Box Score

Get too excited about the Bucks, and they disappoint. Get too down on them, and they claw their way back to respectability.

It's been the pattern we've seen all year, and it continued in Cleveland on Wednesday with a gritty, often ugly, but ultimately satisfying overtime win over the shorthanded Cavs--the team that also happens to be chasing them for the East's final playoff spot. Perhaps just as importantly, Brandon Jennings put behind a turbulent week both on and off the court with a solid, aggressive night at the office (24 points, albeit on 23 shots, eight assists, five rebounds and just one turnover), looking less like the distracted, disengaged bystander he was earlier in the week and more like the assertive team leader he's been for most of the season.

Not that he didn't have help. Drew Gooden (18 of 19 points after halftime) and Shaun Livingston (11 of his 13 in fourth quarter and OT) carried the Bucks late, while Kyrie Irving's absence (concussion) and Anderson Varejao's departure (wrist) early in the second half also lowered the Bucks' degree of difficulty.

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Brandon Jennings still didn't look himself, and managed just 11 points on 3-12 shooting to go with 4 assists and 3 turnovers, but the Milwaukee Bucks still ended a painful three-game losing streak by knocking off the Toronto Raptors, 105-99. The offense leaned on 48 percent three point shooting (12-25) to overcome a poor performance in the paint -- they were just 30 points on 15-31 shooting in the lane, with just 10 of those coming in the second half -- while the defense played well enough to win when it mattered most.

A win over the Bargnani-less Raptors isn't exactly a feat fit to override a recent string of disappointing losses to the Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls and Phoenix Suns, but any road win is worthy of praise in the NBA. That theory goes double for a Bucks team that improved to 4-10 away from the Bradley Center so far this season.

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MILWAUKEE -- Down by 21 points early in the third quarter, the Bucks had a real shot to win this game at the end. And then they had no shot at all.

After a spirited second-half run brought Milwaukee all the way back to a 105-105 tie, Steve Nash sprang free for a running, banking, floating basket with five seconds remaining to go up 107-105. The Bucks opted to play for the win, inbounding to Drew Gooden, who found Ersan Ilyasova, who found Stephen Jackson, who didn't find enough time or space to even attempt a long three-point shot.

However, that one major offensive snafu in the final seconds masks a more pronounced problem: The Bucks are a below average defensive team this season, and if the past couples games are a trend, things are only getting worse on that end.

The Suns lit up the Bucks for 67 points in the first half -- the second straight game that an opponent has come into the Bradley Center and scored exactly that many points in the first half. And Steve Nash is still fantastic here on his 38th birthday, but Phoenix came in with 22nd ranked offense in the NBA and just gave it to Milwaukee, scoring big points early and getting the big baskets late. Andrew Bogut is out, such is life.

And while the offense has picked up some of the slack, the final play served as a reminder that you cannot expect the team to consistently win with offense. The Bucks have not been outscored in the fourth quarter of a game in almost a month -- they last lost a fourth quarter in Dallas on Jan. 13 -- but the late-game heroics have too often been too little, and tonight, too late.

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Box Score

MILWAUKEE -- The Bucks won the tip. And then it was all downhill. Rather, it was all uphill.

Derrick Rose stunned the Bucks with 16 points in the first six minutes of the game. Stunned -- but to be fair, did not really surprise. We have seen this show before.

The last time that Rose and the Bulls visited Milwaukee, Rose orchestrated a 12-0 run to close the game with 10 points and an assist in the final five minutes of one of the most draining losses in a long line of draining losses last season. Rose picked up tonight exactly where he left off last March, making half of the Bradley Center dizzy with euphoria, the other half of the Bradley Center dizzy with despair.

The Bulls scored 67 points in the first half for those still wondering if the team is actually better off without Andrew Bogut. So at halftime, the Bucks were down by 23, Brandon Jennings was scoreless, and Benny the Bull was dunking. It was just one of those nights in the Bucks/Bulls rivalry -- it was just another one of those nights in the Bucks/Bulls rivalry.

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Box Score

Well that was disappointing.

Two days after a thrilling win over the Heat and a day before a big home game against the Bulls, the Bucks came crashing back to earth. Or in this case: Detroit.

Having already dropped two games to the Bucks in the last month, the Pistons came out the more energetic side while the Bucks never seemed to shift out of neutral, finding few opportunities to run and struggling to execute anything in the halfcourt. Brandon Jennings did his best to carry the Bucks in the first half by making his first five shots, but Brandon Knight (26 points on 23 shots, 7 ast, 0 to) held his own early and clearly bested Jennings (20 pts, 7/19 fg, 1 ast, 3 stl, 3 to) over the final three quarters.

