Time: 07:30 P.M. EST Venue: Philips Arena
The visiting team has taken all three matchups between the Atlanta Hawks and Milwaukee Bucks this season. That trend could continue even though the Bucks have dropped 10 straight on the road since they are getting healthier while the Hawks may limit the minutes of their stars on Monday night. Atlanta (55-18) clinched the Eastern Conference's top seed with Friday's 99-86 home win over Miami. That caused Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer to rest DeMarre Carroll, Kyle Korver, Al Horford and Paul Millsap in Saturday's 115-100 loss at Charlotte. With Jeff Teague sitting out a second straight game with a sprained ankle, all five starters did not play. A starting lineup of Mike Muscala, Dennis Schroder, Elton Brand, Kent Bazemore and John Jenkins was used for the first time. Bazemore scored a season-high 20 points, Muscala had career highs of 18 points and 10 rebounds while Schroder had 17 points and matched a career best with 11 assists." It was great to see some of the guys play, Muscala and John Jenkins, Elton and everybody," Budenholzer said. The coach hasn't rested starters at home this season, and the club's official game notes have the regular starting unit as the probable starters. The Hawks are 40-11 with that lineup. Milwaukee (36-37) is enduring its longest road slide since dropping its final 14 last season. The Bucks are getting healthier with solid efforts by Jared Dudley and O. J. Mayo in Saturday's 108-95 home defeat to Golden State. Dudley had 13 points in his second game back from back spasms while Mayo had eight points and five assists in his third game since missing four with a right hamstring issue. Both played their most minutes since coming back, with 24 for Dudley and 20 for Mayo.'' It's our second unit. We're getting banged up a little bit, it's now the second part of the season, so it's important for us,'' Mayo said. The Bucks posted a 107-77 rout at Atlanta on Dec. 26 to end a seven-game slide in this series before losing the next two matchups at home. The season's first two matchups came when Milwaukee had Brandon Knight as its starting point guard. Milwaukee is 6-14 since Knight was dealt Feb. 19 to Phoenix, with Michael Carter-Williams predominantly the starting point guard since. The Bucks' shooting percentage is 43.2 percent over the last 20 games compared to 46.6 before the trade. Khris Middleton scored a team-high 14 points as Milwaukee shot 37.9 percent Saturday." If we are going to rely on making shots against the elite teams, we're going to find ourselves in a lot of games that we lose," coach Jason Kidd said. "We were built to play defense and work from defense to offense." Ersan Ilyasova scored eight points one game after he had a career-high 34 in Thursday's 111-107 home win over Indiana. The Hawks are second in the NBA with 25.5 assists per game. They had 63 over the weekend with 32 against the Hornets. These are among the East's best 3-point shooting teams with Atlanta first at 38.6 percent and Milwaukee at 36.6.
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