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Bucks crush Raptors in dominant performance

Giannis Antetokounmpo has had a phenomenal start to the season. (Keith Allison / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)
Roar Rookie
22nd April, 2017
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The Milwaukee Bucks have announced themselves as playoff ready in a 104-77 win over the Toronto Raptors at Milwaukee’s BMO Harris Bradley Centre in front of their 18,717 rapid fans.

The Bucks raced out of the gates early to set up a 32-12 point first quarter lead to open the game in which their youthful energy and suffocating defence was on display. Bucks starter Khris Middleton was the go to man early on, scoring 11 of his 20 points in the first quarter.

Toronto seemed to buy into Milwaukee’s ‘Fear the Deer’ slogan putting forth a disastrous performance which their All Stars DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry seemed to never really click into gear. DeRozan had eight points and two rebounds in a forgettable performance along with Lowry adding a further 13 points to the teams tally.

“It just sucks right now. It’s a terrible night right now. It’s a terrible feeling the way we just got our ass beat” Lowry said

Lowry will need to look back at what worked in game two for the Raptors which saw him score 22 points after a quiet game one in which he had four points.

One of the worrying signs for Raptors coach Dwane Casey is that Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t need to have a big game to provide such a beatdown on his team, with Antetokounmpo adding 19 points. Most of the Bucks success came from their trapping defence which stymied any type of runs from his team.

“It starts with us, myself as a coach, as far as having them ready to play in a hostile environment,” Casey said. “They ambushed us, and there’s no aspect of our game that we executed whatsoever.”

Raptors have until April 23rd to figure out how to stop a possible 3-1 series ledger, which will be hard to return from with the young Bucks team ready to show the world what they can do.

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“We’ll make changes. We made changes going into the second half, but whoever goes in has to go in and make a difference, and we didn’t,” Casey said.

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