Bucks blowout Raptors to take 2-1 lead: 3 takeaways from Game 3

The Milwaukee Bucks went back home and ran away with Game 3 against the Toronto Raptors on Thursday night, tipping the series in their favor, 2-1.

We weren’t sure how a young Bucks team would come out after letting a winnable game slip away from them. The answer was ‘gangbusters.’  Milwaukee came out hotter than a batch of deep-fried cheese curds.

From the get-go, the entire Bucks lineup thrived off the energy of the sold-out home crowd. In a pivotal Game 3, Milwaukee stormed out to a 32-12 first quarter lead behind purposeful ball movement, crisp passing, and dead-eye shooting, and never looked back.

They kept the clamps on Toronto’s offense for the entirety of the night, as the Raptors couldn’t break 30 in the first half. The Bucks were the polar opposite, shooting an NBA Jam-esque 52.2 percent(!) from deep.

Below lies the summation of Game 3, encapsulated in a single play:

Takeaways

That. Was. Ugly. A 12-point first quarter, 30 at half, 77 at the end of regulation. It was a terrible night for the Raptors any way you slice it. Perhaps most telling, they had more turnovers than assists, 15 to 11.

Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan combined for 21 points and a -41 rating. DeRozan shot a dejected 0-8 from the field. Delon Wright tied for the team-high with 13 points, and no part of that sentence was good.

While Serge Ibaka and P.J. Tucker showed to be the lynchpins in Toronto’s Game 2 win, both were vastly ineffective Thursday night.

Dwane Casey even went with a three-point guard lineup for a stretch to shake things up. Nothing worked. Toronto needs to regain their mojo fast, or this will be a quick series.

Khris Middleton is consummately underrated and consistently awesome. If Giannis is Milwaukee’s perfect cocktail of athleticism, skill, and youthful promise, then Middleton is the straw that stirs it.

He set the nets on fire in the first quarter and started the snowball rolling downhill. Middleton finished with a game-high 20 points, along with seven assists, most of which were on-the-money pocket passes that lead to easy points for his teammates.

He’s the perfect second-banana, a sub-star who does everything well, and plays under control while creating his own shot and shots for others. Again and again, he provided a calm hand and a buried a throng of baseline mid-range jumpers with the shot clock winding down.

Jason Kidd sticks to his guns. It would have been presumable for an inexperienced coach to overreact to Game 2’s loss and revamp his gameplan. However, his team could easily be up 3-0 right now, so he wisely didn’t do anything drastic. Kidd only made slight tweaks to his rotation, opting for Michael Beasley over a struggling Mirza Teletovic.

Beasley’s had an up-and-down career, but seems to have settled into an instant-offense role off the bench. In his first significant action of the series, Beasley’s 13-point boost gave his coach exactly what he needed.

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During his pregame interview, Kidd waxed on how Giannis could “take the state of Wisconsin on a ride that will be enjoyable.” He’s right that Giannis could carry the Bucks by himself, but its promising team-wide efforts like this that you can hitch your wagon to.

The team that takes a 2-1 lead in a best-of-7 series, goes on to win 74 percent of the time. Just from the eye test, Milwaukee looks primed to follow that stat.