Bucks give up a 4-point play in the final seconds, fall to the Pacers 115-114. SERENITY NOW!

I can say one thing for certain this morning: I do NOT have Bucks Lust.

Unbelievable finish last night. UN-BE-LIEV-ABLE. I’ll grant you, the Bucks probably didn’t deserve to win that game. Their defensive rotations on 3-point looks for the Pacers were terrible, they got WHOOPED on fast break points, etc. But despite all of their mistakes, they had a chance to steal the game! Gary Trent hits a big three in the corner to give them a 112-110 lead, the Pacers miss a free throw with 6 seconds left so you end up with a 112-111 lead with 6 seconds left. They have to foul Dame, Dame knocks down two free throws, and the Bucks have a 114-111 lead with 3.9 seconds left.

Then we get to the above sequence. You could maybe argue the Bucks should have fouled with a 3-point lead and never even let them get a three-point shot off, but that’s a little risky given it was a side-out inbound. If the Pacers would have had to go full court? Definitely foul them. But the likelihood is on a side-out inbound that the Pacer that catches it is shooting it immediately, thus if you foul you might give them three free throws to tie the game. But worst case, WORST CASE, in that scenario is that you give up a game-tying three.

Yet, somehow, the Bucks made it a double-worst case scenario by allowing them to get a look at a three AND fouling them for a go-ahead 4-point play. Unreal. And that foul call on Giannis was the correct call. You can maybe debate whether or not it should be called in that situation, but it was a foul. And apparently the Bucks weren’t even challenging the foul call when they went to review, they were challenging whether or not Haliburton stepped out of bounds on the shot. They lose that review, which cost them their last timeout, which meant they couldn’t advance the ball with 3 seconds left for a look at a game winner. So you end up with Giannis taking a 30-foot runner at the end and the Pacers win 115-114. Fun!

As we talked about on the podcast, when they got to 11 games over .500 last week it really felt like they might be building some momentum. Winners of 8 of their last 9, maybe an outside shot at the #3 seed with Jalen Brunson going down for the Knicks. Then you fall asleep at home in a loss to the Magic on Saturday, get stomped by the Cavs on Sunday, and have that happen last night. Just like that you’re in a 3-way (I believe the pronunciation is…) tie for 4th place with the Pacers and Pistons. The Bucks have the tiebreaker with both for the time being, but Saturday’s game at Fiserv with the Pacers is huge now. Win that and you win the season series with Indiana and at least have that tie-breaker in your back pocket. But week-to-week it’s hard to makes heads or tails of this team.

PS: Really sad news about Junior Bridgeman’s passing yesterday. It was before my time as a fan, but he was a key cog for the Bucks from the mid-70’s to the mid-80’s. Those 80’s Bucks teams won a LOT of division titles, but had the unfortunate distinction of playing in an era with the Dr. J Sixers and the Larry Bird Celtics. They just couldn’t get over that hump to reach the NBA Finals. But Bridgeman’s #2 is retired for his contributions to those teams, and then he became a legend as a businessman and entrepreneur in his second life. He owned a ton of Wendy’s franchises and became a billionaire, who just bought a decent stake (10%) in the Bucks last fall.