Hack-A-Buck Out in Full Force Tuesday Night as Milwaukee Snaps Four Game Losing Streak
| 6
|
by Ryan Koski
The Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Orlando Magic 100-86 Tuesday night at the Bradley Center. The victory was the first in five games for the Bucks after they returned from a brutal 1-4 west coast swing.
The Bucks led from the get-go, leading by 17 points with 50 seconds left in the first half before allow the Magic to score the final four points of the second quarter and the first eight points of the third quarter, cutting the Bucks led to only five points. The Bucks answered with their own nine point run later on in the quarter, eventually stretching the lead to 71-57 with 2:01 seconds left in the third. That's when it got interesting.
And extremely boring.
Magic coach Stan Van Gundy ordered his team to intentional foul Bucks Center Dan Gadzuric off the ball for four straight times that the Bucks got the ball, using Forward James Augustine for three of the fouls and Guard Keyon Dooling for the fourth foul on the 50% free throw shooting Gadzuric. Gadzuric shot his average, making 4 of the 8 free throws, but the true story was the complete lack of intergity by Van Gundy to resort to Hack-A-Dutchman with the game still in the third quarter.
Now maybe I wouldn't have such a problem with this if the game was played in Orlando, but Milwaukee Bucks fans that attended the game certainly did not pay high ticket prices to watch possibly the worst free throw shooter in the league obtain failure by bringing a somewhat exciting game to a complete halt.
Meanwhile, Michael Redd played perhaps one of the finest games of his career, finishing one assist shy of a triple double with 27 points, ten boards, and nine dimes. Helping Redd, was Yi Jianlian who scored 18 points and grabbed seven rebounds. Yi started especially strong with ten points in the first quarter and has still shown the ability to hit the mid-range shot. The easiest comparision for Yi is often Dirk Nowitzki and rightfully so as Yi has such a smooth stroke on his shot, much like Dirk, with the height to shoot over anyone, again like Dirk. The difference is that Dirk wasn't doing as good as Yi when he was a rookie (8.2 ppg and 3.4 rpg compared to Yi's 9.8 ppg and 5.5 rpg). Yi still has to work on his upper body strength but has been taking it to the hole harder recently and is nearly averaging a block shot per game.
The Magic were able to pull close again in the fourth quarter, coming within two points of the lead at 73-75 but Milwaukee quickly stretched the lead to eight and lead for the rest of the way as the Magic began to intentionally foul the Bucks again with 1:19 left in the game and continued even though the Bucks put the game away from the charity stripe. Almost as ridiculous as hacking Gadzuric in the third quarter was Van Gundy still instructing his to team to foul Mo Williams with only nine seconds left and the Bucks up by 12, instead of just letting the Bucks run the clock out. By unofficial count, the Magic committed nine intentional fouls during the game.
