It will be the Milwaukee Bucks against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Cup championship game.
The top seeds from the East and West both enjoyed semifinal wins on Saturday, with Giannis Antetokounmpo leading the Bucks to a win over the Atlanta Hawks and the Thunder outlasting the Houston Rockets in a clash of defensive-minded squads.
The championship is scheduled for Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET in Las Vegas, with a prize pool of more than $500,000 per player up for grabs. The game will not count for regular season standings or stats.
The No. 1 NBA team in defensive rating is the Thunder. The No. 2 NBA team in defensive rating is the Rockets.
They certainly looked the part at T-Mobile Arena. It wasn’t pretty at times, but the Thunder will take it after outlasting Houston in a 111-96 win.
The first half was slow in particular, which ended with the Rockets up 42-41 and both teams shooting below 33% from the field. It was OKC that woke up first, taking a double-digit lead early in the fourth quarter and eventually expanding it to 15 points.
The defensive intensity didn’t stop Shai Gilegous-Alexander from hitting 32 points, his 13th 30-point game of the season, plus eight rebounds, six assists and five steals.
Isaiah Hartenstein, Lu Dort and Jalen Williams also contributed at least 19 points each, with Hartenstein getting the better of Rockets standout big man Alperen Şengün (13 points on 6-of-16 shooting, four turnovers, five fouls).
Antetokounmpo finished just shy of a triple-double with 32 points, 14 rebounds and nine assists in the win. He shot 10-of-15 from the field, too. Damian Lillard wasn’t far behind with 25 points, seven assists and six rebounds, though he went just 5-of-14 from behind the arc.
Trae Young did everything possible to keep the Hawks in it in the third quarter after a tight opening half in Las Vegas. He shot 6-of-7 from the field in the period and put the Hawks in the lead entering the final period.
Finally, though, Antetokounmpo and the Bucks surged ahead down the stretch. They mounted a quick 7-1 run late in the fourth quarter, powered by three short buckets from Antetokounmpo, to finally separate from the Hawks. Antetokounmpo sealed the deal in the final minutes, too, with a wild block on Clint Capela at the rim to break up an alley-oop.
Young led the Hawks with a near-triple-double of his own. He finished with 35 points, 10 assists and seven rebounds for Atlanta, which dropped to 14-13 on the season with the loss. Jalen Johnson finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds, and De’Andre Hunter added 15 points and seven rebounds off the bench.
Milwaukee Bucks vs. Oklahoma City Thunder
Time: 8:30 p.m. ET
Channel: ABC
Here’s how it all went down at Yahoo Sports:
LIVE COVERAGE IS OVER55 updates
Among concerns the league has a competition problem, the veteran coach made his stance known after the Bucks advanced past the Hawks to the NBA Cup final: “There’s nothing wrong with saying you want to win something.”
District Attorney-elect Kent Lovern has made it a priority to listen to residents on the North and South sides of Milwaukee.
“What I have heard loudly and clearly is everyone wants to feel safe, and everyone wants that safety in their daily lives, and they want that for their children,” Lovern said.
At a ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 16, Lovern will be publicly recognized in his new role. With nearly 30 years of experience as a prosecutor, he’s recognized for his collaborative approach to systemic issues.
Lovern focuses on collaborations outside his office, in part, because he believes these collaborations are necessary to sustainably reduce violence and increase public safety in Milwaukee.
“I just feel like we need to better connect into one another and develop our own system of public safety – one that is really framed up as community development, economic development, educational development and the public safety comes with that,” he said.
Among Milwaukee’s large network of criminal justice advocates, many say they feel heard by Lovern.
“Kent has always been thoughtful and responsive to me,” said Emilio De Torre, executive director of Milwaukee Turners, which advocates for various criminal justice initiatives as well as those impacted by the criminal justice system.
“We can’t unring the bell of a crime, right? If somebody commits a crime, like myself, they need to be prosecuted,” said Adam Procell, who coordinates the monthly resource fair Home to Stay, for formerly incarcerated individuals reentering society. “But after that time period, when somebody gets out, he (Lovern) also understands that if we don’t provide the person with an opportunity to lead an optimal lifestyle, they’re going to have to prosecute them again for another crime.”
For Lovern, people reentering have a unique ability to lead others away from crime.
“People returning back to communities, looking to be proactive members of their community, looking for ways to help mentor young people and help instruct young people about the pitfalls and the mistakes they made – that’s a very powerful group,” he said.
Milwaukee County has the largest population of people on parole, probation or extended supervision in the state. At the end of October, nearly 13,000 people were under supervision, state correctional data show.
“On the whole, I have heard more interest in reentry across the board … than I have heard at any time in my career,” Lovern said.
Lovern’s support of reentry is consistent with an overall preventive approach to crime.
He cites the relationship between drug addiction and crime as a good example.
“We’ve had a strong approach to this for some time, because right after John (Chisholm) was elected, 18 years ago, we created an early intervention unit, and that was immediately designed to offer opportunities for people to work through a criminal charge…and we’ve seen a lot of success with that.”
