The Milwaukee Bucks gave the Detroit Pistons no chance to break their extended losing streak because to Damian Lillard’s explosive start.

Inflicting their 23rd straight loss on the Pistons, the Bucks defeated Detroit 146-114 on Saturday thanks to a season-high 31 points from Bobby Portis and 33 points from Damian Lillard. The Bucks won their most lopsided game of the season while matching their season-high point total.

The Bucks took a commanding 24-point lead in the first quarter and never looked back, matching the third-longest NBA slump in the same season for the Pistons. Lillard scored 13 points in a row for Milwaukee at one point late in the first quarter.

“It’s not fun to say, but sometimes those games can be trap games where you kind of just play to the level of the people you’re playing, kind of take your foot off the gas and kind of relax and let them hang around the whole game, and in the fourth quarter it’s a tight game and you try to turn it on,” Portis, who finished with a season-high 12 rebounds, told reporters. I liked how we kind of took control of the game early on and managed to kind of start from the lead.

Giannis Antetokounmpo shot 7 of 9 for 22 points, 8 rebounds, and 6 assists in his first game back after setting a franchise record with 64 points on Wednesday. A 140-126 victory over the Indiana Pacers on Antetokounmpo’s record-breaking night saw a postgame altercation between the teams in the arena hallway after a disagreement over the game ball.

“I felt that tonight’s leaders were leaders,” stated Adrian Griffin, the coach of the Bucks. There was no frolicking about. Before the game, I felt that there was a serious atmosphere in the locker room.

Detroit has now lost 23 straight games in a season, joining the 1995–96 Vancouver Grizzlies, 1997–98 Denver Nuggets, and 2011–12 Charlotte Bobcats.

With 26 straight losses, the 2010–11 Cleveland Cavaliers and the 2013–14 Philadelphia 76ers tie the record for the longest losing streak inside a single season. In addition, the 76ers suffered a 28-game losing skid that began in the 2014–15 campaign and continued into the 2015–16 campaign.

The night after losing badly to Philadelphia 124-92, the Pistons were unable to match up with one of the best teams in the East once more. The Bucks never fell behind and accumulated a large enough advantage to allow Lillard and Antetokounmpo to take a full quarter off from the game.

The Pistons’ coach, Monty Williams, expressed his dissatisfaction at having to use an early timeout following the Bucks’ 32-17 lead after nine minutes of play.

Williams remarked, “We can’t afford to start games without the grit and toughness that we display sometimes.” “We simply haven’t adhered to it consistently.”

For the Pistons, Cade Cunningham scored 25 points, and Bojan Bogdanovic added 24.

The Bucks held out Khris Middleton while they continued to manage his surgically repaired right knee, and they were also missing Malik Beasley because of a non-COVID sickness. Isaiah Stewart was out for Detroit because of a sprained left shoulder.

MarJon Beauchamp made his first start of the season and scored the opening seven points of the game in lieu of Beasley and Middleton.

With his highest scoring total since joining the Bucks in 2020, Portis scored 31 points. On February 22, 2018, he scored 38 points for the Chicago Bulls against Philadelphia, which was his highest-scoring game to date.

Cameron Payne and Beauchamp each got 11 points. In a rare start for the Bucks, rookie Andre Jackson Jr. finished with a career-high 10 points and eight rebounds.

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