The Milwaukee Bucks will be seeking to improve their playoff positioning when they tip off a five-game road trip Tuesday night in San Francisco against the Golden State Warriors.
The Bucks (38-29) will take the court for the trip opener tied with the Indiana Pacers for fourth place in the Eastern Conference, the last spot that earns home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
Coming off a 121-105 home loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday after beating the Los Angeles Lakers and Pacers, Milwaukee sits five games behind the third-place New York Knicks but just a game ahead of the sixth-place Detroit Pistons.
If there was a message delivered by coach Doc Rivers on the flight from Milwaukee to San Francisco, it’s that every game matters from here on out.
“There’s games that you have in a year that one team understands the bigness of the game and the other team doesn’t,” Rivers said after the loss to the Thunder. “We could talk about all this other stuff. I think that was the difference. You can feel (it); you can see it.”
The Bucks also will see the Lakers, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets — all Western playoff contenders — on their nine-day trip.
The Warriors, one night after getting steamrolled by the Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon, will have to deal with a surging Giannis Antetokounmpo, who had a triple-double against Oklahoma City (21 points, 12 rebounds, 10 assists).
The perennial MVP candidate has scored 30 or more points in four of his past seven games and has pulled down double-digit rebounds 10 times in his past 12 games. He had another triple-double March 4 at Atlanta.
Antetokounmpo sat out with a strained calf when the Warriors won 125-111 at Milwaukee in February. He has averaged 29.4 points in his past five games against Golden State.
The Monday loss was a costly one for the Warriors (39-29), who had a chance to go a game up on Minnesota in their duel for sixth place in the West. The Timberwolves had lost earlier in the night to the Pacers.
Despite burning Stephen Curry for 36 minutes and Jimmy Butler III and Draymond Green for 33 apiece against the Nuggets, Golden State coach Steve Kerr noted there is far too much at stake at this late stage of the season to be resting anyone.
“We’ve been able to keep them 35 minutes max for the most part,” Kerr said of his three primary 30-somethings. “I think the minutes are fine; we’re playing 10 people. I’m not worried about that. We have to get into the playoffs. We can’t worry about a couple of minutes here and there. We don’t have that luxury.”
Butler, who began his career as a Bucks rival while with the Chicago Bulls, contributed 20 points, nine rebounds, six assists and four steals to the win at Milwaukee last month in just his second game with Golden State.
Butler put up 23 points on Monday against Denver, the first time he led the team in scoring through 16 games in a Warriors uniform.
–Field Level Media
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