WISDOM, a statewide faith-based organization, wants Lovern to expand on this philosophy.
“There’s a lot of room for certainly expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration for people living with mental illness and with addiction issues, and there are many opportunities to divert more people from the system. I’m definitely optimistic that those types of programs will continue and will expand,” said Mark Rice, coordinator of WISDOM’s Wisconsin Transformational Justice Campaign.
Lovern is proud of Milwaukee’s mental health courts, which address cases involving mental health concerns, including assessments of competence and insanity pleas.
An intermediate goal the DA’s office is close to achieving, he said, is increasing the number of cases handled in these courts to 30 cases on an ongoing basis, compared to 10 cases previously.
“Somebody might come first through the police department or to the DA ‘s office, and we may be saying, ‘Look, this person isn’t really committing criminal behavior – the bigger concern here is the mental health piece,’” said Lovern.
Recent data from the Milwaukee Police Department show notable declines since 2023 in violent crimes, especially homicides and non-fatal shootings, and a reduction in most property crimes.
But certain violent crimes have increased since 2022, including robberies and carjackings.
“There’s no question that there is additional work that needs to be done to drive down the level of violent crime we see in this community,” Lovern said.
The problem, he added, is not evenly spread throughout the city.
A quarter of Milwaukee County homicides since 2023 occurred in only two ZIP codes.
“Everyone’s concerned about crime everywhere, but we know where the concentrations of violent crime exist,” said Lovern, adding that many residents in these neighborhoods tell him that we need “a strong response” to crime and that these “neighborhoods need to be valued.”
Rice, of WISDOM, does not want fairness and justice to be lost, however.
“We still in Wisconsin incarcerate Black people at one of the highest rates in the nation,” he said. “There’s a lot of discretion up front when plea bargains are reached in terms of who gets diverted from the system and who goes in.”
Rice and others also worry about the systemic limitations of the DA’s office to address such problems.
“Jobs like the DA’s office, mayor’s office, police chief tend to be very difficult, with unforeseen pressures and inherent flaws in how they’ve been systemized over the years,” said De Torre, of Milwaukee Turners. “The real test is how a person acts and what they do within a flawed system.”
Bucks react to blowout loss to Knicks at Madison Square Garden
Milwaukee Bucks stars Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton react to blowout loss to Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Jan. 12.
The Milwaukee Bucks try to bounce back tonight vs. the Sacramento Kings following a disappointing 34-point loss to New York on Sunday.
The Bucks (20-17) have won three of four and are in a dogfight in the middle of the Eastern Conference as they begin the day two games behind the Knicks in the loss column for the No. 3 seed but are behind Orlando (23-18) and Indiana (22-18) in the playoff standings.
The Magic, led by Milwaukee native and head coach Jamahl Mosley, are in town tomorrow night.
Sacramento fired head coach Mike Brown on Dec. 27 when they were 13-18 and under interim head coach Doug Christie the Kings have seven in a row and are 20-19 overall.
He is probable to play vs. the Kings. He has been managing pain in his right knee since training camp but has yet to miss a game with the issue.
First, Khris Middleton was pushed back to the bench and now the team is taking him out of back-to-back situations. Middleton played 12 straight games from Dec. 6-Jan. 4, including a back-to-back set on Dec. 20-21.
But on Jan. 8 he was moved to the bench because of his continued minute restriction and issues surrounding his complete return from offseason ankle surgeries.
And he was immediately ruled out of Tuesday night’s game against the Kings on Monday, presumably to make sure he’s ready to play in a more important Eastern Conference game against Orlando on Wednesday night.
In a Bucks win over the Magic on Jan. 10 in Florida, Middleton scored 11 points and had four assists in just under 23 minutes of play.
Second-year Bucks guard Andre Jackson Jr. is hosting a coat drive outside Fiserv Forum prior to home games on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. New and gently used coats, hats, gloves and scarves will be accepted and donated to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee and the Greater Amsterdam School District. Cash donations are accepted online here: Andre Jackson Coats | Powered By GiveSmart
The 23-year-old guard is from Amsterdam, New York, and played collegiately at the University of Connecticut.
The game will tip off at 7 p.m. and will be broadcast local on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin with Lisa Byington, Marques Johnson and Melanie Ricks on the call.
Milwaukee is a slim 2.5-point favorite over Sacramento, with the over/under at 228.5 points per BetMGM.
Mostly clear Monday night with temperatures dropping into the negative single digits inland to low single digits near the lake. A cold weather advisory has been issued for inland areas from 3AM to 9AM Tuesday. Wind chills below -20F are likely.
The cold continues Tuesday and Wednesday with morning wind chills -10 to -20 below zero. Afternoon wind chills remain from -5 to 5. Temperatures begin to warm by the end of the week back in the low 40s by Friday. However, another big drop comes in time for the weekend.
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