Hawks 110, Bucks 88: An evening that goes from bad to worse as Giannis Anetokounmpo leaves with knee injury

ATLANTA – The tenor of the Eastern Conference Finals felt like it changed late in the third quarter of Game 3 when Atlanta’s diminutive star Trae Young stepped on an official, bruising a bone in his foot.

A collision among three giants a little less than halfway through the third quarter of Game 4 Tuesday night at State Farm Arena didn’t just change the pitch of the series, but completely re-wrote the sonnet as the Atlanta Hawks evened the series 2-2 with a 110-88 victory.

With Atlanta up 60-52 at the 7-minute, 19-second mark Hawks guard Lou Williams threaded a lob to a soaring Clint Capela, who slid behind Brook Lopez and in front of Giis Antetokoumpo.

Lopez and Antetokounmpo leapt to challenge the attempt, but Capela put it down. The trio of descending bodies pushed into the two-time Most Valuable Player’s left knee, and Antetokounmpo went down in a heap, yelling, and Capela toppled over him.

He briefly appeared at the end of the Bucks bench in full uniform shortly thereafter but returned to the locker room and was ruled out with a left knee hyperextension.

Understandably, the momentum of the game turned.

Jrue Holiday hit a bucket to cut the Hawks lead to 62-54 but the Hawks went on a 15-0 run to blow the game open and take a 77-54 lead. In that stretch, the Bucks missed four straight shots while the Hawks collected two offensive rebounds that led to points.

The exclamation point came on a Bogdan Bogdanović three-pointer off a John Collins offensive rebound that forced a Bucks timeout with 4:16 to go, with the Hawks’ guard crouched and fist-pumping to the crowd.

The Bucks never got back into the game from there and finished the night shooting 39.3% from the floor and 20.5% from behind the three-point line.

“They are competing trying to play a game,” Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer said of his team. “Obviously Giannis is a big part of our soul and our fiber. I’m sure there’s the human element where the concern, care, for him is real. But they are in the heat of the battle. They are playing. They are competing. They are trying to get stops, trying to get rebounds, trying to do things, trying to find a way to be there for him while he’s not able to be on the court, and I’m sure that’s what they will do.”

Game 5 will be Thursday night at Fiserv Forum at 7:30 p.m. and Game 6 will be back in Atlanta on Saturday, July 3 at 7:30 p.m.

Antetokounmpo finished the game with 14 points on 7-of-10 shooting in 24 minutes. He also pulled down eight rebounds and had three assists.

The Bucks were struggling offensively at that point in the game as it were, but Antetokounmpo was just beginning to exert his influence in scoring six points and halving a 16-point Hawks lead to 60-52.

From then on in the third quarter, the Bucks managed just 10 more points while the Hawks scored 15 to go into the fourth quarter up 87-62.

Atlanta went nearly three minutes without scoring a bucket to open the fourth quarter, seemingly opening the door for Milwaukee to make a push. But the Bucks scored just seven points to make it 87-71, and the Hawks also began to make baskets.