Subterms
“If Book shoots it, I expect it to go in,” Chris Paul said after Phoenix took a 2-0 lead over Milwaukee in the N.B.A. Finals.PHOENIX — Devin Booker grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich., as a devoted Detroit Pistons fan. He keyed on Ben Wallace’s energy, Chauncey Billups’ steadiness, Rasheed Wallace’s tenacity and Tayshaun Prince’s versatility. More
Giannis Antetokounmpo came back from injury, but the Suns beat the Bucks, 118-105.PHOENIX — Giannis Antetokounmpo writhed on the court, eyes clenched, dreams ostensibly dashed, in Game 4 of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference finals last week against the Atlanta Hawks. More
When the Bucks acquired Holiday, it was hardly clear that they had solved their problems and improved their chances of enticing Giannis Antetokounmpo to stay.The Milwaukee Bucks were in an unusual position during the last off-season.They were title contenders facing wholesale upheaval, with Giannis Antetokounmpo’s so-called supermax contract extension unsigned after they had again slunk out of the playoffs disappointingly early, despite having the best regular-season record for a second consecutive season. More
Milwaukee was playing without its injured star, Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Bucks will face the Phoenix Suns in the finals.The Milwaukee Bucks advanced to their first N.B.A. finals since 1974 after defeating the Atlanta Hawks, 118-107, in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference finals Saturday night to take the series, four games to two. They will face the Phoenix Suns in the N.B.A. finals starting Tuesday. More
Injuries to stars have dominated and reshaped the playoffs, raising questions about the legitimacy of winning it all this year in a weakened field.The Milwaukee Bucks were in the midst of a comeback on Tuesday against the Atlanta Hawks, who were without their best player, Trae Young. With the Bucks up two games to one in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals series, a win would have put the franchise on the brink of making its first N.B.A. finals since 1974. More
Young, the Atlanta Hawks guard, isn’t the 3-point threat that you would think, considering how many deep shots he takes.When it comes to Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks star, much of the discussion is about whether he takes too many 3-pointers at the expense of his true strengths, which include his dominance in the paint.It’s a worthy discussion, but after Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals, in which the Bucks convincingly equalized the best-of-seven series in a blowout, it’s also worth asking if that discussion should be directed toward Atlanta’s Trae Young, too.The Bucks put the game away in the first half with a 20-0 run en route to a 125-91 victory. How they won wasn’t exactly basketball rocket science. They made 3-pointers at a high clip. In the first half, Milwaukee shot 10 for 18 from deep and didn’t look back. Many of those shots were open and weren’t much different from the Bucks’ looks that didn’t fall in Game 1.As the perimeter opened up in Game 2, so did the lane for Antetokounmpo, who relentlessly attacked the rim, both in transition and in post-ups, and finished with 25 points, 9 rebounds and 6 assists in 29 minutes.The Bucks also disrupted Young by playing him more physically. In particular, Milwaukee used its length to cut off passing lanes, forcing Young into nine turnovers. Jrue Holiday, an elite perimeter defender, was more aggressive in containing Young, particularly coming off screens.“They just picked up their pressure, their intensity,” Hawks Coach Nate McMillan said after the game. “They played with more sense of urgency. I didn’t think Jrue did anything other than stay focused on Trae, containing the ball and just being right there.”Young didn’t hesitate to take the blame.“That’s all on me,” Young said. “I’ve got to be better at taking care of the ball and just do a better job of at least getting us a shot. Nine turnovers. I’ve got to do better, and I will do better next game.”There is another issue with Young that doesn’t seem to get as much attention beyond the turnovers, and here he may have something in common with Antetokounmpo.Antetokounmpo went 0 for 3 from outside the perimeter in Game 2. And with each missed shot, TNT’s Reggie Miller harangued Antetokounmpo on the broadcast for taking those wide-open shots, saying that he was bailing out the Hawks’ defense. It has been a theme throughout Antetokounmpo’s playoff runs. In this year’s second-round series against the Nets, every time Antetokounmpo had an open look at Barclays Center, the crowd would roar with anticipation, hoping he would take the shot.Miller and the Nets fans were onto something. Those are not great shots for Antetokounmpo, given his strength near the rim. But three long jump shots in a game isn’t much in today’s N.B.A.Young, who is supremely confident in his