Written by J.A. Adande at ESPN.com
If the Milwaukee Bucks haven’t turned the Eastern Conference completely upside down (you could say the Bulls are handling that with the Celtics), they’re at least resetting the order. On Thursday night, it wasn’t just the dark jerseys — normally the sign of a higher seed on the road in a Game 3 — that seemed out of place, it was their utter domination of the more experienced, more accomplished Toronto Raptors. It was a 104-77 beatdown so convincing, it left you wondering how the Raptors managed to win one game so far in this series and doubting if they can get another.
How best to summarize it?
Kyle Lowry had plenty of time to think about it, sitting back while teammate DeMar DeRozan answered the first two questions at the postgame news conference, before Lowry was finally asked to share his thoughts.
Lowry leaned forward and said: “We got our ass busted.”
The Busting Bucks are in accelerated growth mode, maturing ahead of schedule and at the exact wrong time for the Raptors.
The lineup the sixth-seeded Bucks sent out for the opening tip had started a total of 18 playoff games in their careers before Thursday night. The Raptors who returned from last season’s squad each played 20 games in the 2016 playoffs alone. It made no difference. The young Bucks took control immediately and led 32-12 after one quarter.
What drags down Milwaukee’s experience curve is the presence of two rookies, Malcolm Brogdon and Thon Maker. Well, the worst thing you could say about them in Game 3 was they had the lowest plus/minus of the starters, at plus-10 and plus-13 respectively. And the only indication of the Bucks’ youth in this series is that they drew back the curtain just enough to let some light shine on the Raptors in Game 2, a game Milwaukee realistically could have won to put it in position to sweep.
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