Milwaukee Bucks (9-2) 134 - 111 Golden State Warriors (10-2)

First published November 9th 2018

I'd swear that in the first minutes of the game every play inside ended up in a defensive foul... Bell would last less than 5 minutes before sitting with foul trouble. Still not the season he'd like thus far. It was a great sign for the Bucks 1st quarter to get Curry out so early.

The Bucks have become a three pointers machine under Mike. This is back-to-back plays where they fire and hit pretty much from the same spot, even if one is a Jerebko miscommunication and the other a trailing shot once KD had his path for a close out blocked by Bledsoe. However, it's hard not to be impressed mostly with the switching and size. A lot of the Warriors' offense comes from separation through off-ball screens and look how Klay has 3 different possible contests when looking to catch near the FT line. The way they can collapse and fill the space near the rim is smothering as hell.

Even with Giannis out and the main Warriors shooters back in, the Bucks were able to keep their lead and the shooting woes continued for Golden State. Bledsoe's explosive power was creating issues for McKinnie, which would mark the start of a great performance for the guard. The last couple of minutes before halftime saw both teams with careless turnovers, a more serious problem for the Warriors because they wasted a lot of potential momentum turns with sloppy play.

Every time Durant started his dribble towards the paint he always had to deal with wither Jones' or Bell's man coming in to double the pressure. Both Warriors' bigs can do little else but finish right now on offense, which really hurts the teams scoring.

This can be exploited easily if someone makes a mistake. In this play, Looney rolling provided a nice escape for the double team and Lopez had his back to him and couldn't bother the movement. So coming in to the third quarter the Dubs came in ready to attack exploiting Milwaukee's plan to edge Durant on the PnR. The game's flow never really changed as the costly turnovers also came back from the halftime break. The Bucks had a 20 point lead and the game didn't seem to be slipping away at any point. The Warriors looked completely lost while getting scored in fast break after fast break.

The 4th quarter was garbage time from the start since Damion Lee playing was a clear message from Kerr.

The Bucks outplayed the Dray-less Warriors in clear fashion tonight. They doubled anyone that could be worrisome, forced a ton of turnovers, got the Warriors in foul trouble early and had a bunch of offensive rebounds. It's only a early November game but in this dominant win there's a little feather that should go on Mike's cap.

Other notes:

If you like players bricking long shots, the early second as a treat. In regards to the Dubs, Jerebko was missing wide open shots in succession and Curry was trying to get himself going but completely off rhythm like he hand't been so far in the season. I wonder how much having to leave early in the first is the cause of this but, regardless, his worst game so far by a mile. (EDIT: it seems unfair to say this without mentioning Bledsoe tracking him very well through screens. You can see it sometimes in some of the gifs)

Giannis is so awesome. Needs only a dribble to get from the three point line to the basket, gets boards, draws a million fouls, can create with a pass out of the post up... Speaking of which, Pat was pretty good attacking from the corner along the baseline. Created a lot of shots with well timed cuts. He also did this when Looney did a great job staying with Middleton

The Warriors found some easy points having Klay post up on DiVincenzo. Klay was the only one that wasn't Arctic cold from the floor but the amount of wasted possessions from his team meant he never really had that many opportunities.

I touched on it earlier but Bell and Jones should never play together. Our spacing is gone, Damian can't defend rolling players very well and Bell has had sub-par game after sub-par game and this might have been the worst. Jumpy, reaching too much... A negative on both ends.

(Reddit)