NEW ORLEANS — Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard spent the opening moments of his Thursday postgame media session describing the various physical ailments that forced him to miss game action.
“There was a lot of fouls not called,” Lillard said as he described the play that led him to leave the game in the third quarter to receive stitches in his lip. “It was a play I went to box out. As we made contact, I turned my head and I bit my lip, so I had that. Play at the end of the half, I got kneed in the back of my calf, and it was just a physical game.”
Despite the physicality, he did return to score 10 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter, but it wasn’t enough.
Lillard shot only three free throws as New Orleans outshot Milwaukee from the line 34-19 in the Pelicans’ 107-100 victory, marking the second straight game the Bucks saw their opponent have a double-digit advantage in free-throw attempts.
“I just thought they played more physical, they were the more aggressive team,” Lillard said. “And I think, usually the more aggressive team gets rewarded by the whistle. The game favors that team, and I thought that’s what they had going. … They were able to get their hands on balls. They chased down offensive rebounds, got extra opportunities. They just played a better game. We got outplayed.”
Lillard totaled 20 points, five rebounds and seven assists, while Giannis Antetokounmpo tallied 35 points, 14 rebounds and four assists, which included a third-quarter stretch in which he scored 20 straight points. But the Bucks couldn’t overcome a 16-point halftime deficit, continuing a troubling road trend.
After the Bucks travel to Atlanta and then wrap up this three-game trip in Washington, D.C., the Bucks will have played 12 of their first 19 games out of the All-Star break on the road. In the first 10 of those 12 road games, the Bucks are 5-5, but they have lost five of their last six.
They beat the Minnesota Timberwolves, the team with the best record in the Western Conference at the time, on the road in their first game after the All-Star break. Then, they went to Philadelphia to beat the 76ers. They snuck home for a game to beat the Charlotte Hornets before heading back out on the road to beat the Hornets in Charlotte and then took down the Chicago Bulls on the road as well.
After posting a 12-14 road record before the All-Star break, they had appeared to figure out their woes away from home with four straight victories.
Then, after one game at home, they headed to the West Coast for a four-game trip. They bookended that trip with 35-point losses to the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings and blew a six-point lead with two minutes left to drop a game to the Los Angeles Lakers to go 1-3 in Cali. In a one-off trip to Boston, they lost by three points to the Celtics without Giannis Antetokounmpo but trailed by as many as 21 points in the fourth quarter.
Recently, on the road, the Bucks have been unable to keep teams from playing to their identities and strengths. On Thursday, the same thing occurred in New Orleans.
“That’s what they do, give them credit,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “They’re a big force-turnover team. They’re a big offensive-rebounding team. I thought the offensive rebounds came from dribble penetration. Guy drives, you send your big, it allows (Jonas) Valančiūnas and the other guys on the glass. I thought we did a better job in the third quarter of cleaning that up.
“We took care of the ball in the third quarter. Got it down to five, and then we have three turnovers in a row, and bam, goes right back to 10. It’s a team you just can’t turn the ball over (against). They’re too big, they’re too long, they’re too fast going downhill.”
The Bucks got beat on the offensive glass as the Pelicans’ lead ballooned from three to 12 in the second quarter.
And they committed costly turnovers that the Pelicans turned into points on the other end.
To start the third quarter, the Bucks exchanged baskets with the Pelicans who maintained a comfortable lead until Antetokounmpo took over the game and rattled off his scoring binge.
On misses by the Pelicans, the Bucks grabbed rebounds, found Antetokounmpo and let the two-time MVP navigate his way through traffic to get to the bucket. And when they were in half-court settings, the Bucks used the Pelicans’ desperation and aggressiveness against them to find openings in the defense.
But the Bucks lost their focus at the end of the third quarter.
After Antetokounmpo knocked down a jumper to cut the Pelicans’ lead to three, Pelicans wing Trey Murphy III knocked down a triple to push the lead to six points. Then, Khris Middleton committed a silly turnover by attempting a long pass from half court to Brook Lopez, who had a marginal size mismatch.
After Murphy’s second consecutive triple, the Bucks pushed the ball and Antetokounmpo got to the rim to reduce the lead to seven points. But then the Bucks went scoreless in the final two minutes of the third quarter, and the Pelicans took a 12-point lead to the fourth quarter. In that quarter, the Pelicans comfortably held the Bucks off and never let their lead shrink below five points.
After the game, Antetokounmpo found himself thinking about the Bucks’ offensive efficiency.
“We just gotta do a better job taking care of the ball,” Antetokounmpo said. “I feel like sometimes we’re just not playing with pace. I feel like the more we play with pace, I feel like the more advantage we can create for one another. The more we don’t play with pace, we play against five-on-five, we play against a team that has a lot of length and guys that can move their feet and guys that can get in passing lanes, so the game becomes harder for us.
“I think the more we play with pace, the more the ball is hopping around, the more people touch it, the more people shoot it, the more people are aggressive, I think we turn the ball over way less because you just play. You just play randomly. You just play with instincts. We just gotta get ourselves playing that way.”
The Bucks have nine games remaining in the regular season and plenty of questions to answer regarding how they are going to play in the postseason.
With Rivers at the helm, their identity has started to take shape in the second half of the season. But the remaining work is significant as the Bucks tend to leave road games against playoff teams with more questions than answers.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
