The Milwaukee Bucks and the San Antonio Spurs are headed in different directions.
That seems pretty obvious from the 127-95 score following their meeting Saturday, March 28, at Fiserv Forum.
The Spurs have won eight straight games and have NBA championship aspirations.
The Bucks, meanwhile, have been officially eliminated from postseason contention after their 13th loss in 16 games. Attention now turns to a monumental off-season and what will happen with superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, who sat out his sixth straight game after hyperextending his left knee March 15.
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It will be the first time that the Bucks won’t be in the playoffs in 10 years.
Speculation about Antetokounmpo’s future has been loud this season. The superstar also has battled myriad lower-body injuries, playing in only 36 games before his latest malady.
“This year, having only one quote-unquote star, every other team has two or three,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “We needed health. We were thin.
“We knew that before the season started and it just didn’t go our way. All the talk and all that stuff probably didn’t help either.”
Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle have big games
Before the game, Rivers said he was going to focus on teaching for the rest of the season.
For a team that has 12 losses by 25 or more points, there are lots of teaching points.
This game was never close, with San Antonio taking a 37-24 lead after the first quarter. Milwaukee had a brief flurry in the third quarter, scoring 20 points in six minutes and getting within 71-58.
But then the Spurs buckled down and pulled away.
“One of our game plans that we finally kind of did in the third quarter, game-specific, not teaching individually, was to keep (Victor Wembanyama’s) guy out spacing to the corner, allowing us to get to the paint and find them,” Rivers said.
Wembanyama, the Spurs’ 7-foot-4 superstar, is at the center of every opposing team’s game plan.
There was a sellout crowd for the matinee game, with the 17,341 fans probably mostly intrigued by seeing Wembanyama. He didn’t disappoint with 23 points, 14 rebounds and six assists.
Wembanyama exited the game with just over 5 minutes remaining. Otherwise, he might have joined teammate Stephon Castle in achieving a triple-double. Castle finished with 22 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists, returning briefly in the fourth quarter to get a rebound and finish off the feat.
Every Bucks player on the court had to be cognizant of Wembanyama’s location.
“They do a good job, with their system, of just keeping him at the rim,” Bucks guard AJ Green said. “He points guys out.
“But you can also get a lot of threes, if you just keep driving and kicking and finding the extra pass. At same point, he’s probably going to have to rotate to the corner to contest. That’s kind of what we wanted to do.
“We did it well at times. We were getting in the paint and he’d close out. Now he’s on the perimeter and you can drive in and finish at the rim. Other times, the ball got stuck a little bit and we played into their hands, defensively.”
Milwaukee finished just 14 for 46 (30.4%) on 3-pointers. The Bucks were led by Gary Trent Jr., who was in the starting lineup and finished with 18 points on 8-for-11 shooting.
AJ Green and Ryan Rollins find motivation for rest of season
The Bucks (29-44) don’t just end the season because no playoffs are on the horizon. There are still nine games left to play.
“What I want to focus on for the rest of the season is trying to be an amazing teammate,” Green said. “Just trying to create a great environment of just trying to grow, as an individual and as a team.
“A culture of playing for each other and trying to play winning basketball. Focus on the process, not the outcome. Just be a great teammate, have great joy and great spirit. All the things that I can control.”
That’s hard with the bitter disappointment of how things spiraled on the Bucks, even for a player like Ryan Rollins, who had a breakout season.
“It is what it is,” Rollins said. “At this point, you got to make the most of the opportunities for the people that are playing right now.
“Started off the season pretty well. Didn’t go so well toward to the end. But, like I said, it is what it is.”
There will be a lot of decisions made about how to fix the Bucks – and what players to keep – so they can start another playoff streak.
“I always try to look at silver linings,” Rivers said. “And Ryan is one of them.
“Pete Nance is another one. Ous (Dieng) is one of them. And we got to rehabilitate or get AJ Green going again. He’s a good player. He’s played too many minutes. We’ve had no choice and I think that put him in a tough spot and I feel bad for him.
“Bobby (Portis) was Bobby. He’s been a pro throughout this year. We had a great talk today about it before the game. I’m just so proud of him as a leader. He tries to do the right stuff. He tries to say the right things in the locker room. So there’s some good things in there.”
Is Giannis playing?
No.
The Bucks ruled the star out for the sixth straight game after he hyperextended his knee and suffered a bone bruise on March 15. Antetokounmpo has made it known he wants to play, and on March 24 the NBPA issued a statement declaring that the league should enforce its own policies about star players suiting up under the player participation policy.
What is the Bucks record without Giannis?
12-24.
The team is 17-19 when he plays at all, and 2-2 when he has exited with injury.
Giannis looking good in pregame warmups
Antetokounmpo has insisted he has been healthy enough to play, though that has been at odds with the team’s preference to shut him down for the season. He looked good in pregame warmups, splashing several jumpers.
Antetokounmpo has been putting on shows before games recently, including a full pregame workout in Phoenix on March 21 that featured powerful several dunks.
Milwaukee Bucks injury report
Bucks probable starters
Guards: Ryan Rollins, Gary Trent Jr.
Forwards: Ousmane Dieng, Pete Nance
Center: Myles Turner
What time is the Bucks game?
Tip off is scheduled for 2 p.m. CT.
What channel is the Bucks game on?
The game will be streaming on Amazon Prime Video with Michael Grady, Brent Barry and Cassidy Hubbarth on the call.
Bucks vs. Spurs odds
The Spurs are 18.5-point favorites with the over-under set at 225.5.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Bucks eliminated from postseason as Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama wows crowd
Reporting by Ben Steele, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
