Warriors 108, Bucks 94: Kevin Durant delivers

Matt Velazquez
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Milwaukee Bucks made a big run. They battled and scrapped and put themselves into a position where they had a chance to knock off the Golden State Warriors.

Then Kevin Durant slammed the door as the Warriors defeated the Bucks, 108-94, on Friday night in front of a sellout crowd at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.

Good night, thanks for coming.

With under three minutes left in a tight fourth quarter, the Warriors took possession up four and needing a basket to stem Milwaukee's slowly growing momentum. With Stephen Curry out due to a right ankle injury, Golden State turned to Finals MVP Durant and he delivered.

Guarded tightly by Bucks wing Khris Middleton, Durant fired off a fadeaway that slipped through the net to put the Warriors up by six. Then, after a Middleton turnover, Durant again came up huge despite being closely defended, this time knocking down a three-pointer.

BOX SCORE: Warriors 108, Bucks 94

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“He’s one of the best players in the world," Bucks coach Jason Kidd said. "We put length on him, we put Giannis on him to try to discourage him, but again, he works extremely hard. No matter if you’re 7 feet or if you’re 6 feet he just doesn’t see you and he just shoots over you. That’s why he’s one of the best players in the world.”

Those buckets put Golden State ahead by nine with just over two minutes to go, and Milwaukee didn't have another run left. Durant finished with a game-high 26 points while Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 23 points in the loss followed by 21 points from point guard Eric Bledsoe.

Antetokounmpo, who spent stretches guarding Durant early before getting into foul trouble, said postgame that he certainly took some lessons from going against the former MVP.

"When you guard players like Durant, you just got to make their game as tough as you can," Antetokounmpo said. "He's going to get 20 shots up and he's going to play his game. You just got to be out there and try to make it as tough as you can to guys like that. You can't stop them.

"That's one thing that I've learned. I gotta see it the same way. The defense gets tough. They're just trying to make my job a lot harder. So, KD was aggressive all night. Moving forward that's a lesson for me to be aggressive all night too."

The game looked like it might go sideways on the Bucks early as they trailed by nine at the end of the first quarter, wholly unable to quell the Warriors' offense as Golden State shot 66.7%. That continued into the second quarter as Golden State made a late push to lead, 63-49, at the break.

Milwaukee returned to the court undeterred and slowly chipped the margin to eight before being dealt a tough blow when Antetokounmpo was called for his fourth foul. The call of a push-off — albeit a light one — on Durant forced Kidd's hand as he removed his star from the game with just under five minutes left in the third.

At that point, the Bucks had to figure out how to navigate an extended period of time, ultimately into the fourth quarter, without their go-to guy and the second-leading scorer in the league.

Enter Malcolm Brogdon with a double-shot of Tony Snell.

With the Bucks still down eight under a minute later, Snell buried a 28-footer. Then it was all Brogdon as over a stretch of fewer than two minutes he knocked down a three, deposited a reverse layup for an and-one and then added another three to tie the game for the first time since the first quarter.

 

“Just things opening up for me," Brogdon said. "My teammates trusted me to take big shots and make big shots. I’m comfortable doing that. ... When Giannis is out that means everybody else has to step up, be more confident, play more aggressive and I thought that’s what we did.”

Snell added another triple for good measure, putting the Bucks ahead, 82-80, their first advantage since early in the contest, bringing raucous cheers from the sellout crowd.

That was about as high as the Bucks would rise, with Brogdon opening the fourth quarter with a dunk to give Milwaukee a four-point lead. Golden State, led by its bench, responded with a 14-2 run from which Durant didn't allow the Bucks to recover.

During the fourth quarter, the Bucks shot just 5 of 20 from the field and finished with 12 points in the period, their lowest total in a quarter this season. Middleton, the Bucks' second-leading scorer, ended up with just eight points on 2 of 12 shooting, although he was far from the only one struggling to hit shots in the fourth.

“I thought in the second half the ball was moving, we just can’t make open shots," Kidd said. "Understanding that third quarter kind of set the tone for us. We were moving the ball, we moved bodies, set screens, guys were getting wide open looks. I thought ... we were going to build on that, but in that fourth quarter, we just couldn’t make shots. The ball was moving, we just couldn’t make shots.”

BEHIND THE BOX SCORE

Energy and effort: Bucks rookie guard Sterling Brown never got credited with a steal and only made one of his two attempts — a three-pointer — but he made a notable impact in his nearly 9 1/2 first-half minutes.

Brown didn't pale in the face of the reigning champions, battling on defense and cutting into passing lanes to break up multiple passes. He was one of the many bodies the Bucks threw at Klay Thompson and he didn't shy away from the task.

He didn't play in the second half, but Kidd noticed Brown's contributions.

“I thought his energy was great," Kidd said. "I thought he gave us a spark there in that first half and that’s something we’re going to need. Again, looking at his minutes he’ll start to get more minutes as we go forward in the second half, but I thought the group that was out there was playing extremely well.”

Hometown highlight: Former Milwaukee Hamilton standout Kevon Looney, a third-year center for the Warriors, logged a career-high 23 minutes on Friday. He contributed a season-high nine points on 3 of 3 shooting while grabbing eight rebounds.

"I thought he was tremendous," Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. "We wanted to get him in the game given that he's from the area. It turned out that he was a great fit for this game, with all the switching and protecting the rim at the same time. I thought Looney put in some fantastic minutes."

Not by the three: The Warriors entered Friday as the best three-point shooting team in the league at 39.0%. The Bucks, on the other hand, rank among the worst, with teams shooting 38.3% against them.

But that wasn’t the difference in the game.

Golden State got off a season-low 15 three-point attempts — a number certainly impacted by Curry's absence — and made just five of them. Klay Thompson, who had 12 points, was held without a three-pointer (0 of 2) for the first time in 95 games, ending a streak that ranked third all-time.

Brogdon, who played four seconds shy of 40 minutes, spent much of the game defending Thompson, trying to limit his chances.

“It’s exhausting; it’s a mental game," Brogdon said. "Klay is arguably the best shooter in the NBA, so chasing him around you have to give that all that attention or he’s going to scorch you.”

UP NEXT

Teams: Milwaukee Bucks (22-19) at Miami Heat (24-17).

When: Noon Sunday.

Where: AmericanAirlines Arena.

About the Heat: Miami — for lack of a better term — is among the hottest teams in the NBA. The Heat have won 13 of their past 17 games and will carry a six-game win streak, including back-to-back victories in Toronto and Indiana, into Sunday. Miami recently learned guard Dion Waiters will have season-ending surgery on his left ankle. Point guard Goran Dragic leads the Heat with 17.0 points and 4.9 assists per game while center Hassan Whiteside has been solid in the paint, collecting 14.0 points and 11.8 rebounds.