BOSTON – It felt like an eternity since the Celtics had made several stops in a row. The Celtics tried to run to close the gap in the fourth quarter, but failed to come out.
So after Al Horford forced Jrue Holiday to miss, the moment seemed to finally be there as Janice Adetokunmpo kept trying to get through Grant Williams and kept bouncing off a brick wall.
Williams fought him relentlessly all afternoon, but you can never completely close Antetokounmpo. You can only hold it until it finally breaks.
So while Williams continued to take blow after blow and stand up, Adetokunmpo had to go deep into his bag. He faked it, as if going to fade, pulled Williams out of position, and then somehow slipped just below the big Celtics. He was out of control and too far from the basket to withstand one of Monstar’s blows. The game seemed to be over, so Jason Tatum was just watching the ball fly out of the backboard, waiting for it to fall into his hands.
As the Greek freak would ever allow this to happen.
Janice comes off the board for the definite blow! #NBAPlayoffs, presented by Google Pixel on ABC pic.twitter.com/vyn50aa2Au
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“He made a hell of a game,” Tatum said after Milwaukee won Game 1 101-89. “We need to be more solid, not stick to their fakes, stay between the man and the basket, and not give them a wide open band and stuff like that.”
What was so strange at the time was that he seemed to shock the Celtics by stunning them. Williams made several consecutive stops at Antetokounmpo and Boston began to enter the transition and swing the ball for open 3s. But because the Milwaukee defense overwhelmed them and covered the back of every game, even when the Celtics started to score, the Boston simply lost that advantage.
They took Antetokounmpo out of him long enough to try to break away, but they couldn’t get anything out of it before he took advantage of the moment again.
This time, Williams didn’t even protest when Adetokunmpo pulled him back. They knew what it was. Milwaukee beat them again and again. It was a technical knockout.
Udoka had seen enough clearing the bench as fans emptied the arena two minutes later. After watching last year’s MVP in the finals tear apart everything his league-leading defense threw, Udoka saw the defending champions run the day. I didn’t need to pull it anymore. This is what Antetokounmpo does with you. It makes you feel like there’s nothing to do after you’ve achieved your goal.
When Adetokunmpo pulled a defender to the corners in the post-up, Boston usually sent help with a pass. This worked against Brooklyn as Kevin Durant had more trouble hitting the stand and he kicked the short shooters. But Adetokunmpo can stay long enough to make a pass, as help runs away from the shooter or when he lures the double completely out of position. He then turned to the top scorers in Grayson Allen, Pat Conauton and Bobby Portis.
“When you give them the ball, they don’t hesitate,” Adetokunmpo said. “I know that if I pass to Grayson right in my pocket, the ball will rise.
In the first half, Adetokunmpo played mostly against Horford and sometimes Rob Williams. This gave the Bucks star more opportunities to drive or pass and speed when he hit the first defender. So Boston had to play a bit in zone 2-3 with the way they would sink an assistant defender from the shooter with one pass.
One counteraction to what works well was for Portis to cross the bar to try to force this loose double team and make the Celtics switch. Jaylan Brown misses Jason Tatum, who hands him Portis, Portis opens under the edge, and Rob Williams has to leave Conneton in the corner to stop Portis.
When Horford was left on the island in the first half, Adetokunmpo stepped over it, turned back across the lane and reached the edge with ease. Nothing really worked consistently against the player who pressed your buttons more than anyone in the game.
“Our rotations in the first half were not as sharp as they should have been. We were a little slow in that regard, “Udoka said. “Sometimes we will pursue him. Sometimes, based on who’s defending him and in what position, we want to let these guys stay straight, especially when he’s looking straight at you, trying to lure you out of this double team. At times we walked too fast. He was watching us and our rotations were not sharp.
It was clear that Adetokunmpo had never been bothered by what Boston had thrown at him, away from Kevin Durant in the final round. The big difference between Milwaukee and Brooklyn is that Antetokounmpo is spoiled by much taller shooters. Allen is probably his shortest option for kicking, and Allen has not been stepped by any of the endings that have happened to him.
Milwaukee was 6-for-11 with 3 catches and a shot in the first half. Adetokunmpo scored or assisted on 55 of Bucks’ 87 points scored while on the floor. Even when Horford or Grant Williams stopped him in a single reflection, he would stop jumping or hit Dirk Nowitzki’s fading. There was always the right answer.
“Those great players who command the double team, sometimes you want to take your poison,” Udoka said. “I think we helped unnecessarily when we had good matches with him. If he shoots a missing jump, we’ll live with that shot. I think we were spinning there and our rotations were not sharp.
The question is how Boston can tighten the game plan for Tuesday. The barrier and scraping that knocked Durant out in the first round did little for Milwaukee. It’s too exhausting to do it against Adetokunmpo all night.
The free doubles did not stop him from driving, as he could go through moves to defeat the defenders on the spot and avoid a trap. Then he could rise and rise above the top of the defense.
Boston would try hard to double it to the baseline, but they had to send help from a close shooter or from a weak side angle. He found these archers reliably to the point that Udoka had to abandon him.
It is rare to see the Celtics coach unable to solve the puzzle overnight, but they went from facing a team last week that admitted admitting to trying to figure it out, to a team whose identity is engraved on Larry’s trophy. O’Brien.
“These are the playoffs. “It’s really not the time to be surprised,” Brown said. “They are the defenders of the champions and we have to go out and play basketball. We must be ready to go, no matter what the injuries are or whatever we are doing. You have to have everyone connected and be mentally closed and ready to leave everything on the floor. It comes down to this. Who will leave everything there? We will be a more hard-working team, we just have to stay focused. “
This trick should last all night. Bucks’ second effort went through the crisis, as Boston was still just trying to find a way to stop Adetokunmpo. Perhaps their last chance to return to the game came when Marcus Smart fed Antetokoummpo into the Horford-Grant Williams trap, after which Williams returned to Portis to stop him from taking 3. But after Grant Williams threw Portis off the line, no one came to follow, Portis missed anyway, and Brown couldn’t hold Alan’s box.
Tatum’s continuing disappointment summed it all up. They went so far in this game as they did well, but Bucks crossed the finish line. Now they have to leave that behind. They have controlled the matches with their physical strength and effort for months and have become one of the best teams in the league because of this. They learned how to move forward from repeated failures and have a short memory. Can they prevent the return of these habits after they finally face a worthy opponent?
“It’s just a game. You can move on, “Brown said.” I definitely need to watch the movie, figure out what we did wrong, and go out and get better than him. But one game doesn’t win you a series. And we know you’re up. “It’s a game and we know you’re playing down now. We can’t lose our faith, we can’t lose our resilience or our confidence. Now go out and play Celtic basketball.”
(Photo: Nathaniel C. Butler / NBAE via Getty Images)
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