MILWAUKEE — The uniforms were the same. Most of the people in them too. And the Toronto Raptors certainly know their way around town having played the Milwaukee Bucks twice in the playoffs over the previous two years.
“It seems like we have been here a lot over the last couple of years,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said. “The hotels are pretty familiar.”
The outcome almost was, too.
It was hard not to be curious to see what kind of carry-over there might be from the Raptors’ steamrolling of the Bucks during the Eastern Conference Finals last May, when they won four straight after falling behind 2-0, becoming just the fifth team in NBA history — in 72 tries — to lose its first two games in the conference finals and still advance.
Nurse said it was going to be a good test for his club, facing their first NBA title contender without having Kawhi Leonard to rely on.
They almost passed it in spectacular fashion, falling just short of what would have been an historic comeback before falling 115-105, dropping their record to 4-2.
Their ultimate undoing came early. The Raptors didn’t have their first field goal until Kyle Lowry pulled up and hit a three in transition with 5:12 already elapsed in the first quarter. Pascal Siakam didn’t have his first field goal until almost 18 minutes had been played. As you might expect, the Raptors trailed 36-17 after the first quarter and were down by 26 when their post-Kawhi Leonard go-to scorer, Siakam, finally got on the sheet with six minutes left in the second quarter.
But perhaps more meaningful is the Raptors didn’t stay down – also, we should know by now – predictably.
The Raptors have been proceeding through their championship defence in what could almost be a state of denial regarding the departure of Leonard. In their minds, they remain championship contenders, even if the rest of the league seems to have moved on.
“I don’t sense any big deal of people thinking we are the defending champions,” said Nurse before the game. “I don’t really know what to say other than that. It just feels like we’re into it, playing a game, and I think our team plays pretty confidently. I think they still really believe in themselves a lot. I think it takes a lot to beat us. Those guys have a lot of competitive drive, they have a lot of pride. We’re not going to win every game and we’re certainly beatable, but it takes a lot most nights if we are going to get an L.”
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It did on Saturday night in Milwaukee.
Lowry led Toronto with a season-high 36-point night while the Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo went off for 36 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
After falling behind by 26, the Raptors nearly came all the way back, cutting the Bucks’ lead to four with 2:32 to play on a Fred VanVleet triple. But that was as close as they came. A pair of free throws by George Hill — as Siakam fouled out — put the lead up to six. An OG Anunoby turnover allowed the Bucks to finish a fast break with an emphatic dunk by Antetokounmpo, and the lead was eight.
By the time it was done, the Bucks had finished on an 8-2 run to put the game away, but make no mistake, they had come within an eyelash of fumbling it in the most embarrassing manner possible.
The Raptors felt like they missed an opportunity, and none were more disappointed than Siakam, who finished with 16 points on 19 shots – his lowest total and least efficient performance in what has otherwise been a remarkable start. He fouled out for the second time in six games, only adding to his frustration.
“I just didn’t have the energy I’m supposed to have in a game like that,” he said. “And I don’t know, I might have to go to a couple of ref’s meetings or something like that.
“Maybe there’s something I need to learn or something I’m not doing right but once again just being in foul trouble and kind of taking myself out of the game a little bit and then coming back and finding a rhythm and finding a way to impact the game is not always easy.”
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Lowry helped pick up the slack. He had 17 points in the first half and another 17 in the third quarter before running out of gas somewhat in the fourth. He had only one field goal down the stretch as the Raptors shot just 6-of-22 from the floor in the fourth quarter – not ideal given it was the Bucks who were in Orlando Friday night and flew in late to complete the road-home back-to-back.
But there was good reason the Bucks were ready to go when the ball went up.
Milwaukee could rightly believe that it was its NBA title the Raptors snatched from its grasp a year ago, which will be only that much more excruciating if the Bucks miss a title in the final two years they have Antetokounmpo under contract and with the NBA rumour mill already assuming he’ll leave for brighter lights.
Still, the Raptors can leave the Fiserv Forum with some degree of confidence because they maintained their track record of giving the Bucks fits. The difference between Saturday night and the conference finals was that the Raptors weren’t quite as committed to executing the game plan that had limited Antetokounmpo’s access to the rim. They turned him into a jump shooter — his only weakness. He shot just 43.5 per cent from the floor in the four Bucks losses compared to his 58-per-cent mark in the regular season.
For much of the game, the Bucks star had it any way he wanted – either swerving through the paint to the rim or kicking it out to open Bucks shooters.
“We didn’t do a good enough job team-wise on him,” said Nurse. “We let him get to his spaces that we didn’t normally let him get to last year too much. He punched through the elbow or the free-throw line way too much. We’d much sooner close those gaps up and take out chances on the fire outs. But for some reason we didn’t do that. That’s probably a little bit more of some other new guys being in there and some mistakes we made. For the first quarter and a half we just didn’t do things well enough.”
And yet they were still there with a chance to win down the stretch, winning the second half 55-49.
It was a Siakam triple finally cut the Bucks lead to single digits with just over a minute to play in the half and a Siakam assist to Serge Ibaka cut it to seven. The Raptors even scored on an inbounds play under the Bucks basket with one second left as Raptors rookie Terence Davis caught Bucks veteran Kyle Korver napping on a cut. Just like that, the Raptors were trailing by five to start the fourth quarter.
The champs were refusing to play dead.
“We played terrible, we couldn’t make a shot and we still had a chance to win in the fourth quarter,” said Siakam. “So that’s definitely something we can take; Just understanding that if we stick to whatever our plan is we can always have a chance to win, every single night.”
It was a remarkable effort, win or lose. The largest comeback in Raptors franchise history was digging themselves out of a 25-point hole Dec. 11, 2010, at Detroit.
Regardless of the outcome, turning around what seemed bound to be a clear blowout proved to the Bucks the Raptors remain a factor to be reckoned with — another mortgage payment on the real estate Toronto could well have in Milwaukee’s collective mind.
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November 03, 2019 at 10:14AM
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