The Milwaukee Bucks took on the Los Angeles Lakers at home on Tuesday night, and it looked like they were going to cruise to a win for most of the game. The Bucks led by 16 points at halftime and they led by 19 points with just 8:25 remaining in the game. The Lakers stormed back, however, and they won the game 128-124 in double overtime.
Losing is always hard, but when you blow a 19-point fourth quarter lead, it's a bit harder to swallow. While the comeback came in the fourth quarter, Bucks head coach Doc Rivers thought that Milwaukee started to let off the gas as soon as the third quarter started.
“I thought it started in the beginning of the third,” Doc Rivers said after the game, according to 97.3 The Game on Twitter. “I just never thought we reached the intensity level that we had for the first half. They got, what, four loose balls, four offensive rebounds in the first few minutes in the third quarter. You have a team down, I think it was 18 right? You have a chance to take that into the third and we didn't do that. We took it from 18 to 10 coming right out of the door, and that gave them hope. And then after that, I just thought we… it'll be a good lesson for us, but we didn't trust the pass tonight. A lot of zero pass shots or one pass shots. And when we play like that, we get away with it some nights because guys make shots. But we lost that trust. And that's something we haven't done… we won't do that very often. But it will scream off the tape and it will be good for us to see.”
Damian Lillard reacts to the loss
The end of the fourth quarter was brutal for the Bucks. The Lakers had started to mount a comeback, but Milwaukee still led 101-91 with 3:26 left in the game. The Bucks didn't score in those final three minutes, however, and that allowed Los Angeles to complete the comeback.
“I thought we had a lot of good looks, we just missed shots, we missed shots tonight,” Damian Lillard said after the game. “That was pretty much what it came down to. I thought we got good looks, I can remember a bunch of times looking at someone thinking ‘ok he's gonna hit that one', and it seemed like we just kept missing. Sometimes when you get away from what you were doing dominating the other team, you forget what went into that success… they got a lot of talented players, we saw that when we played them in LA.”
The Bucks fell to 46-26 with the loss, and they are currently two games ahead of the Cleveland Cavaliers for second place in the East. This was a crucial win for the Lakers as they battle for a play-in spot, and they increased their lead on the Golden State Warriors to 2.5 games. They needed this one.
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