Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks heard the noise headed into this game. ‘Sure, the Bucks have won four straight, but it’s been against bad teams so does it really matter?’ ‘Bucks haven’t beat a great team thus far in the young NBA season.’ Well, Milwaukee got it done on Sunday afternoon. After trailing 100-96, the Bucks closed the game on a 9-0 run to beat Los Angeles. Watching Antetokounmpo yesterday was eye-opening with the way he played. It is hard not to be fully impressed with the variety of things he did on the basketball court yesterday afternoon.

Player of the Game: Giannis Antetokounmpo – For the fourth straight game, Giannis Antetokounmpo scored more than 35 points. He finished with 36 points, 14 rebounds, and 6 assists. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story. In the last eight minutes of the game, Giannis scored 17 points, made all six shots, came up with a huge block on defense, and guarded Kawhi Leonard in the final four minutes holding him scoreless. It is one of the best fourth quarters I have ever seen from Antetokounmpo.

What went right for the Bucks: Again, Bud deserves credit for the adjustments he made late – For the second straight game, we saw Mike Budenholzer pull all the right moves. Budenholzer moved Giannis on Kawhi. They were constantly switching and made the proper adjustments to shut down one of the best late-game players. It looked like Kawhi had it figured out then they came up with the needed adjustments. This is the second straight game where we’ve seen Bud pull the right trigger.

What went wrong for the Bucks: Way too many second chances for the Clippers – If you want one thing to be mad at is the number of offensive rebounds that Los Angeles got yesterday. They finished with 13. It felt like way more than that. Los Angeles seemed to get multiple opportunities to score in the second half. That cannot happen especially with the size Milwaukee has in the middle. I get some of that is how the basketball comes off, but you have to have to be better.

Next up: Milwaukee will try to push their winning streak to six when they welcome Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets to town. Denver is not having the season they expected. The Nuggets will also be coming in on a back-to-back as they play Chicago this evening. Denver used to give Milwaukee fits, but the Bucks have been well against them of late.

Charlie.