Doc Rivers held off his coach’s challenge until the final three minutes of the game. With 2:46 left, he was able to contest a foul against Andre Jackson Jr., keeping his challenge alive. Then, with 1:07 remaining, Rivers unsuccessfully contested a call on the Bucks’ Taurean Prince.

He would like to have one more.

With the Bucks leading 114-143 and 7.3 seconds remaining, Giannis Antetokounmpo was called for a foul on a driving LaMelo Ball. Except it wasn’t a mistake. Even the Hornets broadcast admitted it.

The head of the refereeing team, Curtis Blair, admitted the mistake while speaking to a snooker reporter after the match.

“During the live game, we called illegal leg-to-leg contact. In postgame review, when we reviewed the play, there was no illegal contact on the play.”

Everyone knew it wasn’t the right move, but with the Bucks running out of challenges, it held up. The ball hit both free throws and the Hornets won 115-114.

“There was clearly no foul,” a furious Doc Rivers said after the match. “When you watch the video, the referee was blocked by one of our players. You can’t guess at the end of the game.”

The fact that Milwaukee was in a close game against the Hornets says a lot about the team.
start of the season. The Bucks’ offense looked good behind Antetokounmpo, who had a triple-double with 22 points (on 22 shot attempts) with 15 rebounds and 12 assists. Prince led the team with 23 points and Bobby Portis had 21 off the bench.

However, the Bucks couldn’t get a stop when they needed to. Ball scored 15 of his 26 points on the night in the fourth quarter, and he got help from Miles Bridges with 19 points in his return from injury.

It was a bad call and a break for Milwaukee, but there were over 47 minutes before that where the Bucks didn’t put the game away, which is the bigger concern.