NEW YORK _ In their second game back from a seven-game road trip, the Nets were hoping to enjoy the benefit of home cooking Monday night at Barclays Center. But the NBA-leading Bucks spoiled the festivities with a dominant fourth-quarter performance in which they scored 40 points on their way to a convincing 131-121 victory.
The Nets remained seventh in the Eastern Conference, but their position is precarious because their final four games include a visit to Milwaukee on Saturday, and this game showed that is a daunting task.
After fighting back from 22 points down in the opening quarter, the Nets and Bucks played volleyball with the lead in the third before the visitors took a two-point cushion to the fourth. That's where they turned up the heat, opening the period with a 10-2 burst that included seven points from Antetokounmpo for a 101-91 lead with 10:21 left.
Three straight Nets 3s, two by Joe Harris, cut the deficit to three, but the Bucks ran off eight straight points for an 11-point cushion. The Nets rallied within four points on a Caris LeVert layup at 5:42 only to see the Bucks expand their lead to 11 again.
By that points, sixth-place Detroit, eighth-place Miami and ninth-place Orlando all had lost, leaving an opening for the Nets to take a big step toward a playoff berth if they could engineer the upset. But it wasn't to be. The Nets (39-39) remained stuck in seventh, half a game behind the Pistons, half a game ahead of the Heat and one game up on the Magic with four left to play.
D'Angelo Russell had a different kind of double-double for the Nets with 28 points and 10 rebounds, LeVert totaled 24 points and DeMarre Carroll added 20. The Nets had a whopping 55-40 rebounding advantage, but the Bucks (58-20) outscored them in the paint, 68-42. Eric Bledsoe led the Bucks with 29 points, Antetokounmpo played like an MVP candidate with 28 points and 11 rebounds and George Hill came off the bench with 22 points.
The Bucks limped into Barclays Center with a long injury list for the second game of a back-to-back set. But after missing the previous game with a sprained right ankle Antetokounmpo was able to start against the Nets. So, Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer wasn't taking it easy on his friend and former assistant Kenny Atkinson.
Budenholzer is among the favorites for the coach of the year award, but Atkinson also is in the conversation. "I'd love for Kenny to be coach of the year," Budenholzer said. "I think he's very deserving with what he's done here in three years, the culture and the way they compete, the way they play both ends of the court. I just think he's incredibly deserving."
The Nets didn't look very competitive at the outset, trailing by as many as 22 points in the opening period before trimming the margin to 15 at the end of the quarter. In the second quarter, they flipped the script as Russell scored nine points in a 22-6 run that gave the Nets a brief 42-41 lead on a Carroll layup.
The Bucks responded with a 16-5 surge, including two three-point plays by Antetokounmpo, as they pushed their lead back to 57-47, but the Nets managed to cut that deficit in half by intermission, trailing 59-54. At that point, they were dominating the boards, 33-21 and had a whopping 15-0 margin in second-chance points, but they needed to improve on their 31.9 percent first-half shooting.
Early in the third quarter, Russell scored six points in a 12-4 burst that ended with his 3-pointer for a 66-65 lead. That was the first of 16 lead changes in a quarter that ended with the Bucks holding a slim 91-89 lead.
