Red-hot Bucks look to continue streak against Pelicans

The Milwaukee Bucks are the hottest team in the NBA.

The New Orleans Pelicans are among the coldest.

The Bucks have won 15 games in a row as they prepare to host the Pelicans, who have lost nine in a row, on Wednesday night.

Milwaukee looks to increase the streak to 16 without reigning NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, who will sit out with a quadriceps injury.

Milwaukee's latest victory was a 110-101 triumph at home against Orlando on Monday night.

Antetokounmpo had what has become pretty much an average game for him, finishing with 32 points and 15 rebounds.

"It's amazing, I'm not going to lie," Antetokounmpo told reporters of the winning streak. "When I go back home, sit down and think about it, it's amazing.

"My rookie year we won 15 games. Now we won 15 in a row. We can still extend it. But at the end of the day, the job's not done. We got to keep playing hard. We got to keep playing together. We got to keep moving individually, keep improving as a team. We've got a long way to go."

The Bucks had outscored their last four opponents by an average of 34.3 points before the Magic gave them a tighter game.

"Sometimes, it's good to have close games," Antetokounmpo said. "You learn from that. You get used to being in close games and not always winning by 20 or 30. We got the win, we grinded it out and played defense."

A victory by the Bucks, whose 21-3 record is tied with the Lakers for the best in the NBA, would give them their longest winning streak since winning 16 in a row over two seasons in 1973. The club record of 20 was set during the 1970-71 campaign.

The Pelicans, who lost by 46 points at Dallas last Saturday, had a chance to end their losing streak at home against Detroit on Monday, but came up short.

They led for virtually the entire first half, watched the Pistons take the lead early in the third quarter, then rallied in the fourth quarter.

Brandon Ingram scored the last of his game-high 31 points on a jumper that gave New Orleans a 103-101 lead with 1:11 remaining.

But Derrick Rose's basket tied the score and Ingram missed a jumper before Rose hit another jumper in the final second to give Detroit a 105-103 victory.

That gave the Pelicans their longest losing streak in Alvin Gentry's five seasons as head coach.

"I don't know if it's getting worse but there are no moral victories, so we don't have anything tangible that we can hang our hat on," Gentry said. "Just playing close -- that would be great if we were in a horseshoe contest, but we're not. We can't play close; we have to find a way to make enough plays to win the game and we haven't done that.

"It's getting to be a very frustrating thing for us. It's frustrating as heck for us to show ball-movement and how we play to start the game and then we'll go through a stretch where we're not doing that. Some kind of way we have to get to the point where that is consistently what we're doing. If not, we put ourselves behind the eight ball and have to make these great plays down the stretch to win games."

The Pelicans have made 11 of 70 3-pointers in their last two games.

--Field Level Media