{"id":189269,"date":"2026-04-08T07:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T07:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/189269\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T07:00:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T07:00:15","slug":"brooklyn-nets-out-tanked-by-milwaukee-bucks-win-96-90-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/189269\/","title":{"rendered":"Brooklyn Nets out-tanked by Milwaukee Bucks, win 96-90"},"content":{"rendered":"

E.J. Liddell rises up for a 3-pointer from the left wing, and he misfires wide right, perhaps a little long. Only, the ball bounces off the top of the glass and right back down toward the rim, swirling the net like a mini-golf ball on uneven artificial turf. It drops. Next time down, Liddell tests his luck by pulling up near the top of the key. The ball puts a dent in the backboard, then swishes right in.<\/p>\n

Liddell scored 17 points in the first half, ultimately leading the team with 21 total points on 7-of-9 shooting, as the Brooklyn Nets beat the Milwaukee Bucks on Tuesday night in one of the least watchable NBA games in an April already chock-full of snoozers.<\/p>\n

This is a callous way to write about professional athletes, though not professional sports. E.J. Liddell was a tremendous NCAA player at Ohio State, then tore his ACL at Las Vegas Summer League before his rookie season and has spent the last four years bouncing around the G League in search of steady, lucrative opportunity. In Sunday\u2019s victory<\/a> over the Washington Wizards, Liddell scored a career-high 15 points. He outdid himself on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI talked to my mom after my first NBA start,\u201d said Liddell. \u201cCouldn\u2019t stop smiling, so I mean, the second one felt the same way. Any opportunity I get to put on this Brooklyn jersey, it feels special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of all the anti-tanking arguments put forth by the NBA, or its fans, or people who proudly dislike the NBA but hold cachet anyway, this is the most convincing. Tanking infects the soul of competition, and even if the league trips over itself trying to remedy the virus, it is a worthwhile effort anyway. (Don\u2019t ask about gambling).<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Tuesday\u2019s game was a must-lose for both the Bucks and Nets. Both teams admitted it with their injury report\u2026<\/p>\n

In addition to the players already ruled out for the season, Brooklyn sat Nic Claxton with a finger sprain, Noah Clowney with ankle soreness, Ziaire Williams with foot soreness, and Terance Mann with not one but two different areas of soreness.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s tough to blame Brooklyn for their inability to lose this one. Nolan Traore and Chaney Johnson played under ten minutes, Jalen Wilson played under 20, though they each won their minutes handily.<\/p>\n

Milwaukee was simply terrible. Awful. They turned it over 20 times, turning 2-on-1 opportunities into errant alley oops and handoffs into hot pockets. To Brooklyn\u2019s credit, they picked up their defense after the first quarter and guys like Malachi Smith and Trevon Scott flew around on the perimeter like they\u2019ve been playing under Jordi Fern\u00e1ndez for years\u2026<\/p>\n

Said Fern\u00e1ndez of his energetic bunch: \u201cIf you have the right intentions and always try to make the right play, one day you\u2019ll maybe miss some shots, but it will even out when the work is there, the work that these guys put in every single day. The positive energy, it just ends up working out. So, you\u2019ll see performances like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a miracle the Bucks even had a chance to make it interesting. The Nets shot 7-of-13 from deep in the first half, thanks to Liddell\u2019s luck and 10-day Trevon Scott, who made the most of his first career start with 8\/5\/2 on a couple long-balls and four steals.<\/p>\n

Traore hardly played, but Ben Saraf and Drake Powell combined to shoot 9-of-29 in a combined 76 minutes of action. Sadly, they did not look out of place in this game of supremely low quality, though Saraf did get shoot 9-of-10 from the line thanks to his insistence on getting downhill\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like I can get to the paint and create from there, so I tried to be as aggressive as I could,\u201d said Saraf postgame.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn\u2019s outside shooting fell off a cliff in the second half while the Bucks saw some drop, and the visitors trimmed a 16-point deficit to just one possession in the closing minutes. AJ Green and old friend Tauren Prince hit some huge triples, and the Nets had a chance to snag a miraculous defeat in a 180\u00ba turn from Sunday.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t happen. Ben Saraf drove left, hit the brakes, and baseline referee Che Flores called a foul on Ousmane Dieng, likely the correct call but one the Bucks bench really hated. Their front office? Not so much. Saraf sank both, pushing the lead to four, and it was all over but the shouting.<\/p>\n

Final Score: Brooklyn Nets 96, Milwaukee Bucks 90<\/p>\n

Here is the race to the bottom, courtesy of Tankathon.com<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At time of writing, the Sacramento Kings are currently trailing the Golden State Warriors in the second quarter. Assuming they hold on and lose, they will be 21-59, just a half-game behind Brooklyn, though crucially, it\u2019s in the win column, like the Utah Jazz).<\/p>\n

It was a career-high in points for E.J. Liddell for the second straight gameTrevon Scott is joins Kenyon Martin, Chris Childs, Keith Van Horn, and Bernard King to record 4+ steals in their fifth career game or earlier. Quite the list!\"Geoff<\/a><\/p>\n

Geoff Stellfox\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It does not get any easier. The Brooklyn Nets face the Indiana Pacers in their final home game of the season on Thursday night. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"E.J. Liddell rises up for a 3-pointer from the left wing, and he misfires wide right, perhaps a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,1728,9,24,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-189269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-nets-scores","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}