The Bucks passed the roll to the Warriors, whom they defeated by 118-99 although at rest those from Milwaukee were 39 points up, with a Giannis Antetokounmpo who pulverized his rivals and scored a triple-double with 30 points, 12 rebounds and 11 assists.
Led by an Antetokounmpo that did everything with insulting ease, the Bucks never gave a choice to a Warriors in which their great star, Stephen Curry, seems to have temporarily lost his toe that has made him the best three-point player in NBA history. I did not play the last quarter, scored 12 points, made 2 3-pointers of 6 attempts, plus 8 rebounds and 4 assists. The best of the Warriors was Andrew Wiggins, with 16 points, 2 rebounds and 1 assist. But the newbie Jonathan Kuminga brill with 15 points and 7 rebounds in 19 minutes.
On the bucks, Khris Middleton scored 23 points, 5 rebounds and 7 assists while Bobby Portis he had 20 points and 7 rebounds.
The Bucks started the game with a fury. Antetokounmpo executed in attack while Portis was in charge of defending the board. The Milwaukee did not give any option in attack with a sticky defense that did not let Curry, Thompson or Wiggins breathe.
At three minutes from the start, the score was 8-2, with 8 points from Antetokounmpo. A 10-2 run left the score at 18-4 at the edge of the middle of the first quarter. Curry was without making his debut on the scoreboard.
Antetokounmpo makes the difference
When Atentokounmpo went to the bench with 3 minutes remaining in the first quarter, the Warriors had contained the bleeding and cut the distance to nine points, 24-15, although without really showing the ability to respond to the NBA champions.
Without the Greek star on the court, Middleton assumed responsibility in attack and scored eight points, including two 3-pointers, in the next few minutes. When the first 12 minutes of play were up, the Bucks had reached their maximum advantage, 16 points at 37-21.
The second quarter began with a triple by Curry, his first of the game. But for the next 3 minutes, the Warriors went blank.
This time it was Portis who seized the opportunity. First he answered Curry’s triple with a shot of three and followed with two shots from the inside. The Bucks punished the Warriors with a 11-0 run and went 48-24.
Steve Kerr, the Warriors coach, was trying to rebuild his team with timeouts but the Bucks seemed determined to double the points that the San Francisco players placed in the bright.
curry doesn’t work
When the Warriors reached 28 points, the Bucks were placed at 56. When Curry’s added 30, the Bucks were at 60. And when with 44 seconds remaining and the Californians reached 35 points, Milwaukee’s rose 70 to the scoreboard.
The second quarter ended with the Bucks up 39 points, 77-38, thanks to a new triple that came out of the hand of Portis with a tenth of a second left to play. The pvot celebrated the three points with a dance before the Milwaukee Fiserv Forum spectator rave while Warriors players left the court with their heads down.
The beating that the Bucks had inflicted on the Warriors in the first half is summed up in a statistic: Antetokounmpo, with 23 points, and Portis, with 17, had scored more points than all the Warriors.
Curry only had 9 points, after scoring 2 3-pointers of 6 attempts. Wiggins was at 8 points and Thompson at 3.
After the break, the Warriors adjusted their defense, making life more difficult for Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Portis, thereby slashing the Bucks’ lead. But the reaction of the San Francisco team, who had 14 points more than the Bucks in the third quarter, fell short.
Seconds from the end of the third quarter, Thompson, who has just returned from a series of injuries that kept him off the pitch for almost 1,000 days, retired to the locker room after playing 20 minutes.
In the final 12 minutes, Kerr rested his starters and took the court to the bench. The Bucks were limited to managing the advantage and when the Warriors approached 18 points, 100-82, Antetokounmpo again stepped on the accelerator and the Greek reached the triple double with 8 minutes remaining in the game.
Two minutes later, Antetokounmpo sat down to finish the game on the bench. Mike Budenholzer took the bench onto the court and ended the match, which ended 6 minutes later 118-99.