Then again, at least Jennings had one good quarter. That's more than you can say about his teammates, who were mostly outplayed across the board. The Bucks couldn't make shots against one of the league's worst defenses and managed a mere 10 assists on the evening, all too often looking hurried and out of control offensively. Scott Skiles was not pleased.

Just a very poor effort, one of the worst I've seen. Our execution was sloppy. Defensively we had no will. We had no will on the board. We gambled for steals.

We still had a chance to try to steal it, but even our last several possessions, there wasn't any quality in them.

The Bucks twice closed to within four in the final three minutes, but Knight responded both times: once on a P&R floater and another by driving left and finishing with his off-hand past Jennings. The Bucks then came up empty on clean three point looks by Jennings and Drew Gooden in the final minute and could only watch as free throws clinched it for Detroit.

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Box Score

MILWAUKEE -- You get the feeling, watching Brandon Jennings and the Bucks, that you should not stop watching Brandon Jennings and the Bucks.

You get the feeling, I get the feeling, everyone at the Bradley Center got that feeling.

LeBron James personally won the first quarter (24-23), and the Bucks as a team won the rest (24-20, 29-19, 29-18). As a team, without Andrew Bogut for the entire game and without Stephen Jackson for the final three quarters. But as a team, with a dedication to ball movement and with the energy of a thousand suns -- and for a night the earth indeed revolved around Milwaukee.

This game was like when you wake up really early in the morning, earlier than you want to wake up, only you were in the midst of a vivid dream, so you momentarily think that all that fragmented, disorienting, weird, impossible stuff in your dream is real. You are excited, confused. Only in this case, all that fragmented, disorienting, weird, impossible stuff in your dream is real.

When you wake up tomorrow, LeBron James really will still have scored 24 points in the first quarter. Brandon Jennings really still will have scored 14 points in the fourth quarter. The Bucks really will have made a 34-point swing against the most fearsome team in the NBA, and really will be 2-0 against the Heat in the last couple weeks.

Not that you will be able to fall asleep anytime soon now. Not with this win coursing through you.

But is this sustainable? Are we really getting a true reading of the team over the last week, or learning anything yet about the potential of the Bucks? Only one thing is clear: You finally understand all of the hype, you know why never to miss a Miami Heat game.

Because every once in a while, they play the Milwaukee Bucks.

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Box Score

MILWAUKEE -- The flavor of this win was different than the previous one, the previous win.

But if we are comparing wins, at this point? No one loses.

The Pistons might be worse than their record indicates. And now their record is 4-18. After the first quarter, the Bucks up 30-16, that was the lede of this story. But then the Bucks put up 56 points in the second half and blew Detroit back to Detroit, or New York, or wherever they are headed next.

You might say Detroit has come a long way since Ben Wallace and Tayshaun Prince started with the Pistons, but you should probably just say it has just been a long time since Ben Wallace and Tayshaun Prince started with the Pistons, because that was a full decade ago.

Detroit did not simply make Milwaukee look good though -- no one ever seems to. The Bucks just were good, early and late, as Brandon Jennings reached past the 20-point plateau after just one game under. And while Drew Gooden did not quite play Greg Monroe to a draw, they both scored 16 points, Mike Dunleavy spun in 20 off the bench, and the Bucks made it two in a row without Andrew Bogut (or Stephen Jackson, who is becoming parenthetical).

So, no Andrew Bogut, no problem? No, not really. This was an imperfect performance, but a perfectly acceptable one. And while the more we learn the less we seem to really know, there is something oddly compelling about that ongoing dichotomy.

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Box Score

MILWAUKEE -- Just how they Drew it up.

Drew Gooden was at center and in front as the Bucks won for the first time in seven tries while playing without Andrew Bogut, while the Lakers lost for the seventh time in eight games on the road.

Although the atmosphere suggested that an elite team was in town tonight, the Lakers are officially on the outside looking in at the playoffs right now in the West, whereas the Bucks bumped their way up into the final playoff spot in the East as things stand.

That might arrive as bad news for anyone hoping that the team loses its way into the (high) lottery this season, but if you are a Bucks fan and you were at the Bradley Center tonight, or even not at the Bradley Center tonight -- and I trust that no one wearing a Kobe jersey or Kobe jeans (h/t Jeremy Schmidt) is reading this far -- you would have to go pretty far out of your way to not be pleased with the result.

And not just the end result, but the entire game. Because as much as we try to break the game down into a science, it is at its base an art. The Bucks and Gooden drew something tonight that can only be considered abstract -- at times it was peculiar, even frustrating or difficult to comprehend, but always it made you think -- in the beginning of the night and at the end of the night it was memorable.

So while defeating a team with three players and one road win hardly earns grandiose words on merit alone, and while this win admittedly in no way advances the team on a path to a title in five years and very well might prove meaningless in a quest to lose to the Bulls or Heat in the first round in a few months, today is just today, and so you also don't have to feel bad about feeling good.

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