John Wall (19 points, nine assists, five steals) has his pocket picked by Bucks center and VCU alum Larry Sanders in the second quarter. (Jeff Hanisch/Usa Today Sports)

Paul Pierce, the Washington Wizards’ resident sage, imparted the warning in the team’s joyous postgame locker room Friday night. Fresh off their nationally televised win over LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Pierce insisted the Wizards’ true statement game would come Saturday in Milwaukee. This was the “trap” game, Pierce said, the type of contest in which great teams do not stumble.

A November win over the Bucks will never be mistaken for a seal of approval, but the Wizards did not give in to a letdown and completed the weekend sweep, topping the Bucks 111-100.

“You didn’t want to win last night, being on the big stage, and everybody was watching that game to come here and lose this game,” point guard John Wall said. “What would’ve been the point of winning last night?”

Washington (9-3) encountered a couple of hurdles from the start: Otto Porter Jr. did not suit up due to left hamstring tightness and Nene left after playing six minutes with a right foot injury. After the game, Porter explained he was sidelined out of precaution; Nene received treatment on the right foot. The Brazilian big man, who has dealt with plantar fasciitis in the other foot, said the pain in his right plantar fascia has accumulated recently, but declined to elaborate.

Neither player would have made much of a difference early. The Bucks (7-7) were dominant for the game’s first 18 minutes, utilizing their length and hawkish defense to build a 15-point advantage in the second quarter. The Wizards weathered the rush, then took off on a 23-4 run that spanned the second and third quarters to seize a lead they would not cede.

The Post Sports Crew previews Bradley Beal's return to the Wizards. The shooting guard has missed six weeks due to an injury in his non-shooting wrist. (Post Sports Live/The Washington Post)

Pierce was the Wizards’ motor. The 17-year veteran silenced the Bradley Center frenzy with cold-blooded efficiency and his jumper with 1 minute 13 seconds remaining sealed the win. Pierce registered a team-high 25 points — his most as a Wizard — before fouling out with 64 seconds remaining.

Five Wizards finished in double figures, including Wall, who followed his 28-point performance Friday with 19 points, nine assists, and five steals.

“This group has matured,” Coach Randy Wittman said. “In the last couple years, if we would’ve started a game like this, we might not have been able to recover from it.”

The Bucks entered the contest with the NBA’s highest-scoring bench at 46 points per game, but the Wizards reserves continued their torrid stretch. Led by Bradley Beal, who came off the bench again in his third game back from a fractured left wrist to score 17 points in a season-high 34 minutes, the Wizards’ reserves continued outplaying their counterparts. They outscored Milwaukee’s bench, 54-39, and have claimed the bench battle seven of the past eight games.

“They’re growing with confidence,” Pierce said of the bench. “Any number of guys can step up.”

The Wizards’ starters, though, emerged flat to begin the contest. As they had in their previous two games, the Wizards sought to establish an interior presence early. Milwaukee’s defensive-minded guards, however, thwarted the effort.

The Bucks’ Brandon Knight and Khris Middleton aggressively crashed down to double team every Wizards post-up, utilizing their length to swipe at the ball and create chaos. The strategy generated six steals, seven fast-break points, and eight points off Wizards’ seven turnovers in the first quarter.

Nene, Washington’s best passing big man, was taken out with 5:47 left in the period and didn’t return as the Bucks pushed the lead to 15 behind Knight, who finished with a game-high 27 points.

“We couldn’t get anything from a defensive standpoint set, the way we were executing offensively,” Wittman said. “We just overdribbled too much. We weren’t moving the ball and it just led to turnovers.”

The Wizards began chipping away as soon as Pierce was inserted at power forward with 7:09 remaining in the second quarter and whittled the Bucks’ cushion to five points at halftime. The surge extended beyond the intermission. Unlike in their last two contests - when slow starts in the third quarter required Wittman to call a timeout to halt a collapse - the Wizards were the aggressors.

“I told them at halftime, ‘We can’t get the first half back, but we can control what we do in the next 24 minutes,’ ” Wittman said. “And I thought that they did a good job.”

The teams traded blows in the fourth period, but the Bucks did not cut Washington’s lead below seven, thanks primarily to Pierce, whose jumper from the elbow with 73 seconds to go pushed the margin back to nine and sent fans to the exits.

“They don’t call him ‘The Truth’ for no reason, man,” Beal said.