After having little trouble shutting down the Bulls (who were without Josh Giddey and Lonzo Ball) without Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo just six days ago at the United Center, the Bucks had much more trouble last night, even with Dame behind, and fell along with them 111-116. Lillard led all scorers with 29, while Brook Lopez had 22 and Khris Middleton 21 for Milwaukee. Nikola Vucevic and Giddey were the best men for Chicago at 23, supported by Coby White at 22. Read our full recap of the game here and watch a six-minute audio recap on the Bucks+ podcast “Bucks In Six Minutes” below .

What have we learned?

Second half scoring has been a problem for this team lately; While we saw them struggle with the Nets’ pressure defense on Thursday, they managed to look better in the final minutes on Saturday, but they still need to be better at taking the best options for those shots find. Especially Damian Lillard, who didn’t take any shots in the final 5:07 of the game. Just over two minutes earlier, Dame completed a personal 11-0 run that put the Bucks ahead and steadily took the air out of the building. When asked why Dame couldn’t get care after the game, Doc Rivers said the following:

“This has to be better. One thing I would say is that I need to do a better job of making sure Dame gets the ball in her hands as the game progresses. We drew two plays to get him into the secondary (action) because they were overloaded and he never made it. We have to agree to let him have it, and I just have to give it to him and live with it.”

Now it became clear after the game that Lillard is still struggling with the illness that has swept through the roster in recent weeks, with upper respiratory symptoms causing weakness and breathlessness. Still, he managed something of a takeover late in the game and felt like he could overcome the problems. This is how he saw the final minutes:

“I had the ball in my hands to start a lot of possessions, but we make plays. You don’t always want to attack a defense without passing – it’s more about letting them off the hook. We want at least the ball to move on the second and third side and then try to go. But a lot of things happen, you know. Sometimes teams become more aggressive and try not to let you catch. Sometimes guys see a lead to attack… Those five minutes came and went quickly. You look up, it’s going back and forth, and now there’s 2:28 left. Now we have to manage to get out of a timeout and Doc might have something he wants to look at and that might not be the ball coming to me. You go to someone else there, he has a possession on offense, we come back in transition, maybe someone else gets a look. It’s still 1:30 a.m. now, so time can go by quickly. But I agree, there should be a balance. Even if it’s Giannis, even if it’s me… of course we don’t want to last five minutes like that, but it happens.”

Of course, Giannis’ health and return, which will hopefully take place on New Year’s Eve, will go a long way toward smoothing things out for Dame et al. easier to make. Milwaukee barely managed 50 points in the second half after scoring just 46 points against Brooklyn three days ago, but unlike that game and its numerous mishaps on both ends of the court, that was more due to missed shots. There wasn’t the same hero ball we saw on Thursday, but perhaps that went too far in the other direction, as the shot distribution in the final five minutes consisted of five attempts from Lopez, four from Middleton and two from Bobby Portis. Many of them looked clean, so they made good shots, but none of them were for the best shooter.

Three positive steps

I don’t want to put too much pressure on the Bucks in the last few games where they were without Giannis and Dame almost the entire time. So that was disappointing, and there’s not much to take away from a game where they’re missing the star, a few things stood out to me as a bright spot:

Milwaukee only turned the ball over seven times.

While the Bucks are actually league average in terms of turnover rate, they’ve had some really ugly nights, particularly against the Nets. This was a big swing in the other direction from 21 on Thursday, which was close to a season high. On Saturday evening they were just one point away from their season low. Interestingly, the Bucks are 0-3 when they turn the ball over seven times or less this season.

Khris Middleton played a season-high 28 minutes.

Despite sitting for literally an entire quarter (from 5:37 in the third to 5:26 in the fourth), he clocked in at 27:38 after 26:11 on Thursday. Doc said the long time on the bench had nothing to do with Ball’s flagrant foul when he took out Middleton near the end of the second period, but rather the 22 minutes he had at the start of the fourth period:

Despite some shooting problems, Dame managed an efficient evening.

Before his mini-shooting spree in the fourth quarter, Lillard was just 6/15 and 18 points. Although his finish line of 8/19 and 3/9 doesn’t look great from deep, he finished 10 times in total. He likely felt the effects of an 11-day break from NBA basketball that came with his ongoing illness and, unusually, had three airballs. Still, he almost won that game, providing 11 assists. All in all, a very solid night’s work.

Bonus Bucks Bits

• As mentioned, Giannis is still sick and didn’t even throw a rally this morning when he played his third game. In fact, the Bucks sent him home via I-94.
• Here’s what Middleton had to say about his ankle falling on the ball for that flagrant foul. He added that it did not affect his ability to run or move in the second half.

• Over the last game and a half, the Bucks shot 41% from the floor and 33.8% from downtown. Based on the second half of each game, they are 39.1% and 29.5% respectively. Their second-half offensive rating in those games is just 94.2 and their net rating is -16.5.
• In the opening quarter, Chicago made great strides inside while Milwaukee struggled greatly. The Bulls’ 20-2 team lead ended at 56-42 when the Bucks at least got it done.
• Chicago certainly had a lot of success in the first quarter, shooting 60.9% from the field and scoring 33 points, but in the fourth quarter they matched the same percentage with just 39.3% shooting thanks to some late free throws. However, I think Milwaukee almost completely avoided the kind of glaring defensive mistakes that sank them against Brooklyn. Doc thought their defensive performance on Monday at the United Center was one of their best of the season, and while last night’s performance wasn’t bad by any means (113.7 DRtg), he was pretty critical:

“It felt like we were playing fool’s gold all night long. I thought defensively that we weren’t present all night. I think at halftime they were shooting 58%, we were shooting 44% and it was a two-point game. (It felt like) we were either going to start really defending and then our offense would step up, or we wouldn’t and it would be a close game, and that was it.”

• Taurean Prince has struggled to get to the rim in recent weeks, shooting 51% from within four feet, good for the third percentile leaguewide, according to Cleaning The Glass. However, Jim Owczarski mentioned that Prince often heard things like, “Sorry I missed that call on your drive” from referees in the tunnel. He missed his first layup tonight, but then converted his next three, which prompted Eric Nehm to joke with us, “Can you do a heat check on layups?” Because that’s what we just saw.”
• Nikola Vucevic joined Brook Lopez tonight in an exclusive club: the only two centers in NBA history with at least 16,000 points and 800 three-pointers. When we spoke to Lopez after the game, not only did he have no idea that he and Vooch were the only ones who had done it, but when I asked him who he thought the other guy was other than Vooch, he guessed Joel Embiid. When I was told during the game by a Bulls media staff member that there were two and asked to guess the other, I guessed Lopez for one and Karl-Anthony Towns and then Nikola Jokic for the other . Anyway, congratulations to the greats.

Next

The Bucks will travel to Indianapolis on New Year’s Eve to take on the Pacers at Central at 2 p.m. Watch it on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin or our Playback Channel.

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