The injury-riddled Milwaukee Bucks have been a doormat for just about everyone in the first month of the season.

The Boston Celtics are about the lone exception.

OJ Mayo rebounded from a subpar game with 22 points and the Bucks snapped an 11-game losing streak with a 92-85 victory over Boston on Saturday night.

"It feels good to get that monkey off our back," Milwaukee coach Larry Drew said. "It really does. Especially kind of the way we did it, shorthanded as we were, playing some guys out of position. It's kind of been our story pretty much all season long."

Two of Milwaukee's three victories have come against Boston. The Bucks beat the Celtics 105-98 on Nov 1 in Boston.

Jared Sullinger scored 21 points and had 14 rebounds, while Jeff Green and Jordan Crawford added 18 points apiece for the Celtics.

The Bucks went to a zone defense, and Boston missed 40 of its final 62 shots.

"We just were kind of waiting to see if they made shots, and they didn't fall for them, so we stuck with it," Drew said.

Boston coach Brad Stevens said his team's struggles simply were due to missing shots.

"We moved the ball against the zone and attacked where we wanted to," he said. "We just didn't make as many as we wanted to."

The Celtics missed 15 of 19 3-point attempts.

"We definitely had a good amount of looks, but we just weren't able to knock them down," Boston's Avery Bradley said. "Probably every 3 we took was wide open. We just weren't able to convert."

Despite having the worst record in the Eastern Conference at 3-13, Milwaukee is only three games behind Detroit (6-10), which currently sits in the eighth spot in the mediocre Eastern Conference.

(China Daily 12/02/2013 page24)