LAS VEGAS – The Milwaukee Bucks and Indiana Pacers played down to the wire in a back-and-forth, high-scoring contest at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas that saw the Pacers advance to the In-Season Tournament final with a 128-119 victory.
Thursday’s semifinal counted toward each team’s regular-season record, as the Bucks fell to 15-7 on the season and the Pacers improved to 12-8.
The Pacers will face either New Orleans or the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday for the right to hoist the inaugural NBA Cup trophy. That game will not count toward the regular season standings. The Bucks head home and will play Chicago on Monday.
The Bucks fell behind by as many as 12 points in the first half and then charged back to take a lead going into the fourth quarter to set the stage for a dramatic fourth quarter where the Pacers attacked the offensive glass to outlast the Bucks late.
Giannis Antetokounmpo led all scorers with 37 points on 13 of 19 shooting. He also made 11 of his 13 free throws and pulled down 10 rebounds.
BOX SCORE: Pacers 128, Bucks 119
Damian Lillard added 24 while Khris Middleton (20) and Brook Lopez (18) also reached double figures. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, the rest of the team scored just 20 points.
Oshkosh native Tyrese Haliburton led the Pacers with 27 points and 15 assists, and he provided the dagger with 48 seconds left when he knocked down a three-pointer to give his team a 122-114 lead. Haliburton also did not turn the ball over in his 36 minutes of action.
Myles Turner (26), Obi Toppin (14), Isaiah Jackson (11) and Bruce Brown (10) also reached double figures for Indiana.
“The talent level that we have is incredible, but we have to be more organized,” Antetokounmpo said when asked about where the team is at at the quarter-pole of the NBA season. “We have to be more organized. I feel like sometimes we’re not organized at all. We don’t know what we try to get from our offense, or sometimes defensively we’re not sprinting back. We don’t – we create a lot of – shoot a lot of early threes. At the end of the day, you have to protect the ball. You have to know where the ball is.
“We had a lot of situations today that they got a lot of dunks, open threes, early threes. We have to be better. And the other thing is that obviously our chemistry, game-by-game, going to keep on getting closer. Again, because we have new players on the team, Malik (Beasley) and Dame, which we’ve played a lot of years in the previous years with the same, basically, core, and now it’s different.
“We have to know what their weaknesses are, what their strengths are, where they want the ball, what spots on the floor they want the ball, and the biggest thing, I believe, is that we got to – we’ve got to want it. You know, nobody is going to give you nothing.
“Like sometimes I feel like we expect just because we have great players out there, that Tyrese Haliburton or Myles Turner or Aaron Nesmith, somebody is not just going to give us the game. Like no, we have to — we have to be better. We have to go out there and take it. You know at the end of the day, I think we are great players, but if we don’t go out there and compete, they are not going to respect us. They played their best against us.”
Pacers clean up on offensive glass
The Bucks moved to a zone defense in the second half to get themselves back in the game, but it also allowed some gaps for the Pacers to shoot through for offensive rebounds. So while Indiana was just 3 for 17 from behind the three-point line in the second half, they pulled down 11 offensive rebounds.
Those second chances led to 15 points.
“Yeah, listen, you give up 15 O-boards with 23 second-chance points, it’s going to be tough to beat anybody, I think that’s what the game was,” Bucks head coach Adrian Griffin said. “We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to try and find a body. You know, they are crashing and I thought we did a good job in the second half taking the threes out and I think that was critical. But we’ve got to limit them to one shot. You know, you cut that in half and it’s probably a different outcome.”
The Bucks came into the game as the league’s sixth-best rebounding team, but it’s been a climb to get there and they’ve had to be more mindful of teams taking advantage of the offensive glass all season long to date.
“Yeah, it’s definitely a key and something you have to keep in mind with zone, with any zone,” Bucks center Brook Lopez said. “We’ll definitely have to be better at that as well. That’s something that’s been something we’ve wanted to improve at all season long anyway, regardless of what defense we’re in. We just have to take extra special care in the zone.”
For Antetokounmpo, the Pacers’ success on the offensive glass was an illustration of their overall effort throughout the game.
“Played harder than us. Simple as that,” he said. “Obviously playing the zone, you’re not guarding, you’re just guarding like an area. Try to keep – have a guy in front of you. And sometimes when the ball goes up, obviously if you try to find a body to get back, you know, to kind of crack a body but at the end of the day, I don’t even think that was the case. I think they just played harder than us and we’ve just got to accept it.
“How many offensive rebounds they had, 11 (in the second half)? That 23 points, second, whatever it’s called, second-chance points, yeah, that’s the game right there. That’s the game right there, man. Played harder than us. They crashed the board. Defended better. They were better.”
Turnovers hurt Bucks late
The Bucks played a near flawless first quarter, committing only two personal fouls and one turnover. That changed dramatically in the second quarter, as they turned it over six times and were called for eight fouls as the Pacers turned a slight 29-27 first quarter deficit to a 56-44 lead with 3:09 to go in the first half.
The Bucks came back from that deficit in a strong third quarter in which, you guessed it, they didn’t turn the ball over or commit a single foul in the first 7-plus minutes of the period. During a 21-5 run in the third, which saw the Bucks took a 78-72 lead they forced a couple of turnovers of their own and got to the free throw line several times.
Indiana then retook the lead early in the fourth quarter thanks to a trio of early Bucks turnovers and a three-point play that turned into four after Bucks guard Cameron Payne was assessed a technical foul.
Then, with the Bucks trailing 113-110 with just over three minutes to go, Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton hard turnovers that led to Pacers baskets.
Lillard: I think the turnover that I had, I came off the pick-and-roll and I tried to, it, was the same pocket pass that I had been throwing. Myles, he just barely tipped it. He got a hand on it. It’s a play that happens sometimes. That ball gets through, Brook is going for a dunk, you know what I mean. But it was a play that we always make, the ball gets there more times than not. He just made a good defensive play.
Middleton: Just gotta be better. Simple as that.
The Bucks have wanted to play aggressively on defense all season but cutting down on their fouls has been an emphasis and how cleanly they played against the Pacers helped dictate the outcome.
“I felt like that was our fault with the late-game execution,” Beasley said. “Not knowing what we’re in. We could’ve been better at making the right play and getting in our position and executing. So, I think they did a good job putting pressure on us.”
Did you notice?
The Bucks and Pacers played the game under theatre lighting, with the lights focused on the red and blue court. Only three NBA arenas use that lighting for their regular contests (Barclays Center, Madison Square Garden, Crypto.com Arena for Los Angeles Lakers games).
Five numbers
7 Consecutive shots missed by Lillard to open the game. He was 7 for 13 afterward and finished with 24 points, including 16 points in the third quarter.
11-4 Bucks record when the Big Three of Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Lillard play together.
43 Points in third quarter by the Bucks, a season high. They set their previous best with 36 against the Knicks on Tuesday.
257.5 The pre-game over/under for the Bucks-Pacers game, which ESPN reported was the highest combined point total prognostication since 1991. The Pacers entered the game as the No. 1 scoring team in the league and the Bucks were No. 3.
1992 The last time the NBA held a regular season game in Las Vegas (Portland vs. Los Angeles Lakers). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also broke Wilt Chamberlain’s all-time scoring record in Las Vegas, doing so in 1984 when the Lakers played the Utah Jazz in the city.
