Bucks 107, Nets 96: Giannis pours in 34 points to help even playoff series, 2-2
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Giannis Antetokounmpo cut baseline and Jrue Holiday bounced a pass between the legs of Kevin Durant, giving Antetokounmpo the momentum to catch-and-rise, putting down an emphatic two-handed dunk on Blake Griffin.
Antetokounmpo gave the rim an extra pump for effect, then gave Griffin and the home crowd a flex.
The dunk that gave the Bucks a 60-50 lead with just under nine minutes to go in the third quarter was the bolded exclamation point in a 107-96 victory over the Nets on Sunday afternoon that tied the Eastern Conference semifinals series, 2-2.
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“It goes without saying — you’ve got to come home, you gotta win, keeping your mind in a good place, be ready to compete an play ” Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer said. “So we gotta stay there, we gotta stay in that same mindset.”
Game 5 will be in Brooklyn on Tuesday night with Game 6 back at Fiserv Forum on Thursday.
That dish to Antetokounmpo was Holiday’s sixth assist, and the veteran point guard finished with nine handouts while the Bucks as a team got back to moving the ball and incorporating all players on the court. Of the Bucks’ 39 baskets, 27 came on assists.
Milwaukee also, finally, hit three-pointers. After making a combined 20 threes through the first three games of the series they hit 16 of their 47 attempts (34%) from distance Sunday.
The starters were pulled with 3:20 left and the Bucks up, 101-86, and Antetokounmpo finished his night with 34 points on 14-of-26 shooting in 38 minutes. He was 5 for 10 from the free-throw line and 1 for 5 from behind the three-point line. He led the Bucks with 12 rebounds.
Khris Middleton (19 points, eight assists), Holiday (14 points) and P.J. Tucker (13) all finished in double figures. Brook Lopez added six points, 11 rebounds and three steals. Bryn Forbes had 10 points and Pat Connaughton added eight points, four steals and three assists.
A postgame fire alarm meant only Budenholzer and Connaughton were made available to the media, but after the game Antetokounmpo told the television broadcast, “I’m really proud of this team. We keep playing together.
“We come in every night and put ourselves in a position to win. You know, leaving Brooklyn we know that they took care of business so we say we’re going to go back to Milwaukee we’re going to try and take care of business and we put ourselves in a position to win two games.
“We’re very happy but we gotta to keep getting better, keeping playing together rand hopefully we can go in Brooklyn and take one.”
The Nets could not weather the loss of star guard Kyrie Irving, who turned a right ankle with six minutes left in the first half.
Brooklyn scored just eight points after that point in the second quarter and just nine points in the first nine minutes of the third when the Bucks took as much as a 17-point lead. Without Irving (and with James Harden sidelined since Game 1), Durant shouldered a heavy load for Brooklyn. He played 42 minutes and scored 28 points on 9-of-25 shooting. He also pulled down 13 rebounds and had five assists.
Jeff Green (foot) played for the first time in the series for Brooklyn and had eight points, but the supporting role players could not get untracked as the Bucks could focus on making life difficult for Durant. Joe Harris and Blake Griffin were each 3-for-8 from the floor, scoring eight points.
The Bucks opened the second half with a 13-2 run to take a 66-50 lead and eventually led 74-57 on a Forbes three-pointer with 3:37 to go in the third quarter. Durant single-handedly cut the lead to 78-69 with six seconds left with 12 straight points, but Middleton hit a three with one second left to give the Bucks an 81-69 lead going into the fourth.
That seemed to take the air out of the Nets and the legs out from Durant, as he didn’t score in the fourth quarter before he and the rest of the starter were pulled with 4:24 left in the game down 15 points.
Milwaukee could not immediately capitalize on Irving’s sudden departure in the second quarter, taking a 53-48 lead into halftime. Irving limped to the locker room after severely turning his right ankle on Antetokounmpo’s foot following a basket that made it 44-40 Bucks with 6:04 to go in the second half. The teams traded turnovers, fouls and missed shots over those final minutes as the Bucks could not stretch the margin any further.
A key moment to the half the Bucks came when coach Mike Budenholzer challenged an offensive foul call on Antetokounmpo with 49.8 seconds left. It would have been his third foul of that variety in the half, but the call was reversed. It not only removed the foul, but he had made the basket, so it turned into a three-point play and broke a Bucks scoreless streak of nearly 2 ½ minutes.
Tucker had a big first half for the Bucks offensively, scoring 11 points on 4-of-7 shooting, including 3 for 6 from behind the three-point line. He had scored a total of nine points over the first three games. Antetokounmpo led all scorers with 16 points while Middleton had nine. Seven different Bucks scored and the team had 16 assists on 20 of its baskets. Bobby Portis came off the bench to record two blocked shots.
Tucker continued to harass Durant, and the Nets star scored 12 points on 4-of-10 shooting.
The Bucks did, however, prevent the Nets from running away early in the second quarter following an 8-0 Nets run that gave them a 34-23 lead. After a Mike James basket made it 36-25 Nets, Middleton converted a four-point play and Tucker hit back-to-back threes for 10-0 run. Antetokounmpo emphatically erased the deficit with a massive dunk to make it 37-36. The Bucks would push the lead to 44-38 before Irving’s basket and injury.
Irving exited after 13 minutes of game play, scoring 11 points on 5-of-11 shooting. He also handed out two assists and had five rebounds.
The Bucks began the game moving the ball, creating open looks from deep, the midrange and went to the rim yet still began the game 1 for 8 and fell behind 9-2 in the opening four minutes of play. But Antetokounmpo followed a dunk with a three-pointer and an assist to Lopez for three for a 7-0 run to tie it at the 6:33 mark.
The lead changed twice before the Nets took a 26-23 advantage into the second quarter after the Bucks turned it over four times in the final 2:40.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bucks 107, Nets 96: Giannis pours in 34 points to help even playoff series, 2-2