The Milwaukee Bucks won a nail-biter against the Indiana Pacers in overtime! Tyler Herro led the Bucks with 25 points on 10/16 shooting (5/7 from deep), while Pascal Siakam dazzled for the Pacers with 24 on 8/10 shooting in less than 20 minutes. It was Kasparas Jakucionis, though, who stole the show late and basically won the game for Milwaukee.
NBA.com Box Score
Game Recap
Milwaukee kept “pace” with Indiana early, able to run good offence, generate good shots, and thus keep the home team out of transition. However,
after the Bucks built a 10-5 lead, they gave up an 11-0 run, mostly at the hands of Andrew Nembhard. A scuffle between Ryan Rollins and Tyrese Haliburton soon followed; Haliburton took offence at the way Rollins attacked an offensive rebound. Make no mistake: Giannis or no Giannis, these teams still do not like each other. After their cold spell, the visitors responded with their own 11-0 run to go up 21-16 with four minutes to play; Brayden Burries was instrumental, scoring a quick five points off the pine. Unfortunately, the Pacers answered with a shutout to close the period, capitalising on missed shots and turnovers—primarily from Kevin Porter Jr.—to run out the first on a 13-0 run to go up 29-21.
Pascal Siakam sparked the Pacers to open the second with a quick nine points, extending Indy’s run to 22-3 and forcing Taylor Jenkins to burn an early timeout—Bucks down big, 40-24. Milwaukee answered out of the break with an encouraging 8-2 spurt—headed by threes from Kel’el Ware and Kyle Kuzma—but their inroads were quickly erased by more Siakam buckets, who was unconscious for the entire period. Tyler Herro stepped up later in the quarter to keep the margin from blowing out past ~16, working intuitively in the pick-and-roll to find his spots. Ultimately, the Bucks did well to keep the margin from blowing out to close the half, considering the absolute heater Siakam was on. At quarter time, the Pacers starting forward had 2 points, and at half time, he had 24 on 5/7 from three. Tough. Bucks down 71-56 at half.
Indy rested their entire starting group for the second half, and the Bucks did not. Herro got the motor back up and running out of the half with five quick points, and a Kuzma spinning hook forced an early Pacers timeout. The contrast between how Herro scored on the Pacers’ first unit and their second was stark: he dropped his 19th and 20th points on a fastbreak layup after reading an errant pass, cutting the deficit to 11. From there, Milwaukee’s starters were done. After a few Pacers buckets to stem the tide, the Bucks went on an 11-0 run to cut the lead to five, 89-84, with under three minutes left in the third. Their defence remained steady to close it out, and a KPJ stampede to the rim on the buzzer had the visitors down by a single posession, 93-90, after three.
Both teams started the final stanza cold, but a Burries floater, followed by threes from Green and Porter, gave the Bucks their first lead since early in the first. Bogoljub Markovic came in and made an impact with a strong offensive rebound and finish; unfortunately, that goodwill was undone a few possessions later when the rook was late on help, and Kobe Brown posterised him—Bucks up just one, 105-104, with five to play. Both teams got in their own way for the next few minutes, failing to score; however, the deadlock was broken by a breakdown in transition D for the Pacers (off a dead ball!), which allowed Ware to smash home a thunderous dunk, followed by a triple from Cormac Ryan. The Pacers weren’t done, though, and responded with a 9-0 outburst—led by a pair of Braden Smith-Keba Keita alley-oops—to take the lead in short order. Former Pacer Kam Jones, though, nailed a clutch fading three deep in the left corner to tie it at 113 with just over a minute to go. The Pacers built a small lead on free throws, but a crazy sequence followed—including multiple missed Bucks free throws and multiple offensive rebounds—that allowed the Bucks tie it at 117 with a Ware slam and send the game to OT.
After some deer-in-the-headlights possessions to close out the fourth, Markovic sparked the Bucks early in OT, scoring the opening five points of the extra period. Kobe Brown answered with four straight points, followed by a Braden Smith floater, and the Pacers wrenched the lead back, up 123-122 with two minutes left. However, Kasparas Jakucionis—who didn’t get on the floor until late but was huge as a rebounder in his minutes—made three straight heady plays down the stretch to help the Bucks grab and hold the lead until the final buzzer. Milwaukee wins a nail-biter to close out the preseason.
Stat That Stood Out
Milwaukee got 26 second-chance points, while the Pacers got just 12. Much of this was due to the Bucks grabbing 19 offensive rebounds, which has clearly been a key focus in the preseason.
Obscene Overreaction
It was a crime that Kasparas Jakucionis came into the game so late. Jakucionis was stellar in his minutes, generating extra possessions and high-quality shots. The kid needs to play.
