LOS ANGELES – The Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers demonstrated why they are Eastern Conference contenders after posting blowout National Basketball Association (NBA) wins on Dec 16.
Damian Lillard scored 33 points, Bobby Portis added 31 off the bench and Giannis Antetokounmpo chipped in 22, as Milwaukee handed the hapless Detroit Pistons their 23rd straight defeat with the 146-114 victory despite the absence of Khris Middleton and Malik Beasley.
The Sixers, meanwhile, trounced the Charlotte Hornets 135-82, fuelled by 42 points and 15 rebounds from Joel Embiid, as the two East challengers moved to 18-7, just behind the leading Boston Celtics (19-5).
The Bucks outscored the Pistons 43-20 in the first quarter, and Detroit did not manage to get the deficit below 18 points the rest of the way.
“I thought our entire team had the right approach coming into this game, taking care of business early,” Bucks coach Adrian Griffin said after watching his team put up 81 points in the first half.
“As you can never judge a team on their record, I think they’ve got a lot of talent on that (Detroit) team.
“And I thought our leaders were leaders tonight. There was no messing around. I thought that in the locker room, there was a seriousness before the game.”
Despite Griffin’s warning about Detroit (2-24), Portis felt that the Bucks were simply superior.
He said: “Sometimes those games can be trap games where like, I don’t like to say it, but you kind of just play down to the level of who you’re playing.
“You kind of take your foot off the gas and kind of relax and let them hang around the whole game, and in the fourth quarter it’s a tight game and you try to turn it on.
“But I like how we kind of started from the jump, jumped on them early and kind of controlled the game throughout.”
Cade Cunningham scored 25 points and Bojan Bogdanovic added 24 for Detroit, but the misery continued for a team on a franchise-record losing run.
“We can’t afford to start games without the grit and toughness that we display at times,” their coach Monty Williams said. “We just haven’t been consistent with it.”
Detroit are now closing in on the longest single-season losing streak in league history of 26 – a mark shared by the 2010-11 Cleveland Cavaliers and the 2013-14 Sixers.
The current Philadelphia side’s 53-point victory was the largest winning margin in the league this season, topping Boston’s 51-point win over Indiana in November.
It was also the heaviest defeat in Hornets history, surpassing a 50-point loss to Milwaukee in 2000.
Embiid notched his 10th straight game with 30 points and 10 rebounds, despite sitting out the entire fourth quarter along with the rest of the Sixers starters.
Tyrese Maxey added 21 points for Philadelphia, who earned a sixth straight win.
Embiid said that he was motivated to make a point when a foul call at the start of the game did not go his way.
“I was going to be aggressive anyway, but the fact that I didn’t get (the call), I felt that I had to go harder and be more aggressive,” the Cameroonian centre said.
The Hornets (7-17), who were without starters LaMelo Ball, Gordon Hayward and Mark Williams, saw Terry Rozier exit in the third period after taking an elbow to the face.
“I mean the overall story of the game would be more about guys who didn’t play, than the guys that did,” Hornets coach Steve Clifford said. AFP
