WASHINGTON
Season openers are not supposed to look like this for a rebuilding team, and they are definitely not supposed to look like this against Milwaukee. But with 8:13 left in the fourth quarter on Wednesday night, the Washington Wizards led the Milwaukee Bucks 105-98 at Capital One Arena, according to the ESPN scoreboard at the time of writing, seven points and one very loud home crowd standing between the Bucks and an opening-night loss that would follow them all week. Moments earlier the margin had been a single point, 99-98, and the game is live as this report is filed. Nothing about it is decided.
The shape of the night is what makes it so striking. Milwaukee led 56-51 at halftime and appeared to be following the contender's script: absorb the home team's early energy, take control by the break, squeeze the game in the second half. Washington had other ideas. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the Wizards actually struck first, leading 25-23 after the first quarter behind Anthony Davis, who put up 10 points and 6 rebounds in the opening period alone. Davis setting a physical tone early, in the paint and on the glass, gave Washington something a young rebuilding team does not always have on opening night: a reason to believe the game plan was real.
Milwaukee's counterpunch came from Tyler Herro. Per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Herro scored 14 points and handed out 4 assists in the first half, the engine of the Bucks offense as Milwaukee turned the early deficit into its five-point halftime lead. Around him, the Bucks are a team visibly in transition, and not only on the scoreboard. This is the first game of the Taylor Jenkins era in Milwaukee, and Jenkins was candid before it began about where his team actually is. “We're laying our foundation... it's still a settling foundation,” Jenkins said, in comments reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, adding, “we've got to establish quicker rather than later.” Wednesday night is showing exactly why he said it, and exactly what it looks like when a foundation is still settling in the fourth quarter of a road game.
The most encouraging Milwaukee development of the night may have come from its youngest player. Rookie Brayden Burries, the No. 10 pick in the draft, scored his first NBA points at the free-throw line and then added a driving three-point play, per the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — the kind of sequence that a rookie remembers forever and that a coaching staff files away for the winter. For a Bucks team trying to get younger and faster around its core without giving up its place in the Eastern Conference race, Burries producing real minutes and real points on opening night is a genuine storyline, win or lose.
For Washington, the stakes of these final eight minutes are larger than one game in October, even if everyone in the building would tell you otherwise. The Wizards have spent recent seasons pointed firmly at the future, and home openers against brand-name opponents are precisely the games that have tended to expose the distance between the plan and the product. A seven-point lead late in the fourth, earned after trailing at halftime, is a different kind of evidence. It says the young core can absorb a contender's run, answer it, and play the last quarter like it belongs to them. Our NBA coverage has Washington pegged as one of the league's most interesting rebuilds for exactly this reason: the talent is accumulating, and nights like this are how accumulation turns into identity.
Milwaukee, meanwhile, still has time to make this a routine road win and a forgotten October box score — that is what the final 8:13 are for. But the Bucks also know how these losses linger. Drop a season opener on the road to a rebuilding team, in your new head coach's debut, after leading at halftime, and the questions in Jenkins's own words — about how quickly the foundation gets established — stop being preseason talk and start being the story of the season's first week. The talent edge in the building still belongs to Milwaukee. The game, at the time of writing, belongs to Washington.
What decides it from here is the oldest script in the league: execution against pressure. Washington has to value possessions, defend without fouling, and survive the moment when a veteran team makes its last organized push. Milwaukee has to manufacture stops it has not consistently manufactured all night and turn them into the transition chances that fueled its first half. Either the Wizards close out the first signature win of their season in front of a home crowd that can feel it coming, or the Bucks escape Capital One Arena with a win that felt nothing like an escape in the standings. This live report will be updated when the game goes final. Keep the Previously sports front open — the finish is minutes away.