long-range shooting, is an example of that. His confidence is part of what makes him such a great player and why the Hawks have unexpectedly made it to the conference finals. But there is growing evidence that Young’s 3-point shooting is almost as problematic — if not more so — than Antetokounmpo’s, because he takes many more of them and hasn’t consistently knocked them down.Young and his teammates struggled from 3 in Game 2, finishing 9 for 36 from 3. Young went 1 for 8. The one make was a highlight-worthy quick release following a crossover against Holiday. That’s just it with Young: When he succeeds, he does it in a flashy way, making it easy to forget about the seven misses. It’s easy to chalk this up to a poor shooting night. But in Game 1, when Young masterfully poured in 48 points, what went less noticed was that he shot 4 for 13 from 3.OK, that’s two poor shooting nights — at least from 3. That happens. But when one zooms out and looks at Young’s history as a shooter, there are holes. Against the Philadelphia 76ers in the semifinals, Young shot poorly from 3 over seven games: 32.3 percent on almost nine attempts a game. In the opening round against the Knicks: 34.1 percent over five games.Over 204 career regular-season games, Young has shot only 34.3 percent from 3. For someone who has averaged more than seven 3-point attempts per game for his career, that’s not very good.Part of this is the difficulty in the 3s Young takes. As the primary ballhandler, Young is excellent at creating shots for others, but he rarely has shots created for him. That means many of his 3-point shots are coming off pull-ups or step-backs, and rarely off catch-and-shoots. They’re also frequently contested.In the regular season, 43.8 percent of Young’s shots came after he dribbled the ball more than seven times, according to the N.B.A.’s tracking numbers. For comparison, that same number for Kevin Durant of the Nets was 13.1 percent. Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, a player Young has compared himself to, is at 24.3 percent.Young certainly looks the part of a great 3-point shooter: His form is similar to Curry’s. He is a great free-throw shooter (88.6 percent during the regular season). And he is often aggressively guarded as if he is a consistent threat as a shooter. But there’s isn’t evidence that he is much of one.During the regular season, when the closest defender was more than six feet away from Young, he only shot 39.6 percent from the field. During the playoffs, entering Friday, that number was slightly worse at 38.2 percent. (Curry, during the regular season, was at 48.9 percent. The Los Angeles Lakers’ LeBron James was at 45.2 percent, and Durant was at 56.3 percent.)This is an argument to occasionally guard Young in the same way that opposing teams guard Antetokounmpo: Goad him into taking more deep shots, particularly step-backs. Give him more space and put a defensive wall up around the rim. Young makes up for his shooting with his skillful ball-handling in the paint and by getting to the free-throw line. While Antetokounmpo bullies his way to the basket, Young uses finesse. One of Young’s best weapons is a floater, which he deploys often coming off a pick-and-roll and seeing a Bucks big man drop back in coverage. On Friday, Young was 5 for 8 inside the 3-point line.Simply put: The Bucks should encourage Young to take shots he doesn’t usually make and stop him from getting the ones he usually does. Giving him more space to operate on the outside might help neutralize his skill at breaking down defenses to get to the rim. The downside is that this leaves more space for Atlanta’s other shooters as well. But Young is adept at finding them anyway when he gets into the paint easily.Young is a better deep threat than Antetokounmpo, who shot 30.3 percent from 3 during the regular season. But to an extent, shooting has so far been a weakness in Young’s career — one that the Bucks should not be afraid to exploit as the series heads to Atlanta on Sunday.Young seems to think he’s a good long-range shooter. Don’t disabuse him of that notion. More
Injuries to the Nets’ stars weighed on the team, which had been favored to win the championship this season.The Milwaukee Bucks are headed to the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference finals after defeating the Nets, 115-111, in overtime on Saturday night in a decisive Game 7 for their semifinal series.Giannis Antetokounmpo led the way for the Bucks, scoring 40 points and grabbing 13 rebounds, allowing Milwaukee to withstand another masterful showing from Kevin Durant, who countered with 48 points and 9 rebounds of his own.Durant repeatedly exploited screen-and-rolls, and deftly used his post-up game to befuddle the Bucks defense. The deafening Barclays Center crowd roared when Durant hit a long jumper to tie the game with 1 second left in regulation to send the game to overtime. But the Nets, whose bench players scored no points and attempted