwaukee Bucks couldn’t play the role of Santa Claus and deliver the fans a post-Christmas win, as the Brooklyn Nets pulled off late game comeback, winning 111-105. Cam Johnson had a big game for Brooklyn, going off for 29 points on 8/13 shooting and five rebounds. Noah Clowney and Shake Milton added a combined 40 points for the Nets, with 14 coming for Milton in the fourth quarter. Khris Middleton led the Bucks with 21 points but turned the ball over seven times last night

Read our full summary of the game here and catch a six-minute audio recap on the Bucks+ podcast Bucks In Six Minutes below.

What Did We Learn?

The Bucks, with or without Giannis and Dame, have some serious issues in late-game execution against a pressure defense, especially some of the younger players. “I just thought their pressure turned us over, I thought their pressure got to us, I thought we didn’t handle it very well,” head coach Doc Rivers said. “They sped us up, we broke our offense… we just can’t have that many turnovers and mental mistakes, we made a ton of mental mistakes today.”

The final five minutes of this game was a disaster class on how to win a close game. It all started with Khris Middleton being called for a flagrant-one foul when he elbowed Johnson while trying to create space. That led to two free throws, which sparked a 7-0 run for the Nets to take a two-point lead with 3:40 to go. Then, arguably two of the most crucial mistakes on the night came within 45 seconds of each other. After Doc Rivers called a timeout for Khris Middleton with 3.4 seconds on the shot clock down by four points with 1:36 left to play, AJ Green didn’t even get a shot off, seemingly unaware of how much time was left on the clock. That possession led the Bucks from being down four to down six with 1:12 left after Keon Johnson drove into the lane and fished with a spinning layup.

Then the play currently living in infamy on Bucks Twitter: whose fault it is for the Johnson three? Doc said the following about the play: “it was a switch that we shouldn’t have switched. We hadn’t switched that all night. Whenever Ben had the ball, the guy guarding Ben was supposed to just go under. That was what Bobby was doing. The guy guarding Cam decided to switch.” Well, clearly that didn’t happen here as Bobby went over the screen and AJ Green decided to switch, resulting in a double on Simmons that left Johnson wide-open, who Rollins then fouled to make it a four-point play.

This was Portis’ account of what happened in the play: “it called [for] a switch, but it wasn’t a screen really right? Sometimes you switch when it’s a screen or whatever,” Portis said. “We called [and] communicated a switch, [we] didn’t switch, I feel like it wasn’t a screen there wasn’t a need for a switch it was a slip-out—no screen, no scheme—they taught that when I first came to the league. It is what it is, chalk it up, and move on to Saturday.”

So based on this, it seems like somebody (presumably Green) called for a switch, Portis didn’t think it was necessary to do so, he moves over and Green still follows to switch or realizes what happens and commits to a double team. It’s hard to say whose fault it really was, but regardless, there was a massive defensive miscue that needs to be corrected moving forward.

Despite that, there is a silver lining to this type of loss near the end of December. I’ll let Brook Lopez take it from here because he provided the perfect answer to my point:

“You just tell them to keep playing, learn from it obviously,” Lopez said. “We have a lot of young guys who have stepped up this year and played big minutes for us and we wouldn’t be where we are without them. This is the stuff that in the moment stinks but we got to learn from it because we’re going to play deep in the playoffs and they’re going to be playing heavy minutes in those games, so it’s good for it to happen now.”

The only caveat I have to Lopez’s optimism is that this has been a constant issue for Milwaukee this season. It’s been less of a problem of their recent resurgence back over .500, but their inability at times to execute their gameplan in these late games is cause for major concern. I wouldn’t say the alarms need to be blaring on this, but if this kind of thing sticks through February and March, the Bucks will have a serious flaw on their hands come playoff time.

Three Action Jackson Things

As usual with my recaps, I don’t want it to be all negative. Despite some of his struggles, I think Andre Jackson Jr. put in a solid performance, especially in the first half. Here are his three best plays from Thursday night.

This skying putback got everyone jumping early at Fiserv.

These types of plays make you jump out of your seat, which all of us in media row metaphorically did seeing this play. After two misses from Taurean Prince at the free-throw line and a miss from Ryan Rollins from three, Jackson flies in off of one leg with no running start and throws it down with one hand. Considering what he does to get it done, this is an absurd athletic play.

AJax continues to impress as a passer night in and night out.

One of the things that I always liked (or hated when he was at UConn) was how good of a passer he was. Someone who can find open players and do it with some sauce. This play exemplifies that perfectly as after getting the ball in the paint, he notices Green and Prince are open, but he manipulates Jalen Wilson with his eyes like he’s passing to Prince. Wilson commits to Prince while the ball goes whizzing over to Green for a wide-open three-ball. This is some elite-level passing and eye manipulation; not every player in the league can do this type of stuff, let alone a second-year player out of the second round.

Jackson’s basketball IQ can make up for his lack of shooting in so many ways.

I agree that Jackson is severely limited right now as a scorer on offense. He hasn’t quite figured out his jump shot, and he really can’t create his shot off the dribble. Yet his basketball IQ can help him get some easy buckets. In this play, once Jackson sees Johnson commit to helping on Middleton, he back cuts into the wide open space and puts down another dunk, this time with two hands. No one will ever confuse Jackson with Kyrie Irving as an offensive creator, but using his athleticism and basketball IQ to get his offense rolling as a scorer will only make him more confident moving forward.

Bonus Bucks Bits

• Brook Lopez officially passed Theo Ratliff for 20th all-time for blocks in NBA history in the second quarter. He now needs 58 more blocks to tie former Cavs big man Larry Nance for 19th place all-time. “It was pretty cool. I was sitting by MarJon [Beauchamp], and we got looks, and he was like, ‘this is pretty crazy’,” Lopez said. “Obviously, very proud of that, and you know I couldn’t be happier to do it for you guys here.”

• Khris Middleton had a game-high seven turnovers for the Bucks. It’s the most he’s had in a game since April 9 of last season, when he had seven against the Boston Celtics in the Bucks’ 13-point win. Middleton commented on his performance when discussing Ryan Rollins as the starting point guard with Lillard out. “I mean, I had the most turnovers tonight, so there’s no reason why he should feel like he [Ryan Rollins] had the worst game tonight,” Middleton said. “Just keep his confidence up, he knows when he’s making a mistake out there.”
• On the night as a whole, they committed 23 turnovers (leading to 34 points for the Nets), fouled three-point shooters three times, and allowed nine offensive rebounds.
• For you soccer/futbol fans out there, FC Barcelona midfielder Dani Olmo was in attendance tonight.

• Several masked characters from the Netflix show Squid Game were in attendance tonight to promote the release of the second season of the popular show.

Up Next

The Bucks will travel to Chicago for the second time this week to take on the Bulls on Saturday. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:00 PM Central from the United Center and you can watch all of it on Fan Duel Sports Network Wisconsin or our Playback channel.

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