What a difference a month made for the Milwaukee Bucks.
Sunday’s 118-113 win in Brooklyn marked exactly one month since the Bucks’ last game in New York — a 116-94 loss to the Knicks in which Milwaukee’s lack of effort frustrated their superstar forward, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
“We didn’t compete,” Antetokounmpo said after that loss at Madison Square Garden. “Are we OK with not competing? I don’t know. I’m not OK with that s—.”
That Nov. 8 loss dropped the championship-hopeful Bucks’ record to 2-7, and they would lose their next game against Boston, too, to fall to 2-8.
But the Bucks have been red hot ever since.
With Sunday’s hard-fought victory over the Nets, the Bucks improved to 10-3 in their last 14 games and 12-11 overall.
“I think we’re just playing better,” Antetokounmpo said Sunday after leading the Bucks with 34 points on 14-of-22 shooting.
“We figured out ways to close games. I think starting the season, we just thought that teams were going to allow us to just come in here and win games, and that wasn’t that case. We have to play good basketball. We have to go out there and kind of demand respect.”
The Bucks’ slow start to the season included a 115-102 loss to the Nets in their first trip to Barclays Center on Oct. 27.
Sunday’s return started off similarly, with Milwaukee trailing at halftime and at one point facing a double-digit deficit in the third quarter. But the Bucks ended the game on a 14-5 run, with Antetokounmpo’s dunk with 1:09 remaining serving as the dagger.
“We’re a championship team,” said Bobby Portis, who was part of the Bucks roster that won the NBA Finals in 2021.
“We’re battle-tested. We’ve been through the highs and lows. Every year is different, right? In our regard this year, obviously getting off to a slow start, to the world’s eyes, it’s like, ‘Oh, the Bucks are dead,’ but for our eyes, we never got rattled. We were just like, ‘Take it a day at a time and it’ll turn around.’”
The Bucks’ turnaround included going 4-0 in the group-play round of the NBA Cup, setting up a single-elimination game against the Orlando Magic in Milwaukee on Tuesday for the right advance in the league’s in-season tournament.
The Bucks are now the No. 7 seed in the Eastern Conference — three spots behind the Knicks (14-9) and one ahead of the Nets (10-14).
Veteran forward Khris Middleton made his season debut Friday after undergoing offseason surgery on his ankles, then scored 11 points Sunday in Brooklyn.
Milwaukee gave the Nets multiple defensive looks, including an effective zone in the third quarter. Head coach Doc Rivers believes the Bucks’ defensive performance has improved “night and day” from the start of the season.
“We’ve just gotten better at it,” Rivers said before Sunday’s game. “We’ve made some changes since then as well to try to adapt to our team. And then offensively, the ball’s moving more, and honestly, guys are making shots. You can run your best offense, and if the ball doesn’t go in, it doesn’t go in. In a lot of cases, I thought, early on for whatever reason guys just didn’t make shots. They’re starting to.”
