The Boston Celtics came out swinging in game 2 and evened the series 1-1 with the Milwaukee Bucks. Throwin’ Stones discusses what we’ve seen from the series so far.
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Matt Bassin: What a difference a day makes, huh? A couple of days ago we were saying how bad the Boston Celtics looked, how good the Milwaukee Bucks looked after that Game One beat down in Beantown. Now Jalen Brown rebounds from a 12-point game to a 30-point game. The man came out, flat out, and told everyone after the game, “it’s the playoffs and we want to be aggressive from the gate. They certainly accomplished that, scoring the first seven points, and jumping out to an 18-3 lead. Before, basically from start to finish steamrolling the Bucks.Â
Ryan Griffin: Yeah, they were pretty much, it seemed like they were ahead 15 to 20 the entire game. At one point, I think it was even close to 30 and then the Bucks would get it back down to 15. And then they were really never able to get it any closer than that. What the Celtics were able to do was play some really good defense, especially at the start, and set that tone with Jaylen Brown. I think he had 25 points just at halftime and it was really an incredible game by them; Al Horford has done a good job on Giannis, for the first two games that we’ve had in the series.
And if Boston’s going to play defense like that, they’re going to be really hard to beat. And now you have to go to Milwaukee with the series tied 1-1, and at least try and get one there, so that you can reclaim home-court advantage because they still don’t have it right now. They could easily get it back obviously with winning the game in Milwaukee, but playing like they did and just having kind of everybody clicking on all cylinders, that was a really impressive game.Â
Concerning Khris Middleton, the Bucks gave an update. It doesn’t sound like he’ll be back. It was more just like a regular medical update, which is weird. Cause I don’t really know that I’ve seen so many of those and I saw the tweet. I was like, oh my God, like he’s coming back and he’s not.
But I think that obviously bodes well for the Celtics. And I think they are, they’re not in as good of a spot as they want to be. They should be encouraged by their game two performance.
Matt Bassin: Yeah, I think, we talked about it. I asked you flat out, was this just a bad game or is this a sign of things to come; getting lost in the shuffle of an overreaction to a Game One beat down is Chris Middleton ain’t coming back and Milwaukee is going to desperately need their second-best player if they want to survive this year is against Boston. Because Boston has the ability to do what they did the other night where you’re despite missing the defensive player of the year for the bruised thigh, that defense was absolutely on display.
You hold the bucks to 86 points. Overall Giannis, look, man’s a freak. He’s a Greek Freak for a reason. Still almost had a triple-double of 28, 9, and seven, but it took him 27 shots to get those 28 points. And unless you are going to get a consistent outing from Jrue Holiday, from Bobby Portis, from Grayson Allen, who definitely did not have a good outing in his last game, it’s going to be hard for the Bucks to get past this Celtics team, which has the ability to get 30 points from Tatum and Brown most nights. More often for Tatum, obviously, but Brown absolutely has the ability. And when you got guys like Grant Williams, who’s going to chip in with 20 of his own. It’s going to make life a lot easier for the Celtics to get by the Bucks.
The Bucks are going to have to find a way to get guys like Allen and Portis more involved offensively, and not relying solely on the Greek freak. Otherwise, you’re going to end up with basically what the Mavs have right now, which is, one guy and everyone else trying to figure it out. And that’s not going to get it done against the defense that the Boston Celtics can bring.
