Box score/Recap/The Two Man Game

The Bucks got Dirk’d, that much is clear.  You simply cannot allow the Dallas Mavericks to have the last shot.  Dirk Nowitzki is too big and too good of a shooter to stop when the game is on the line.  If he misses, it’s a fluke.  His fade-away is indefensible.

So on one hand it’s a huge disappointment that the Bucks let this one slip away.  Score one for being upset.

But on the other hand, they had no business being in the game anyway.  Milwaukee was down 18 with eight minutes and 11 seconds to go in the third quarter.  Plenty of time was left, but there were few signs of life from a group that followed their worst defensive game of the year with an equally putrid start.

So in some ways it was a minor victory to even have been in the game at the end.  But that’s not the way successful teams look at these types of games.  Successful teams say, “we never should have been in the position to lose this game and then when it was close we should have closed it out.”  And that’s what the Bucks want to be, a successful team. Read more…