By Jimmy Carlton Sportswriter Published Apr 22, 2017 at 5:19 PM Photography: David Bernacchi

Two days after the Bucks comprehensively outclassed the Raptors in Game 3, Toronto came out on Saturday to purposefully and effectively ugly up the affair for Game 4. Milwaukee, playing sloppy and looking disjointed all afternoon, was more than happy to oblige the strategy, falling, 87-76, at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.

Following its embarrassing defeat, 104-77, on Thursday night, Toronto unsurprisingly made adjustments, including lineup changes and a different gameplan, and saw its talented backcourt return to All-Star level.

For the fourth game of a first-round Eastern Conference playoff series that has seen the Bucks be the aggressor and the Raptors the reactor, and which is now tied at two games apiece heading back to Canada, head coach Dwayne Casey went small and slowed down the pace. He inserted guard Norman Powell into the lineup for center Jonas Valunciunas, and the move paid off, as Powell scored 12 points and hit all three of his 3-point attempts.

Star guards DeMar DeRozan and Kyle Lowry combined for 51 points to lead Toronto, which employed a physical, grinding style that wore down Milwaukee as the game – tied at 41 at halftime – went on.

"I’ve always said we play better with our backs against the wall," Casey said after the game. "It’s a tough way to live, but I love our team’s resilient personality. I wish we didn’t have to have a stinker before we played that way, but if we can consistently get everybody at their potential level, I think we’ll be in good shape.

"Every game is a different story. I’m sure they’re going to make adjustments. I think it’s going to be a chess match for the next three games."

The Bucks didn’t appear to have any answers or counterpunches of their own. They came out with the same verve as Thursday, but when shots weren’t falling early on, they couldn’t find a rhythm and quickly appeared incapable of creating offense. When they tried to speed the game up and get out in transition, it was chaotic; when they had to play in the half court, they were unable to execute and it often became isolation offense.

After averaging 23.7 assists to 10.3 turnovers in Games 1-3 – a testament to its impressive ball movement and eagerness to share – Milwaukee had 16 assists to 20 turnovers on Saturday. The Bucks were called for 21 fouls – many of the whistles drawing the ire of the loud, proud and often-angry sellout crowd – and the Raptors hit 16 of 17 free throws.

The Bucks, meanwhile, made just 11 of 18 at the line, and they missed 16 of their 21 3-point attempts. Playing a desperate, motivated and much-improved Toronto team, Milwaukee couldn’t pass, couldn’t shoot and couldn’t keep the home-floor advantage it'd taken.

"I thought our tempo was extremely slow," said head coach Jason Kidd in unusually revealing comments after the game. "You give them credit; they slowed us down. It wasn’t a high-scoring game, no one could make a shot, but they found a way to slow us down, and our tempo in that second half came to a halt, our energy level was low.

"We seemed to be walking the ball up. We weren’t in fifth gear; we were more in third gear, and we needed to be in fifth gear this afternoon. For whatever reason, we have to fix that going into Game 5."

Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was averaging 23.7 points and 10.3 rebounds for the series couldn’t get into the flow. He finished with 14 points, on 6-of-19 shooting, with nine rebounds, four assists and a season high-tying seven turnovers.

Khris Middleton, who’d appeared to break out of his shooting slump in Game 3, struggled again, scoring 10 points on 4-of-13 shooting. Rookie starters Thon Maker and Malcolm Brogdon were mostly invisible, while the typically productive bench was largely quiet. The only offensive bright spots were Tony Snell (playoff-high 19 points) and Greg Monroe (14 points, nine rebounds).

On the other end of the court, the Bucks couldn’t replicate their success against DeRozan, who bounced back from his putrid eight-point outing in Game 3 with 33 points on Saturday. He looked almost unstoppable, torching every defender Milwaukee tried on him.

"In that first half, DeRozan was the only one scoring for them, and we knew coming in that he was going to have a better game than in Game 3," Kidd said. "We had opportunities, but when you turn the ball over 20-plus times, it’s hard to have a pace, and so we’ve got to look at our turnovers and do a better job on that end of the floor.

Kidd said he thought Antetokounmpo was looking to try and pick the struggling team up and put it on his back.

"He could see that guys weren’t making shots, so he thought he could do it. That’s what the great players do; unfortunately, he couldn’t make a shot either," Kidd said. "We’ve talked about staying in character – this is a great game for our group to understand we have to stay in character and keep moving the ball. We weren’t passing the ball due to turnovers, but we’ve got to move the ball and find the open guy and trust that the open guy will make the play."

Brogdon, the usually composed Rookie of the Year candidate, had four points, three assists and four turnovers. Afterward, he agreed with his coach’s assessment of Milwaukee’s performance.

"I think we played hard, but offensively we didn’t move the ball, the ball stuck," Brogdon said. "I think we took bad shots, didn’t take care of the ball. So when you don’t take care of the ball, you don’t execute at the offensive end and they’ve got one guy that’s going and going and scoring, it’s not going to be a game you’re going to win."

The 24-year-old guard said the Bucks were "just forcing plays" – trying to do too much and not making the extra pass for an easier shot. Milwaukee made 37.0 percent of its field-goal attempts, including 23.8 percent of its 3-pointers. "We didn’t get the shots we usually get because we weren’t moving the ball, so we were taking tougher shots," Brogdon said.

Despite the smaller lineup, it often seemed like the Raptors – particularly forwards Serge Ibaka, DeMarre Carroll and P.J. Tucker, as well as Valunciunas – bullied the Bucks, who looked overmatched at both ends. In the first three games, sixth-seeded Milwaukee’s youthful athleticism and length had given Toronto problems, but on Saturday the third-seeded Raptors muscled up and played like the better, stronger team.

"It was a physical game – not more physical than (the Raptors) have been," Brogdon said. "Overall, I thought we weren’t as physical, that they were a little bit more physical.

"I’m not sure that’s a game, the way we played, that we deserved to win. We missed a lot of shots, a lot of easy shots, took a lot of hard shots, turned the ball over a lot. That’s a game Toronto won."

Certainly, after the excitement generated by the Game 3 blowout and the 2-1 series lead, the ugly reality of Saturday’s loss brought the Bucks, and their fans, back down to earth. Now Milwaukee heads to Toronto for Game 5, before a potential do-or-die Game 6 matchup back at the Bradley Center next Thursday.

Jimmy Carlton Sportswriter

Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.

After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.

Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.