Milwaukee Bucks Gaming fall short in thrilling match with Blazer5 Gaming

Milwaukee Bucks’ affiliate Bucks Gaming just came up short in a thrilling and historic match against Blazer5 Gaming on Tuesday night.

After a bye week last week, the Milwaukee Bucks’ affiliate Bucks Gaming returned to action in Tuesday night in what proved to be a frequently thrilling and always eventful match against Blazer5 Gaming.

Consistently one of the best teams in the NBA 2K League since its foundation a couple of years ago, Blazer5 Gaming picked up wins in their opening two contests to live up to the early expectations of what their season might have in store.

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Notably, Blazer5 play home to a pair of MVPs, with OneWildWalnut and Mama Im Dat Man the only two players to have claimed the 2K League’s leading individual honor to date.

The headlines from Tuesday’s match would end up being dominated by one of those MVPs too, as Mama Im Dat Man produced one of the greatest performances in 2K League history in the first leg of the best of 3 series between the Bucks and Blazer5.

With the team from Portland coming out of the blocks red-hot in the opening game, Mama Im Dat Man scored a league record 31 points in the opening quarter, and the Bucks essentially found themselves blown out of the contest right from the jump.

From that point on, the game was all about the record books. With 46 points in the first half, the single game scoring record of 84 points (which had been recorded in a double-overtime game) was very much in play for Mama Im Dat Man, as was the team scoring record of 108 points for Blazer5.

With 71 points through the end of the third quarter, it began to look like an inevitability, but the Bucks had other ideas.

Mama Im Dat Man found himself with all five Bucks crowding him throughout the final period, with Milwaukee essentially content to allow any other Blazer5 player to score as the overall scoreline was already insurmountable.

Taking things a step further, the Bucks milked the shot clock throughout the period, frequently not even attempting shots and just letting the 24 seconds expire with a violation.

It was far from pretty, and is unlikely to have been all that popular with 2K League higher-ups given a potentially historic moment could have unfolded in front of a national audience on ESPN, but it was a point of pride for the Bucks to avoided being immortalized for all of the wrong reasons. And they succeeded on that front as they dropped the first game by a brutal 43 points, but ultimately managed to cap Mama Im Dat Man at 77 points, and Blazer5 Gaming at 105 points overall.

Having only played in sweeps through their first four games of the season, the Bucks were then left needing to win Game 2 in order to force a decider.

Regg, the Bucks’ star point guard who returned to a Slashing Sharpshooter archetype this week, picked up his play, his teammates followed suit, and some semblance of the defense that had led the Bucks to two wins in their last gameweek returned for Game 2.

With Regg back to dictating the tempo and pulling the strings in all elements of Milwaukee’s offense, the Bucks’ star rookie led the Bucks to that Game 2 win with 30 points and 17 assists, and a final score of 83-72.

With an all or nothing finale, both teams again produced a hard-fought game in what proved to be the grittiest and lowest scoring of the bunch. The Bucks had a couple of great chances late on with missed corner threes, and they ultimately proved the difference as Blazer5 prevailed 71-65 for the overall victory in the match.

There’s no shame for the Bucks in losing such a competitive match to one of the 2K League’s very best teams and, with the way it all played out, this could prove to be the start of an intriguing rivalry.

Now back at 2-3 in overall record, the Bucks will need to get back to winning ways on Thursday night against Gen.G Tigers.