DETROIT – It took a season-high in points from Damian Lillard and a monster second half from Giannis Antetokounmpo for the Milwaukee Bucks to outlast the Detroit Pistons, 141-135, at Little Caesars Arena on Saturday afternoon.

The Pistons dropped to a league-worst 4-38 while the Bucks improved to 29-13.

Lillard scored 45 points, including 30 over the second and third quarters after registering six in the opening frame. He began to heat up after the Bucks found themselves down 55-46 with just under six minutes to go in the first half. Lillard then scored 11 points from there, including a step-back three-pointer with just three-tenths of a second left to give the Bucks a 70-67 lead at the break.

He then added 19 more in the third quarter to stake the Bucks a 103-98 lead.

“I know how these kind of games can be,” Lillard said. “You’re playing the same team two times in a row and in the first half they was believing and playing really well and shooting the ball well. I knew it was Giannis’ first game back and he was a little winded at times, so I just wanted to be a little more assertive. The ball went in a couple times in the third and I was like, I’m going to keep the foot on the gas and try to stay on the run and I did.”

Lillard then added nine points in the closing 2 1/2 minutes of the game, including four free throws in the last 60 seconds.

“The moment Dame plays like that and is that assertive offensively with the ball, because he has the ball a majority of the time, the whole team follows," Antetokounmpo said. "And, Dame is Dame. He’s going to have big quarters, he’s going to have big halves, he’s going to have big games. This was an example of it. We need him to keep on being aggressive, we need him to keep on leading this team. We need him to keep on making the right plays, we need him to keep on making shots because when he’s assertive and aggressive and he makes the right plays and makes shots, we are at our best.”

Antetokounmpo had a 23-point second half and played almost the entire fourth quarter as the Bucks struggled to overcome a Pistons team that shot 56.8% from behind the three-point line.

“I just think we were overhelping on penetration,” Bucks forward Jae Crowder said. “They have good guys who can get in the paint and sometimes we had to try to help, try to stay in our principles, but I think they did a good job of just knocking down shots. They got into a rhythm. They shot 50% from three? That’s crazy. I think we were just trying to stop penetration a little bit and we had to kind of balance later on in the game.”

BOX SCORE: Bucks 141, Pistons 135

Milwaukee led by as many as 11 in the third quarter but found themselves trailing early in the fourth before the Bucks' two stars took over. Of the Bucks' final 24 points, Lillard and Antetokounmpo accounted for 20 of them. Khris Middleton (17 points) had the other four.

“I just feel like they did a good job of just reading the game and everyone else did a good job of playing around them and off those guys,” Crowder said of Antetokounmpo and Lillard. “They were aggressive tonight. They had a great pick-and-roll synergy together and great iso game. So, it was one of those games where they just had it going.”

Lillard was 16-for-16 from the free throw line, but the Bucks were just 35-for-49 from the charity stripe for the game. Antetokounmpo missed 10 free throws. Milwaukee made 12 of 32 three-pointers (12 of 32) while Detroit made 21 of 37 to stay in the game.

Giannis Antetokounmpo returns to lineup for Bucks

Giannis Antetokounmpo has missed just two games this season, the first coming in the 11^th game of the season, before the team’s offense had truly started to coalesce around him, Damian Lillard and a full-go Khris Middleton. Antetokounmpo played the next 29 games, a stretch of play that saw the Bucks put together the highest scoring December in NBA history and score 130 or more points on 16 different occasions.

So, when Antetokounmpo missed Wednesday’s game against Cleveland, perhaps it should have been expected for the Bucks to experience some issues on that end of the court, even with Lillard, Middleton and Brook Lopez. But even Lillard acknowledged how different the court looked without Antetokounmpo, and how Cleveland was able to make things difficult. The Bucks ended up playing into the Cavaliers' hands, too, by not moving the ball as sharply (or at all at times).

The Bucks went through a film session and a practice in the two off days prior to traveling to Detroit, with head coach Adrian Griffin saying they drilled down on the 40-point loss in Cleveland, with an emphasis on the importance of ball movement, better shot selection and getting back on transition defense.

But it also helped that Antetokounmpo was back in the lineup against the Pistons, even if he looked a bit rusty having not played a game since Jan. 14. In the first half Antetokounmpo handed out six of the Bucks’ 18 assists but also had more turnovers (4) than field goals (3) and was just 2-for-8 from the free throw line in scoring eight points.

“Obviously six days, I wasn’t able to – because we played the other day, had a day off in between – wasn’t able to get my five versus five, any contact play," Antetokounmpo said. "So if you don’t have that kind of practice day, it’s hard to find your rhythm. But at the end of the day I think we scored 140 points, our defense gotta be better. Offensively we were moving the ball, we were finding open guys, Dame is doing his thing, guys are getting involved, we are heading towards the right direction. We have another one in two days (on Monday) and hopefully we can defend a little bit better but we can keep our rhythm offensively and execute the way we did today.”

Antetokounmpo began the second half by bursting down the lane and dunking on two Pistons, and he was more aggressive in the final two quarters. Though his free throw struggles continued, he scored 23 points and helped the Bucks overcome a fourth quarter Pistons rally.

