Rockets rout Bucks as Milwaukee's post-Giannis rebuild stumbles to 1-4

The Houston Rockets remained the NBA's only unbeaten team on Wednesday night, routing the Milwaukee Bucks in a 132-100 blowout to improve to 5-0. The loss was Milwaukee's fourth in five games under new head coach Taylor Jenkins, who is overseeing the franchise's first season since before Giannis Antetokounmpo's rookie year without the two-time MVP on the roster.

Fred VanVleet scored 24 points on 7-of-14 shooting, including 4 of 9 from three-point range, and Amen Thompson added 23 points on 10-of-16 shooting as Houston shot 54.8 percent from the field. Kevin Durant scored 18 points and Bogdan Bogdanovic added 16 in just 15 minutes off the bench, according to the Associated Press recap of the game. The Rockets made 23 of 26 free-throw attempts and did it all without their leading scorer: center Alperen Sengun, who is averaging 24.5 points per game this season, sat out with low back soreness. Guard Marcus Smart missed his third straight game with a left forearm strain, and backup center Steven Adams was out with a right calf strain.

Houston turned the game in the second quarter, outscoring Milwaukee 34-14 to take a 57-35 lead into halftime. The Bucks made just 4 of 24 three-point attempts in the first half and were 1 for 1 at the free-throw line over that stretch, while the Rockets went 13 for 15 from the line. VanVleet, who missed virtually all of last season after tearing his ACL, scored 15 consecutive points for Houston in the third quarter, a run that included three free throws that pushed the lead to 81-61.

Tyler Herro led Milwaukee with 23 points and Jaime Jaquez Jr. added 19, but the rest of the Bucks struggled badly. Myles Turner was held to 4 points on 2-of-7 shooting, and Kyle Kuzma matched that total on 2-of-6 shooting. The 32-point margin was Milwaukee's worst loss of the season and dropped the team to 1-4, tied with the Chicago Bulls for last place in the Central Division standings. Houston sits alone atop the Western Conference, a half-game ahead of the 4-0 Memphis Grizzlies.

A franchise remade around a different core

Wednesday's result was the latest setback for a Bucks team still absorbing the shock of trading Antetokounmpo, the player Milwaukee drafted 15th overall in 2013 and built a championship around in 2021. Milwaukee sent Antetokounmpo and forward Bobby Portis to the Miami Heat in a deal agreed to in late June and finalized on July 6, 2026, receiving Herro, center Kel'el Ware, Jaquez, guard Kasparas Jakucionis, wing Caris LeVert and draft compensation in return. It is the first time since before Antetokounmpo's 2013-14 rookie season that Milwaukee has opened a year without him on its roster.

The coaching staff turned over as well. Doc Rivers stepped down in April after Milwaukee finished 32-50 and missed the playoffs, and the team hired Jenkins, formerly of the Memphis Grizzlies, on April 30 to rebuild around the players acquired in the Antetokounmpo deal rather than the core that had defined the franchise for more than a decade. The early results have been difficult: Milwaukee opened the preseason 2-3 and the regular season 0-3 before salvaging a 110-102 win over Indiana on Oct. 26, only to be blown out two nights later. On the roster Jenkins is now building around, Herro has become Milwaukee's leading scoring option, a markedly different role than the one he held for years in Miami, where he most often played alongside or behind other scorers rather than as the team's primary offensive focus. Jenkins spent six seasons as Memphis's head coach before taking the Milwaukee job, leading the Grizzlies to the playoffs three times, and his task now is to install a defensive identity and a developmental timeline for a roster that includes four players, in Herro, Ware, Jaquez and Jakucionis, acquired in a single trade only four months ago.

Wednesday's loss also left Milwaukee tied for last in the Central Division with Chicago, well behind a group of teams that includes the 4-1 Detroit Pistons and the 3-1 Cleveland Cavaliers, the team the Bucks host next. Indiana, which snapped a three-game losing streak of its own by beating Milwaukee on Oct. 26 before falling to Philadelphia two days later, sits at 2-3 in the same division.

Houston's deep roster keeps winning without its top scorer

For the Rockets, the result extended an unbeaten start built on little more than depth: Houston won comfortably even with Sengun, Smart and Adams all sidelined. VanVleet's recovery from the torn ACL that cost him most of last season has been a central storyline of the opening weeks, and his third-quarter scoring burst on Wednesday put the outcome out of reach well before the fourth. Thompson, in his third NBA season, continued an efficient run to start the year, finishing 10 of 16 from the field. Durant, who joined the Rockets in a trade from Phoenix in the summer of 2025, started and scored 18 points, while Bogdanovic provided scoring punch off the bench, reaching 16 points in just 15 minutes. The win left the Rockets as the Western Conference's only unbeaten team five games into the schedule.

What's next

Houston visits the Dallas Mavericks on Friday in National Basketball Association Cup group-stage play, a game that will test whether the Rockets can stay unbeaten against a divisional opponent. Milwaukee returns home to host the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday, looking to avoid a fifth loss in six games and to show that Wednesday's rout was an aberration rather than an early sign of how the season will unfold for a roster still searching for its identity under Jenkins.