The Bucks Rode A Big Third Quarter To An NBA Cup Win They Definitely Care About

The hottest NBA action on Tuesday night was in Las Vegas, as the second Airline NBA Cup Championship Final Where They Award A Trophy pit the Milwaukee Bucks against the Oklahoma City Thunder at the Cell Phone Arena Earmarked For A Future NBA Team, Probably. Granted, it was the only NBA action on Tuesday night, thanks to the league's ongoing effort to make its in-season tournament seem important. Still, though, a game between the two hottest teams in the NBA is usually worth the price of listening to Richard Jefferson speak for a couple of hours.

For a half, it looked good. Well, not good; both teams were a bit sloppy, and the Thunder shot six (!) percent from three in the opening 24 minutes, but it was at least close. Isaiah Hartenstein, a new and key addition to Oklahoma City, had 14 points and seven boards, feasting in the paint as the Bucks simply chose to never guard him all that closely. Jalen Williams, getting the full red-carpet treatment from the announcing team (and rightfully so; he really should be an All-Star this season), chipped in 11 points of his own to help offset the atrocious Thunder shooting. On the other end, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard did what stars should do in ostensibly important games, combining for 26 points on 9-of-15 shooting (Antetokounmpo took zero threes, something that will come up in the second half). The Bucks entered the break with a one-point lead, and though it wasn't the prettiest basketball, it was a bit closer and more exciting than last year's Lakers-Pacers final; the Lakers took a five-point lead into the half before winning by 14.

As was the case in last year's NBA Cup final, any potential excitement in this one fizzled pretty quickly on the other side of halftime. Though the Thunder upped their atrocious three-point shooting to merely bad, going 2-of-7 in the third, that was about the only positive the Western Conference's best team could take from the quarter. The Bucks held OKC to just 14 points, the Thunder's lowest-scoring period all season, and dropped in 26 of their own to open up a comfortable lead. The defense stepped up, notching six steals, and the Bucks also wrangled five offensive rebounds, but this was just about what you would expect from a December game where one team comes out a bit more motivated from halftime.

The fourth quarter was when the Bucks really put their dominant stamp on this game to clinch the prestigious Airline NBA Cup trophy. While the Thunder continued to find new ways to underperform their usual shooting percentages, the Bucks only got better, hitting 6-of-11 threes in the final period, building a 20-point lead just two-and-a-half minutes into the fourth. Gary Trent hit two back-breaking threes, Brook "Splash Mountain, I guess" Lopez hit two others, and the game was over with plenty of time for both teams to begin planning for their NBA Cup off-season, also known as the rest of the regular season.

The presence of Antetokounmpo (who didn't once attempt a shot from behind the arc) wouldn't lead you to expect that kind of three-point barrage from the Bucks, and yet that's who they are. For the season, they shoot 38.9 percent from deep (third best in the league), making 14.3 attempts per game. So while making 17 on 42.5 percent shooting is a bit over their usual mark, it's not that much of an outlier for a team that has turned its season around after a rough start in part due to its accuracy from distance.

It's hard to get too excited about the goofy in-season tournament, but damn if the Bucks didn't try after the final buzzer cemented their 97-81 victory. To their credit, given the aforementioned rough start, winning the NBA Cup puts a nice punctuation mark on the first half of the season, and the players do get a bonus of around $500,000 for winning, which is no chump change. But the team didn't even celebrate as hard as last year's Lakers squad. Part of that is because Doc Rivers apparently talked to assistant coach Darvin Ham, who won the tournament as Lakers head coach last year, about the thrill that comes from winning the NBA Cup. The fact that the resulting conclusion was to not celebrate too hard says more about the value of the NBA Cup than any potential snark I could muster.

Feel the excitement in that photo!

Antetokounmpo tried his best afterward to hype the moment up, wrapping up his post-game conference with, "Oh man, what a feeling. What a great feeling. I'll see you guys again, I promise." He probably will see those reporters again, once the real tournament of the playoffs comes around, but for now it's right back to what Rivers called "the grind" of the regular season. (Antetokounmpo at least had a better reason for not drinking champagne, saying that the last time he drank some, after the Bucks' 2021 title, he got a full body cramp.) But a win is a win, and though the Bucks robbed the final of any excitement by simply not forgetting how to shoot the ball, unlike the Thunder, the team will surely try to ride this momentum into the dog days of the holiday season.

At the very least, the Bucks will play another important game soon, on their visit Cleveland on Friday. The main thing that game has in common with the NBA Cup final is that the Bucks won't celebrate either with champagne. On the other hand, the game against the Cavs, the best team in the league right now, does actually have some significance for the rest of the Bucks' season.