“I’m just trying to be aggressive, get back rhythm," Antetokounmpo acknowledged. "Yeah, there’s going to be sometimes I’m able, able to find a lane and go downhill and get in for a layup or for a dunk or find my teammate, but at the end of the day I feel like when I’m at he best, when the team is at their best, is when I’m aggressive and getting downhill, when I’m making plays, when I’m being aggressive. But yeah, I think in the second half I was a little bit more; kind of got used to the speed of the game. Because it doesn’t matter if you don’t play, if you’re not out there, it goes away immediately. So you gotta get it back.”

Detroit flipped an 11-point third quarter deficit to a 4-point lead at 121-117 with 6 minutes, 49 seconds to go when Antetokounmpo followed a Malik Beasley bucket with a three-point play to give the Bucks a 122-121 lead.

Though Milwaukee never trailed again they stayed close, which meant the Bucks leaned on their stars. Antetokounmpo had a basket and was 4-for-6 from the free throw line in the final four minutes and pulled down a key offensive rebound to effectively clinch it with 23 seconds left. Lillard added nine points in that time, also.

“When he starts to be aggressive you can hear every coach that we play against like ‘load up!’ and ‘wall up!’ and stuff like that,” Lillard said. “If they’re gonna do that, the better me and him get of him seeing them doing it and then him zipping it to me and me being able to shoot and then attack off them defending him that way, it’s just going to get more and more deadly and harder to deal with. That was kind of the, I guess, benefit for me was when I start to see him attack like that I’m looking for the space on the floor.”

Antetokounmpo finished with 31 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists. He was 10-for-16 from the field but 11-for-22 from the free throw line.

Pistons bench explodes, nearly leads upset

The Pistons were on the verge of their best – and one of their only – wins of the season as they led by as many as nine points and kept the Bucks on their heels throughout.

Detroit was buoyed by a 33-point effort off the bench from Alec Burks, who was 7-for-14 from behind the three-point line. He led a Pistons second unit that scored 85 points, which included rookie Ausar Thompson (22 points, nine rebounds) and Mike Muscala (13 points).

"They’re really talented in their second unit," Bucks head coach Adrian Griffin said. "Burks, Muscala, (Danilo) Gallinari, all these guys are proven veterans in the league. I know that their record is not indicative of their talent. They really have some good players over there. We were kind of forced to; they took us out of some of our coverages because they have a lot of shooters out there that we had to account for. And, you gotta guard the three-point line. I thought in stretches we didn't do a good job of guarding the three-point line, like closing out with more urgency. And then the times we did they made some tough shots."

Three of the five Pistons starters didn’t reach double figures and the Bucks hassled dynamic guard Jaden Ivey into nine missed shots and Bojan Bogdanović into 10.

Burks and Thompson were on the court down the stretch for the Pistons, too, keeping the Pistons connected and forcing the Bucks to make free throws to clinch it.

The Pistons have won just four times this season, with half of them coming in the first three games of the regular season. Since Oct. 30 they’ve gone 2-36, including a 28-game losing streak that set a record for most consecutive losses in a single season. It tied the overall mark for consecutive losses, which Philadelphia set over two years from 2014-16.

The 76ers set the record for fewest wins in a regular season by going 9-73 in 1972-73.

Did you notice?

At the 9:40 mark of the second quarter, Pistons rookie Ausar Thompson was called for a foul on Giannis Antetokounmpo that was to result in two free throws. Detroit head coach Monty Williams challenged the call, as it looked as if Thompson blocked Antetokounmpo’s shot. The challenge was ultimately successful because Thompson did not commit a foul – but Pistons guard Marcus Sasser was given the foul instead. So, Antetokounmpo ended up taking two free throws anyway (making one).

5 numbers

• 8 Straight wins for the Bucks over the Pistons.

• 10 Straight wins for the Bucks over the Pistons in Detroit.

• 45 Points for Damian Lillard, a new season-high.

• 58.8 Percentage from behind the three-point line Detroit shot in the first half (10-for-17), including a 7-for-10 mark from bench players Mike Muscala, Alec Burks and Marcus Sasser. Burks scored 14 points in the first half, leading the Pistons bench to a 35-point first half effort that had them trailing just 70-67.That included a 38-point first quarter in which the Pistons were 6-for-9 from behind the three-point line.Lillard: "It was just too easy for ‘em. In this league, guys see the ball go in, they start to believe, they start to play faster and start to play with more confidence. And anybody can do it if you allow them to get going. They started shooting the ball well, they started feeling good about themselves, the ball started moving, they was getting to the line. I thought their pace caused some miscommunications in our coverages and when you come out slow and you don’t kind of have that urgency from the jump a team can do that to you."

• 61.5-60 Bucks free throw percentage (16-for-26) vs. the Pistons three-point percentage (12-for-20) with 6:07 to go in the third quarter as the Bucks held an 82-78 lead.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Damian Lillard scores season-high 45 points to help Bucks beat Pistons