Lowry bounces back, Raptors edge Bucks to even series at 1-1

“It’s something now that we’re not unfamiliar with, being at this point”. Khris Middleton added 20 points, Greg Monroe had 18 and Tony Snell scored 14.

Casey said it’s not just Lowry he needs to be more aggressive and forceful in everything he does in the game.

The Raptors took a one-point lead into the fourth quarter before reeling off 11 straight points to go up by 12.

The worst that the Bucks can do is return home with a split of the first two games. When asked by the Canadian Press to elaborate, he simply said: “We’ll see”. Toronto finished 5 for 23 from long range, with the starting five going 1 for 13. “We have to stay together, stay focused”.

As you can expect, Toronto played much harder than in Game 1 early, the ball going to Jonas Valanciunas, who scored on his first touch.

Immediately after saying that he was not going to bed thinking about Dellavedova on Monday, Raptors coach Dwane Casey said that the Bucks guard set 18 screens, some of which perhaps did not meet the criteria for National Basketball Association legality. You look at Malcolm, we say he doesn’t play like a rookie. “They did a good job”. Then as DeRozan fell away to the right of the basket, the Milwaukee Buck known as the “Greek Freak” celebrated to the left. Somehow, some way, Lowry, the Raptors most important player, has to get back to setting the tone for his team with his scoring and his playmaking.

The Bucks used a big second half to get past the Raptors on Saturday.

“I don’t know if we played hard enough to deserve a chance to win”, Casey said.

“Put it this way: I guess I’m going to have to force shots”, he said. Of course, they couldn’t have come close to doing so without Giannis.

The Raptors shot 36 percent from the field and the Bucks shot 44.7 percent.

DeMar DeRozan enjoyed some high degree of difficulty makes, though he missed a few easy ones too. “We have to understand that we can’t let that affect us getting back in transition”. That was passion. He took up for all of us.

The game came down to the final two minutes, where the teams were tied at 100 apiece after a clutch Giannis three-pointer.

NEED TO KNOW: Celtics point guard Isaiah Thomas is preparing to play Game 2 before flying out Tacoma, Washington to be with his family to finalize funeral arranges for his younger sister. You just want to make it as tough as possible on them and I thought Thon (Maker) did that in the second half.

This five-second clip succinctly sums up why Lowry only managed 11 shot attempts in Game 1. Toronto took a 55-52 lead into halftime.

Raptors: Ibaka started despite a sore left ankle sustained when he stepped on Antetokounmpo’s foot in the third quarter of Game 1. “We just can’t panic every time a guy has a rough night”.

“The way they set screens, if you go under a screen internationally, the big man is going to roll you down in to the paint, so you really can’t go under any screens”, he told the Journal Sentinel. The Raptors were the best fourth-quarter team in the National Basketball Association this season, outscoring their opponents by 13.2 net points per 100 possessions, with their five-man unit of Lowry, DeRozan, Valanciunas, DeMarre Carroll and Patrick Patterson producing a net rating of plus-26.6 in the final 12 minutes of regulation.

Antetokounmpo led the Bucks in points, rebounds, steals and assists. In Saturday’s game, Middleton had 10 points with nine assists.

Antetokounmpo would still have an impact on the game – 24 points, 15 boards and seven assists - but gone for the most part were the soul-crushing one-step dunks that littered the first game and sucked the life out of the Raptors.