no shots all game, were outscored in overtime, 6-2, and lost.It was a disappointing end to the series for the No. 2-seeded Nets, who entered the playoffs primed to make a championship run, with their stars at last seemingly healthy at the same time. Their best three players — James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Durant — played only eight games together during the regular season because of injuries and other absences.The Nets started the series favored against the third-seeded Bucks, but once again, injuries to the stars piled up, increasing the potential of an upset.In Game 1, James Harden left after less than a minute because of a right hamstring strain. Nonetheless, the Nets won the first two games of the series at home in convincing fashion.Then the Bucks squeezed out a win at home in Game 3. And in Game 4, the Nets lost Irving to a sprained ankle in the first half. The Nets also lost the game and appeared to be losing momentum with the best-of-seven series suddenly tied at two.But in Game 5, Durant put together one of the greatest playoff performances ever, finishing with 49 points, 17 rebounds and 10 assists and becoming the first player to record those numbers in a playoff game. Harden surprisingly returned for that game, but was largely ineffective. The Bucks led by as many as 17 points, only for Durant to snuff out their lead almost single-handedly in the second half. Jeff Green emerged to fill some of the gap left by Irving, scoring a playoff-career-high 27 points, the most points off the bench by a Net in postseason history.The Bucks struck back with strong performances from their stars in Game 6, with Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday scoring 89 of the Bucks’ 104 points.Throughout the series, the Nets tried to take advantage of Antetokounmpo’s ineffectiveness as a shooter, a weakness that has vexed him throughout several playoff runs. Defenders routinely left him open on the perimeter or sent him to the free-throw line, where he also struggled. That made Antetokounmpo, a two-time Most Valuable Player Award winner, less of a threat late in games.But Antetokounmpo still managed to have one of the best series of his career. Through the first six games, he averaged 30.5 points and 12.8 rebounds per game on 56.5 percent shooting. It was good enough to get the Bucks to a Game 7, and to the Eastern Conference finals for the second time in Antetokounmpo’s career.The Nets had difficulty getting production from their role players, many of whom had career years. Joe Harris, one of the best shooters in the N.B.A., struggled all series — shooting just 35.5 percent from the field and only 32.5 percent from 3 through the first six games.The Bucks’ series win brings them one step closer to winning their first championship since 1971, when the team was led by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In the Eastern Conference finals, they’ll will face the winner of the other semifinal matchup, between the Atlanta Hawks and the Philadelphia 76ers. That matchup is headed to a Game 7 on Sunday, after the Sixers tied the series behind a strong performance from Seth Curry on Friday. The Eastern Conference finals are set to begin on Wednesday.The Nets missed a chance to make their first conference finals since 2002 and 2003, when they were in New Jersey led by Jason Kidd. Both of those years, the Nets went to the finals. They haven’t won a championship since the A.B.A. merged with the N.B.A. in 1976. More
The Bucks tied their playoff series with the Nets, 2-2, as Kyrie Irving left with an injured ankle, joining James Harden on the Brooklyn sideline.MILWAUKEE — When the Nets settled into their hotel in the city’s Historic Third Ward last week, their 2-0 series cushion against the hometown Bucks looked especially cushy. A lead that reached as high as 49 points in the Nets’ Game 2 rout — without the injured James Harden — had the entire N.B.A. discouraged.By the time the Nets flew back home on Sunday night, after a second consecutive road defeat and the loss of another superstar, they were abruptly forced to contemplate the possibility that fielding a full-strength team is a luxury this season might never afford, no matter how lavishly the roster reads.Kyrie Irving’s right foot bent sharply in Sunday’s second quarter after he converted a layup and came down on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s right foot. Antetokounmpo had positioned himself for a rebound but left little landing space, and Irving was soon ruled out for the rest of the game with a sprained right ankle. It all meant that Kevin Durant would have to try to keep up with the emboldened Bucks alongside a rather limited supporting cast, while Harden stood throughout the game to shout instructions from the bench in street clothes.Nets guard Kyrie Irving grabbed his leg after being injured in the second quarter. Jeff Hanisch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersMilwaukee predictably pulled away for a 107-96 Game 4 victory that evened this best-of-seven, second-round series at two games apiece and which, coupled with the uncertainty of Irving’s status, erased any notion of comfort that the Nets once felt. Irving left Fiserv Forum on crutches and with his right foot in a walking boot after X-rays were negative, according to a person briefed on Irving’s status but unauthorized to discuss it publicly.