Barrett and Martin Share 27 Apiece as Short-Handed Raptors Rally Past Bucks 121-107

The Milwaukee Bucks had the game exactly where they wanted it. Fourteen points up in the first half, 60 points on the board before the break, the offensive glass theirs, and a short-handed Toronto team that had flown through four time zones in four games looking every bit as tired as the schedule suggested. Then the third quarter started, and none of it mattered. Toronto came out of halftime and took the game apart piece by piece, outscoring Milwaukee 38-27 in the third and 32-20 in the fourth to win 121-107 at Fiserv Forum on Friday night, an NBA Cup group game that kept the Raptors' hopes of reaching the knockout round alive and pushed the Bucks to a fifth straight defeat. R.J. Barrett and Alijah Martin did the damage in tandem, 27 points apiece. Barrett added seven rebounds and five assists in a steady night. Martin did his from the bench, catching fire from deep to the tune of six three-pointers on 11 attempts, the kind of shooting night that turns a close game into a rout in a hurry. Jakob Poeltl anchored the middle with 19 points and 11 rebounds, and he was part of the reason Toronto finished with 42 boards to Milwaukee's 37 and 31 second-chance points. What made it sting for Milwaukee was who Toronto was missing. The Raptors played without all-NBA forwards Kawhi Leonard and Scottie Barnes and starting guard Immanuel Quickley, three of their best players, and still found a way. The Bucks, meanwhile, had built one of their most productive halves of the season and let it slip away in a single quarter. "We made them shoot threes, they missed them, we didn't get hits," Bucks coach Taylor Jenkins said afterward, his frustration plain. "We did a great job in the first half, the second half it hurt us." Jenkins had warned before the game that the possessions battle would decide it, and he was right — Toronto won it by double digits, outshot Milwaukee by 11 and held the Bucks to just five offensive rebounds over the final three quarters after Milwaukee had grabbed 17 in the first, nine of them on the offensive end. There were bright spots in the loss, and the brightest belonged to a rookie. Brayden Burries, the 10th pick in the draft, recorded his first career double-double with 21 points and 11 rebounds, both career bests, pulling down six boards in a frantic first quarter alone. He was honest about the part he still needs to fix. "I think first half we had way more energy than the second half," Burries said. "Second half, I really just think second half I didn't really rebound that well." Tyler Herro finished with 23 points and a season-high 10 assists, the 11th double-digit assist game of his career, and he has been Milwaukee's steadying hand since the trade of Giannis Antetokounmpo remade the roster. "It's process," Herro said. "We've been saying it really since the trade. This isn't a thing that happens overnight. We've been in a lot of these games. I think we've played nine games, we should've won five of 'em." At 1-8, though, process is starting to wear thin. The Bucks have now lost five in a row and dropped their first game of East Group A play in the NBA Cup, a tournament they once won. Toronto, at 5-4, had already lost its Cup opener to Orlando and could not afford another defeat. On Friday, the team with everything to lose played like it, and the team with the early lead could not hold it.