Milwaukee Bucks Grades and Reactions From 113-104 Loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers

It’s tough to win when you give up 17 offensive rebounds. The Milwaukee Bucks failure on the glass led to a defeat on the scoreboard, falling to the Cleveland Cavaliers 113-104.

How many of you have ever played basketball? Probably quite a few. Okay, how many of you remember way back to youth basketball where the finesse wing players got downright bullied by their more-developed post opponents? That’s what it was like watching the Milwaukee Bucks try to compete with the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night.

Sure the Bucks were able to hang around. But that’s no longer an impressive achievement. Besides, we’re looking for areas of development–not just the absence of futility.

So where then, on a night where one of the Bucks glaring weaknesses cost them the game (rebounding) do we look for story-lines? It starts, as always, at the point.

Giannis Antetokounmpo was once again the Bucks best contributor. He scored 24 on 11-19 shooting and demonstrated his own development in his one-on-one match-up against LeBron James.

Their face-off was dubbed the battle of the point forwards and it did not disappoint.

Joining Giannis with a strong performance was the Bucks bench. (Who would have thunk it?) The performances of Henson and Plumlee were especially noteworthy as their presence on the court helped the Bucks erase big deficits in the second and third quarters.

But despite their efforts the Bucks saw the game slowly slip away; and they have awful rebounding to thank for it. The Bucks were out-rebounded 43-31 (17-10 offensive) with Giannis, Bayless, and Inglis leading the way with six, five, and four rebounds each, respectively.

Wait…what?

Yes you read that right. A guard and two forwards led the way in Bucks rebounding.

That means the likes of Monroe, Parker, Henson, and Plumlee were absent on the glass. A glance at the box score confirms this as those four players combined for nine rebounds between them (Parker had one).

Meanwhile Tristan Thompson and LeBron James had five offensive rebounds, EACH!

Overall it was a good effort from the Bucks, but when you let the big kids in class dominate you in the paint like the Bucks did there’s no way to avoid a loss.

We look deeper into the positives and negatives from the Bucks road loss with our Milwaukee Bucks grades and reactions.

Next: Reactions: The Good