(Basketball news) The Milwaukee Bucks beat the New Orleans Pelicans 130-115. For the Bucks, Antetokounmpo scored 50 points while playing only 30 minutes, he shot 20 of 26 from the floor including 3 of 4 from 3-point range and 7 of 12 from the foul line as Jrue Holiday scored 17 and Brook Lopez added 15 points. For the Pelicans, Jose Alvarado stepped up to lead the scoring with 18 points, while Trey Murphy III and Jonas Valanciunas had 16 points each. This marked the 10th time this season that Antetokounmpo has scored at least 40 points, matching the career high he set last year for 40-point games in a single season as his 50 points were five off the career high he set Jan. 4 With this result the Bucks moved upto 3rd in the Eastern Conference standings with a record of 33-17.
”They might say, `Daddy, you’re boring. You’re lame. We don’t want to see your highlights. We’ve heard so much about you. We want to watch Scooby-Doo’ or whatever the case might be,” Antetokounmpo said. ”I’m just going to keep creating the way people in the past created, the way I can go back and watch Magic Johnson highlights, Kevin Garnett highlights, Kobe Bryant highlights, Allen Iverson highlights, KD’s, LeBron’s. They’ve created so much art throughout the years, and we can go back and see it and admire what they did. Tim Duncan.”
”I thought our effort was there,” Pelicans coach Willie Green. ”I thought we fought. It just wasn’t enough tonight.”
”He made it look easy all night long,” Bucks forward Khris Middleton said. ”He’s playing efficient. He’s playing dominant. He’s playing unstoppable. He’s playing like the MVP again. We need that from him every night, and he knows that.”
The Charlotte Hornets produced a clinical performance as they shocked the Miami Heats 122-117. For the Hornets, Terry Rozier scored 31 points and also had seven assists and six rebounds, he was 11 for 19 from the field, including a 5-for-11 performance from 3-point range as he made two buzzer-beater 3s at the end of quarters. P.J. Washington had 27 points while LaMelo Ball scored 13 of his 19 points in the fourth quarter. For the Heat, Jimmy Butler scored 28 points and Tyler Herro had 24 points as Adebayo scored 17 points, but he only had four rebounds. With this result the Heat fell back to 6th in the Eastern Conference standings with a record of 28-23.
‘Everybody is back and everybody is healthy – and that is a major difference,” Washington said. ”At the end of the day we have to keep going the way we are right now.”
”Getting ‘Melo and Gordon back, obviously you’re a different team,” Clifford said. ”If we can get into playing set groups then we’ll have a good chance to hopefully put some good stretches together. (It helps) when they know who they’re playing with and they know where the shots are coming from.”
”They have had a lot of injuries but when they have been fully healthy, this team can score much different than their numbers may suggest for the season,” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said. ”We did not step up defensively, they got a lot of easy run-ups that quickly changed the momentum of the game.”
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