Yes, the Golden State Warriors’ regular season winning streak — the second-longest in NBA history at 28 games — ended on Saturday night because of the accumulated attrition which is part of the 82-game NBA deathmarch.
The streak ended because Harrison Barnes was injured, and because Klay Thompson’s injury created a domino effect which caught up with the Warriors. Thompson being out in Boston made that game harder, hard enough that Golden State needed two overtimes on the front end of a multi-time-zone back-to-back. When Thompson returned to the lineup on Saturday in Milwaukee, he wasn’t sharp, a perfectly natural consequence of the interruption to his week.
The streak ended because of the schedule maker. Golden State will play just three games in the next week and a half, but the schedule simply had to create a back-to-back at the end of a week in which Golden State’s previous game was on Tuesday in Indianapolis against the Pacers. The Warriors’ next game isn’t until Wednesday, meaning that in a seven-day period from Dec. 9 through Dec. 15, Golden State will wind up playing just two games. That they were back-to-back certainly mattered.
Yet, for all of those acknowledgments — the injuries, Klay Thompson’s rust, the back-to-back, the double-overtime game in Boston on Friday, the works — one thing remained on Saturday night in the Bradley Center:
Milwaukee needed to play well… and the Bucks did.
This is the same Milwaukee team which entered Saturday’s game with a very disappointing 9-15 record. It’s a team which has not been the same since Brandon Knight was shipped to Phoenix last February. It’s a team which is learning how hard it is to make a steady, season-by-season climb in the NBA without the arrival of a top-tier star.
The Bucks weren’t just bad in a season-long context, either. They were really bad in the first half of their loss in Toronto on Friday night against the Raptors. Milwaukee scored just 31 points en route to a 90-83 loss. The Warriors might have been exhausted, but the Bucks weren’t going to beat the reigning champions if they failed to hit 90 points. This team needed a wake-up call. What’s also worth pointing out is that Milwaukee played a multi-time-zone back-to-back just as Golden State did. It’s not as though the Bucks entered this game with two days of rest. (They didn’t play a double-overtime game on Friday, but still, they weren’t exactly coasting into this contest.)
Consider this as well: The Boston team which lost to Golden State on Friday night in two overtimes was able to march into Charlotte on Saturday night and shut down the Hornets’ offense, pulling out a 98-93 win. If the Celtics could do that against one of the hottest teams in the NBA — on the road — the Warriors, limited though they were, could have pushed through and cleared what was likely to be their final big hurdle en route to a perfect record heading into Christmas Day against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The NBA wanted that scenario so badly. Plenty of fans did as well.
Yet, Milwaukee had to do something of consequence in order to shatter the dream.
As much as the peripheral reasons certainly mattered, Milwaukee’s performance mattered most of all.
The Bucks halted this special streak by the Warriors.
The Bucks stopped it here.
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Giannis Antetokounmpo picked quite the night to register his first triple-double in the NBA: 11 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists.
Greg Monroe picked quite the night to score 28 points on 11-of-16 shooting and play the way the organization expected him to play after picking him up from Detroit.
Michael Carter-Williams served up more turnovers (3) than points (2) in the Toronto loss on Friday. In this game against Golden State, he went 7-of-10 from the field for 17 points… and that represented but a small fraction of his influence on this game. Carter-Williams collected 5 steals and handed out 5 assists in 30 minutes, all while committing only one turnover. A floor game that flawless lent structure and depth to Milwaukee’s attack, and a spent Golden State team wasn’t able to get enough answers from Luke Walton’s odd attrition-influenced lineup combinations.
Milwaukee played its best game of the season, providing the kind of moment which could become the spark which ignites this team and gets the Bucks to play to their potential.
Golden State lost for many reasons on Saturday — this much is certainly true — but the Milwaukee Bucks, the organization which also snapped the 33-game winning streak of the 1971-1972 Los Angeles Lakers, deserve to occupy the top spot.
Jason Kidd’s team entered Saturday’s game with a basket of advantages most teams won’t have against the Warriors this season. There’s nothing wrong with pointing that out.
Yet, merely having advantages doesn’t give you anything in sports. You need to capitalize on that advantage.
Milwaukee did just that, and now Golden State will have to settle for 24-1.
The NBA will have to settle for LeBron versus Stephen Curry on Christmas, without the presence of a streak. Somehow, we’ll all live with that.
Our lives have certainly been made brighter as a result of what the Warriors have accomplished over these past six and a half weeks.
