The Milwaukee Bucks came home on Friday night following a rough stretch that saw them losing six of their past seven games, and managed to stop the bleeding with a victory over the reeling New York Knicks.
The Milwaukee Bucks have been playing some of their worst basketball of the season over the past few weeks. This has not been timely, as they’ve matched up with quality opponents, who have often been Eastern Conference rivals playing for playoff tiebreakers.
After dropping all but two of their eight games since the All-Star break, the Bucks’ strength of schedule drops until a March 19 meeting with Cleveland. This began with Friday’s game against the New York Knicks at the Bradley Center, and thankfully for Milwaukee, it started with a win.
Bucks games have typically been very strange to watch of late, but the way this game started pushed the envelope.
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The opening tip was won by Milwaukee, with the ball finding itself in the hands of Giannis Antetokounmpo. Antetokounmpo then hiked it, NFL-center-style to Eric Bledsoe who proceeded to get on the ground and perform a push-up, before collecting the ball and heading up court.
It could be that the Bucks are trying to inject fun back into their game, as they have been anything but as of late.
From there, the Bucks managed to take care of business. Not only holding the lead for a brief moment in the third quarter, during a big Knicks run. Milwaukee managed to take back control from there, with Giannis Antetokounmpo scoring 13 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter. Khris Middleton led both teams in scoring with 30 points, along with several other positive contributors for Milwaukee.
From here, let’s take a closer look at those individual contributions and hand out our grades for the players from Friday night.