Playing without Victor Wembanyama due to ankle soreness, the San Antonio Spurs ended up losing to the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night by a final score of 132-119. The Spurs are now 4-22, while the Bucks are 20-7 San Antonio scored the first basket of the game. Sadly, the good times were short-lived. Milwaukee responded with a 21-1 run to take control of the game. From then on, the Spurs were able to rally a few times to trim the deficit to single-digits. However, the Bucks were always able to turn up the intensity a little bit and San Antonio’s run would be thwarted. While the final score looks respectable, Milwaukee was never truly in danger of losing the game after their early run.
It was an inefficient night on the offensive end for Vassell. His main problem against the Bucks was that he wasn’t playing within the offense. Instead, he missed open teammates to hunt his own shots. Vassell’s poor passing hurt the team and he also wasn’t playing much defense on the other end. It wasn’t his fault the Spurs lost but he has to play a smarter brand of basketball for San Antonio to have success.
Johnson deserves a round of applause for how he performed in Milwaukee. He basically willed the Spurs back into the game by brute force. Rather than firing contested three-pointers, Johnson muscled his way to the rim and refused to be denied. The result was a team-high 28 points on 9-for-13 shooting from the field and 10-of-12 shooting from the free throw line. Johnson turned it over too much (5) and his defense was nothing to write home about but without his stubbornness to excel on offense, the Spurs would have been blown out of the water.
