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No beauty contests were won this night, but the Milwaukee Bucks did pick up a notch in the left column of the ledger with a 108-98 victory over the Chicago Bulls.
The Milwaukee Bucks opened up the first period with a hot shooting start while the Bulls hit only 26.1% of theirs. Unsurprisingly, Milwaukee led 28-16 after one. That lead ballooned further in the second quarter, but a string of Bulls scoring possessions got them back into the game with Milwaukee up 52-44 at halftime. In the third period, it certainly wasn’t pretty, but the Bucks were able to pull away as the minutes ticked away and came out ahead 80-63. Chicago narrowed the score in the closing minutes of the game, as is Bucks tradition of late, but Milwaukee ultimately pulled out the win.
Stat That Stood Out
38 combined points for Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday. With no Giannis Antetokounmpo, the scoring burden fell upon the Bucks remaining stars, who admittedly looked gassed on this second night of a back-to-back. They did have some big buckets late to help salt this away. They simply didn’t have their shot going all night, as MIddleton hit just 8-24 and Holiday went 7-17. Credit to the rest of the team for picking up the scoring slack, Brook Lopez in particular who had 22 on 15 shots.