NEW YORK — Giannis Antetokounmpo is the most dominant force in all of basketball.
So dominant that on an island with the unstoppable force that is the Bucks MVP, Royce O’Neale did what the Nets should have done all game long.
Foul.
Forcing the Greek Freak to hoist free throw after free throw may have offered an alternative reality from what the Nets experienced in their 118-104 loss to the Bucks on Tuesday.
Antetokounmpo finished with a game-high 33 points to extend Milwaukee’s winning streak to 15 games. He handed the Nets their fifth loss in their last six games and seventh defeat in their last nine.
And after Brooklyn jumped out to an early 15-point lead, Antetokounmpo flexed the biggest muscle in his game — brute strength — making the Nets pay time and time again with a flurry of debilitating rim finishes.
The first and most vicious ended the first quarter and sucked the life out of a Barclays Center crowd with bubbling excitement given the early lead: Nets stopper Dorian Finney-Smith picked up Antetokounmpo well behind the halfcourt line, and the Bucks star walked him down three-quarters of the floor from the back court to the rim.
But starting center Nic Claxton rotated over to help weak side, and his hand made a cameo in the poster Antetokounmpo created with a one-handed flush over two Nets defenders.
Silence immediately befell the arena.
From there, the bully ball commenced.
Antetokounmpo attempted to go at Claxton the following possession but slipped on a spin move and got his shot rejected. The following possession, he went right back at Claxton and dunked on him with the right hand.
And the possession after that, Bucks veteran forward Jae Crowder threw a lob over Finney-Smith’s head that Antetokounmpo caught and flushed with two hands.
Antetokounmpo scored 11 of his 33 points in the second quarter. He drove by Mikal Bridges for a layup at the rim and hit a pull-up three in transition. He had an opportunity to make it 13 in the period when he leaked out in transition and received a pass with only the much smaller O’Neale in-between him and the rim.
O’Neale assumed the position — knees square, arms folded on top of one another — and shoved Antetokounmpo to stop the play.
This is the type of dominant presence the Nets were once familiar with when Brooklyn was home to two of the league’s most unfazed scorers in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
With those two stars gone, the Nets are figuring things out on the fly.
And for much of the first half, the Nets looked like a competent basketball team, unlike the product they put on the floor when down 50 in the 44-point loss out of the All-Star break and much closer to the effort that almost earned them a victory over the Hawks at the buzzer on Sunday.
The problem in Brooklyn, however, with a new-look roster isn’t the first three quarters.
It’s closing games without a bona fide, All-Star level closer. It’s matching an impact like Antetokounmpo’s with another player on their roster — an impossible task now that the superstar era has come to an end.
Mikal Bridges finished with a team-high 31 points, operating time and time again from the mid-range. He shot 11-of-19 from the field and 3-of-7 from the foul line. Spencer Dinwiddie added 26 points on 5-of-10 shooting from downtown, and Cam Johnson followed a brilliant performance against the Hawks with another 19 points and seven rebounds on Tuesday.
That was the extent of Brooklyn’s scoring punch against the Bucks: The Nets mustered just five bench points, with second-unit standout Cam Thomas shooting 0-of-6 from the field for two points in his 23 minutes on the floor.
Meanwhile the Bucks had five players score in double figures, led, of course, by Antetokounmpo. Former Nets star center Brook Lopez put up 13 points and 10 rebounds in his return to Barclays, and ex-Net Jevon Carter scored 11 points on three-of-four shooting from downtown off the bench.
The Nets exited the All-Star break owners of the NBA’s seventh-toughest schedule. They face the Knicks in the second game of a back-to-back at Madison Square Garden on Wednesday, then travel to Boston to play the league-best Celtics on Friday.
The Nets have fallen behind the Knicks and are now sixth in the Eastern Conference. They are two games in front of the Miami Heat. If the Nets fall to seventh or lower, they will have to earn their playoff spot in the Play-In Tournament after the regular season.
