Marquette In The NBA Playoffs: Milwaukee Bucks 118, Orlando Magic 104

I’ll be honest here: I missed the section of this game where it got super interesting in the fourth quarter.

I tuned in to watch when the game started, and got a pretty interesting first 15 minutes or so. Milwaukee built up a 10 point lead in the first quarter, but it was only five, 26-21, at the break. Orlando tied the game up at 28 and quickly again at 31 early in the second quarter. From there, the Bucks kicked it into gear, ripping off a 13-0 run capped by a triple from Eric Bledsoe to make it 44-31. The Magic clawed a little bit of that back, but Milwaukee made it a 17 point margin at the half.

That’s the point where I wandered off. I mean, it was halftime, I had other things I wanted to get done, I changed the channel but opened up my ESPN app on my phone to keep an eye on the score juuuuuuuuust in case.

I noticed that the Bucks had a 20 point lead in the third quarter and figured that things were well in hand. I saw that the lead was just 11 at the start of the fourth quarter, and that was interesting, but I was in the middle of something and didn’t turn it back on.

The next time I checked in, it was 104-93 with 5:50 to go, and I said, “Hey, this is interesting, let’s turn it back on.” I was almost immediately presented with Mike Breen and Jeff Van Gundy talking about how the Magic had cut the lead to a mere three points (!) earlier in the quarter! WOAH. Whatcha doin, Bucks?

Anyway, the rest of the game had very little drama as the lead never went back below 10 points, and so Milwaukee advances to the second round with a 4-1 series win over the Magic.

Five Magic players scored at least 13 points as they pushed the Bucks til the very end in this series. Milwaukee was led by 28 points from Giannis Antetokounmpo, who also added 17 rebounds and three assists. Five non-Giannis Bucks scored at least 10 points in this game and head coach Mike Budenholzer went 11 (!) deep on his roster in terms of guys who played at least 10 minutes.

OUR GUY~! Wesley Matthews was out there for 23 minutes, but had a bad day shooting the ball. He went just 1-for-9 from the field, including 1-for-7 from behind the arc. Matthews did have two rebounds, two assists, and a steal as well.

Up Next: Milwaukee advances to a second round series with Miami, which means we’ll get Matthews against Jimmy Butler and Jae Crowder. That series is set to start on Monday night with a 5:30pm tipoff on TNT.