[ad_1]
We’re less than a month into the season, but with a rare degree of certainty we can say we’ve seen the game of the year before. The Brooklyn Nets hosted the Milwaukee Bucks in a heavyweight showdown on Monday, and in a game that was close throughout, the Nets came away with a thrilling 125-123 win after Khris Middleton missed a game-winning game at 3. points to the buzzer.
Kyrie Irving may have missed the festivities, but the stars who were available put on a show. Brooklyn’s Kevin Durant-James Harden tandem gave the Nets 64 points, 18 assists and 15 rebounds, while three-headed monster Milwaukee, Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday gave the Bucks 81 points. In the end, the actors made the difference. Beating the Nets when they get 34 points from Joe Harris and Jeff Green is next to impossible, and of course the Bucks just missed out.
It was the first time we saw these two behemoths face off, but it won’t be the last. Aside from a few extra regular season dates on the calendar, these two are big favorites to reach the Eastern Conference Finals and fight for a championship shot. Here are four things you should take away from tonight’s thriller before that possible playoff game.
1. Milwaukee couldn’t exploit Brooklyn’s weaknesses
The Nets may have the greatest perimeter talent of any team in NBA history, but the price for getting it was depth anywhere else. Jeff Green is doing the minimum, but he started strong tonight before. DeAndre Jordan has been a negative value player so far this season and was even benched ahead of Jarrett Allen’s exit in the Harden deal, but he is the only legitimate NBA center on the list.
This gave the Bucks a fairly simple plan to beat the Nets: kill them on the inside. Milwaukee was the NBA’s best rebounding team by a mile last season. They have allowed the fewest restricted area shooting attempts and have produced a new MVP winner who has shot over 82% within three feet of the basket so far this season. Brooklyn will win the battle behind the arc most nights. Milwaukee could have knocked him out with proper domestic dominance.
Still, the Nets topped the Bucks, 49-41. They also scored more points in the paint, 52-50. If this continues into the playoffs, it’s over. The Nets go to the final. Their shooting and creation is too good for them to lose when they win on the inside as well.
Give credit where it’s due. Jordan, who has struggled for most of the season, gave the Nets an excellent 38 minutes on Monday. Brooklyn won those minutes by five points, and he tied Antetokounmpo for the lead with 12 rebounds. Specifically, he proved to be a real deterrent for Giannis as a pilot, forcing him to take six 3-pointers and several midrange jumpers. It makes sense. The common strategy against Giannis is to build a wall of defenders at the edge. Well, Jordan has very limited mobility at this point in his career. Some great men, like Anthony Davis, will eat it alive. But given his size and sturdiness, he’s practically a human wall, and that made life very difficult for Giannis and the Bucks in this game.
2. The Bucks finally found a clutch offense
Milwaukee should be cheered on on a few fronts, but neither should their clutch attack. Coming in tonight, the Bucks were ranked 12th in the clutches per 100 possessions chart. They were 11th last season and eighth the year before, and in both cases they collapsed in the playoffs when Giannis couldn’t create any shots. But in the last five minutes of this game? They scored 13 points.
Now some of those points were unclear. Two of them, for example, got out of Durant assuming a ball was going out of bounds rather than actively bouncing. The central issue with Giannis being an insufficient endgame creator still exists.
But Middleton’s continuous improvement as well as Holiday’s presence as a secondary creator gives Milwaukee enough alternatives to credibly find points. Having two additional stars for their quality makes it easier to find off-ball uses for Giannis, like pick-and-roll scouting. The Bucks won’t have an elite offense late in the game, but they proved tonight that they can get points against the team they actually need to beat to reach the final.
Their real offensive problems came from the bench, who shot 7 of 23 from the field and scored just 19 points. The Bucks are in dire need of another creator when one or more of their stars is on the bench. He doesn’t have to be a star, but someone from the Lou Williams-Derrick Rose class of “older point guard who can score 20 points per random night” would be very, very helpful. They signed DJ Augustin thinking he might be that player. In a game of this magnitude, it looks like it couldn’t be.
3. Mike Budenholzer keeps making the same mistake
Milwaukee lost to Miami in the playoffs for a variety of reasons, but Mike Budenholzer’s dogmatic commitment to his same old defensive plan was significant. He was left with a drop blanket all year round and the Miami shooters destroyed him. He refused to increase the workload of his best players and his bench could not compensate. But most damning, he refused to let his Defensive Player of the Year keep Miami any closer. Jimmy Butler killed the Bucks in the fourth quarter while Giannis watched helplessly from his place as the weak side’s shot blocker.
Give Budenholzer credit: at least he appreciated the magnitude of the moment. Giannis played 40 minutes against the Nets, the first time he did so in a non-overtime regular season game under Budenholzer. But again, his coach refused to unleash him on the opponent’s best player. Giannis wasn’t guarding Durant when it mattered, and of course Durant nailed the winning dagger with 36 seconds left. Antetokounmmpo was on Jeff Green around the corner.
Durant was guarded by Middleton and Holiday for most of the game. Middleton is a good defenseman and Holiday is a great defender, but neither are tall enough to take on a seven-foot shooter like Durant. Antetokounmpo and his 7-4 wingspan do. The charitable reading of the situation is that Budenholzer is keeping this gun in his back pocket for a playoff rematch, but after the Miami streak last season, it’s pretty hard to believe. Could Giannis have modified Durant’s dagger enough to give the game to the Bucks? We’ll never know, but for Milwaukee’s sake, I hope Budenholzer doesn’t repeat the mistake when it counts.
Fortunately for the Bucks, he might not have a choice. Irving’s return makes the Nets even more dangerous offensively, but it also realigns clashes in a way that could force Budenholzer to stick Giannis on Durant. Who else is he going to keep? He can’t chase Joe Harris on screens all night. Their two Star Guards are too small for him to credibly defend himself for an entire night. If he’s defending downtown Brooklyn, what does Brook Lopez do? We might just see this game for now.
4. This game isn’t going to last much.
It might seem counterproductive in a story meant to detail the takeaways from tonight’s game … but getting a lot out of this one-off game would probably be misguided. Irving’s absence obviously makes a huge difference, but in reality the variance is why this game means so little in the grand scheme of things.
On the Brooklyn side, the Nets lost the turnover battle 17-5. It is quite explicable. Harden is always adjusting to his new teammates. Jordan, quite sensitive to the stripes, played more minutes than ever and spat the ball five times himself. They were missing their starting guard. Milwaukee is expected to win the revenue battle in this series, but not nearly as much.
Where the Bucks can rest easy is knowing that Brooklyn may never outperform them so badly again. The Nets have hit 15 of their 31 3-pointers, or over 48%. The Bucks went 11 of 37 for about 29%. Entering Monday, the Bucks were making 41.1% of their 3 points. It wasn’t sustainable, but no team should ever expect to lose an entire streak thanks to an 18% margin in 3-point shooting. The Nets are a better shooting team than the Bucks, but not nearly as much.
How much will this regression matter on either side? Well, we don’t know. The truth is, luck tends to play a much bigger role in the playoffs than anyone wants to admit. The Bucks could get hot and hit half their 3 points in four games and sweep the Nets. They could hit a cold streak like they did against Miami last season and get swept up. The two teams have steps to take on the deadline and on the buyout market despite their limited resources.
That makes Monday an opening salvo. The Nets won the first round. The second round is not yet scheduled, but will come later in the season. And then the big ones will come in June. The Nets should be favored after their win tonight, but a lot can change until then. The Eastern Conference is still very much to be won.
[ad_2]
Source link