“It was a big adjustment tonight to play without him and James,” Nets Coach Steve Nash said, referring to Irving and Harden. “But we’ve had that type of year.”Even by the standards of this injury-laden Nets season, in which Durant, Irving and Harden have scarcely been able to play together since Harden arrived in a four-team trade in mid-January, Sunday afternoon’s events had the jarring feel of a new low. That was the unavoidable takeaway without even factoring in the fire alarm after the final buzzer that forced all arena occupants, including both teams, to be evacuated for what the Bucks termed “precautionary reasons.”The Nets’ original aim for this Milwaukee trip was to win at least one game and set up Game 5 on Tuesday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn as a closeout opportunity, enabling Harden to essentially take the series off after aggravating a right hamstring injury in the opening minute of Game 1. With the series now tied, in what was billed in many corners as a matchup that could well produce the N.B.A.’s next champion, Nash found himself fielding questions about the urge to restore Harden to the lineup on Tuesday.“I think it’s an independent case,” Nash said, swatting down the idea that Irving’s prognosis would influence Harden’s timetable. “I don’t want James to be rushed back.”The other factor, beyond Irving’s setback, that prompted such questions: Milwaukee had begun to cause problems even before Irving’s exit and looked a lot more like the team that swept the Miami Heat in the first round. Antetokounmpo had the standout box-score line with 34 points and 12 rebounds, but P.J. Tucker was the Bucks’ unquestioned spark, easing the pressure (at least temporarily) on the Bucks’ under-fire coach, Mike Budenholzer. After scoring just 9 points in the first three games of the series, Tucker sank three 3-pointers from the corner, his well-chronicled favorite spot, and finished with 13 points and 7 rebounds.He might have been even more effective at the other end, imposing his physicality on Durant in precisely the manner the Bucks envisioned when they acquired him from Houston in a March trade. Durant led the Nets with 28 points and 13 rebounds but needed 25 shots to reach his scoring total. When Tucker was the primary defender, Durant shot 3 for 12.Hounded by the Bucks’ P.J. Tucker, the Nets’ Kevin Durant led the Nets with 28 points but needed 25 shots to reach his total.Jeff Hanisch/USA Today Sports, via ReutersDuring a verbal confrontation between Tucker and Durant in Milwaukee’s narrow Game 3 victory, Antjuan Lambert, a personal security guard for Durant who was hired by the Nets when they signed him, came onto the court and shoved Tucker. The Nets were notified on Saturday that Lambert had been barred by the league office from any further on-court involvement in the series.Sunday actually brought a positive start for the Nets, with Jeff Green being cleared to make his series debut after missing the first three games with a left plantar fascia strain. Green immediately drew a charge upon entering the game late in the first quarter, putting Antetokounmpo in early foul trouble, but the Nets’ hopeful vibe was soon doused by the sight of Irving hobbling to the locker room after he spent several minutes on the floor recovering from the painful landing.When the Nets finally surrendered in the fourth quarter, pulling Durant with 4 minutes 28 seconds remaining and the hosts leading by 99-84, Milwaukee’s crowd, which included the Wisconsin native J.J. Watt of the Arizona Cardinals, broke into a “Bucks in six” chant.You’d have struggled to find anyone, with or without local ties, who believed that outcome would be possible after Milwaukee’s humbling 125-86 defeat at Barclays Center last Monday in Game 2. In these playoffs, though, injuries continue to wield the largest influence. Health woes for star players were unrelenting throughout the second half of a harried regular season conducted in pandemic conditions — and remain so.Remember the warning we got from Philadelphia 76ers Coach Doc Rivers at the start of the second round?“It’s going to be the battle of the fittest by the end of this thing,” Rivers said. He was unsure at the time how well his star center, Joel Embiid, would fare trying to play through a slight meniscus tear in his right knee in the 76ers’ second-round series against Atlanta.Embiid, for now, is thriving. For the Nets and especially Durant? Suddenly nothing is slight about their shortage of playmakers or the load he’ll have to carry. More
