The Milwaukee Bucks might feel reassured by turning a 21-point Boston Celtics lead into a one-possession difference at the final buzzer in Wednesday night’s 122-119 final, but that’d be disingenuous.
Granted, the Bucks were far from full strength when they faced the Celtics because they did not have two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo on their roster. However, Boston was without Sam Hauser, who had just finished a 48-hour streak of making a career-high 10 three-pointers, and Jrue Holiday, the team’s defensive captain. Thus, when Jaylen Brown took the initiative and aggressively pressured Damian Lillard at full-court to set the tone in the first quarter, the much-anticipated implications of a possible Eastern Conference finals preview between Boston and Milwaukee were severely dashed.
In response to Brown’s opening defensive move, the Bucks buckled on that end of the floor — and massively.
Ever since Milwaukee’s front office got desperate to keep Antetokounmpo satisfied following his offseason threats to bail on the team, the wound of Jrue Holiday’s eventual move from the Bucks to Boston has grown. No longer can Milwaukee rely on Holiday’s defensive cheat code which erases opposing teams from effectively setting screens and creates a nightmare for others in 1-on-1 matchups.
That’s not something you can replace quickly, and in Milwaukee’s case, it also can’t be replaced by the NBA trade deadline in February or throughout the latter stretch of the offseason. The narrative trailed the Bucks for the first part of the 2023–24 campaign and then came back to Boston’s favor, enabling the Celtics to win seven straight games.
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“You (substitute Holiday) cannot.” Rivers highlighted, “That was one of the first things I said, like, we’re not going to run the Jrue Holiday defense.” “.. You have to play differently as a result. We don’t have Jrue’s ability to press the ball up the floor. We lack guards capable of climbing over screens. We’re still learning how to play differently because of that.
Milwaukee applied a heavy emphasis on “still.”
The fact that the Bucks defense was so bad that the Celtics consistently had opportunities for picture-perfect scoring plays was even more impressive than their commanding double-digit advantage. As Milwaukee pathetically tried to play a zone defense that frequently saw one or two players out of place, it soon turned into amateur hour. Attempting to pressure Boston’s ball handler in an incompetent manner resulted in a few uncontested 3-point attempts that weren’t stopped to the caliber that the Celtics have demonstrated.
Boston made 18 of 40 three-pointers (45%) but missing a few extremely good setups that didn’t say anything about the Celtics. blowing a late-game lead
It encompassed Milwaukee’s worst weakness (almost) as well: defense. Rivers still hasn’t figured out how to switch up his perimeter lineup or use a two-man block to slow down rival teams’ pick-and-rolls. The Bucks’ assist defense is equally ineffective, and the more inventive they try to be, the more unlikely it is that they will be to produce defensive stops.
When Boston’s lead was reduced to two points with 32.1 seconds remaining in regulation by Bobby Portis of Milwaukee, that was the deciding factor. The Bucks’ lack of knowledge on the defensive end of the court cost them when it mattered most.
“The Bucks were forced to get distorted a little bit by the guys’ excellent spacing against the zone.””Obviously they’re playing (zone) to throw us off rhythm and get to different things and I thought we got some good looks against the zone. I thought there were a couple of plays that didn’t go our way,” Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said following the game.
Mazzulla went on, “We were able to get to some things there once we were able to, kind of, distort the spacing and get to what we wanted — Jayson (Tatum) with the ball at the top and making plays.”
Milwaukee’s hopes of forcing OT were dashed when Brown drew a crucial foul and made two clutch free throws to extend Boston’s advantage to four points. Rather than succumbing to the persistent stigma that keeps surfacing, the Bucks self-sabotaged an opportunity to reassure themselves by failing to mount a defensive strategy that didn’t undermine what Rivers’ playbook envisioned.
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