We are less than a month into the season, but with a rare degree of certainty, we can say that we have already seen the game of the year. The Brooklyn Nets hosted the Milwaukee Bucks in a heavyweight clash on Monday, and in a game that was played, the Nets came out with an exciting 125-123 victory after Khris Middleton lost a decisive 3-point game. on the bell.
Kyrie Irving may have missed the festivities, but the stars that were available gave a show. Kevin Durant-James Harden of Brooklyn gave the Nets 64 points, 18 assists and 15 rebounds, while Milwaukee’s three-headed monster, Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday, gave Bucks 81 points. In the end, the actors were the difference. Winning the Nets when they got 34 points from Joe Harris and Jeff Green is almost impossible, and for sure, the Bucks came right down.
This was the first time that we saw these two giants facing off, but it won’t be the last. In addition to a few more regular season dates on the schedule, these two are favorites to reach the Eastern Conference finals and fight for a chance at the championship. Here are four things you should take out of tonight’s thriller before the possible playoff match.
1. Milwaukee failed to exploit Brooklyn’s weaknesses
The Nets may have the greatest perimeter talent of any team in NBA history, but the price to guarantee it was depth elsewhere. Jeff Green is doing the bare minimum, but he started as a striker tonight. DeAndre Jordan has been a negative player so far this season and has even been released before Jarrett Allen left Harden, but he is the only legitimate NBA pivot on the list.
This gave the Bucks a pretty simple plan to defeat the Nets: kill them inside. Milwaukee was the team with the best NBA rebound by one mile last season. They allowed the fewest attempts to shoot in the restricted area and produced a repeat of the MVP winner who was shooting more than 82 percent within one meter of the basket so far this season. Brooklyn will win the battle behind the arch most nights. Milwaukee could have pushed him away with the proper internal dominance.
However, the Nets surpassed the Bucks, 49 to 41. They scored more points in the painting too, 52 to 50. If this continues in the postseason, it is over. The Nets are going to the finals. Their pitching and kicking is too good for them to lose when they’re winning on the inside as well.
Give credit to whoever is due. Jordan, who fought for most of the season, gave the Nets 38 excellent minutes on Monday. Brooklyn won those minutes by five points and drew with Antetokounmpo in the lead with 12 rebounds. More specifically, it proved to be a real deterrent for Giannis as a driver, forcing him to give six 3-point points and several medium-range jumpers. Makes sense. The common strategy against Giannis is to build a wall of defenders on the edge. Well, Jordan has very limited mobility at this point in his career. Certain big men, like Anthony Davis, are going to eat you alive. But due to its size and robustness, it is practically a human wall, and that made life very difficult for Giannis and the Bucks in this game.
2. The Bucks finally found some clutch offense
Milwaukee should be encouraged on some fronts, but nothing more than its clutch attack. Coming in tonight, the Bucks were ranked 12th out of 100 possessions. They were 11th last season and 8th the year before, and in both cases, they collapsed in the postseason, when Giannis failed to hit the shots. But in the last five minutes of this game? They scored 13 points.
Now, some of those points were unstable. Two of them, for example, left Durant on the assumption that the ball was leaving the field instead of actively ricocheting. The central problem with Giannis being an insufficient creator of the end game still exists.
But Middleton’s continued improvement, coupled with Holiday’s presence as a secondary breeder, gives Milwaukee enough alternatives to find credible points. Having two additional stars of his quality makes it easier to find uses outside the ball for Giannis, such as the pick-and-roll display. The Bucks will not have an elite attack at the end of the game, but it proved tonight that it can score points against the team that really needs to win to reach the finals.
His real offensive problems came from the bench, which hit 7 out of 23 on the field and scored just 19 points. The Bucks desperately need another breeder for when one or more of their stars are in the bank. It doesn’t have to be a star, but someone in the Lou Williams-Derrick Rose class of “older point guard who can score 20 points on a random night” would be very, very helpful. They hired DJ Augustin thinking he could 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 number of reasons, but Mike Budenholzer’s dogmatic commitment to his old defensive scheme was a major problem. He maintained fall coverage throughout the year and Miami snipers destroyed it. He refused to increase the workload of his best players and his bank could not compensate. But most cruelly, he refused to let his Defensive Player of the Year guard Miami get any closer. Jimmy Butler killed the Bucks in the fourth period, while Giannis watched helplessly from his place as a weak pitcher.
Give Budenholzer some credit: at least he appreciated the magnitude of the moment. Giannis played 40 minutes against the Nets, the first time in a game without a regular season extension under Budenholzer. But again, his coach refused to release him on the opponent’s best player. Giannis was not protecting Durant when he counted, and for sure, Durant hit the victory dagger with 36 seconds remaining. Antetokounmmpo was in Jeff Green in the corner.
Durant was guarded by Middleton and Holiday for most of the game. Middleton is a good defender and Holiday is excellent, but neither of them is big enough to face a two-meter sniper like Durant. Antetokounmpo and its wingspan of 7-4 yes. The charitable reading about the situation is that Budenholzer is putting that gun in his back pocket for a playoff rematch, but after the Miami series last season, this is very hard to believe. Did Giannis alter Durant’s dagger enough to give the Bucks the game? We will never know, but for Milwaukee’s sake, luckily, Budenholzer doesn’t repeat the mistake when it matters.
Fortunately for Bucks, he may have no choice. Irving’s return makes the Nets even more offensive, but it also realigns the clashes in a way that could force Budenholzer to put Giannis on Durant. Who else will he protect? He can’t chase Joe Harris through screens all night. His two-star guards are too small for him to defend credibly for an entire night. If he is defending downtown Brooklyn, what is Brook Lopez doing? We can only see this confrontation yet.
4. It will not sustain much with this game
This may seem counterproductive in a story designed to detail the results of tonight’s game … but getting too much out of that single game would probably be unwise. Irving’s absence obviously makes a huge difference, but in fact, variance is the reason why this game means so little in the grand scheme of things.
At the end of Brooklyn, the Nets lost the 17-5 turnover battle. This is quite explainable. Harden is still adapting to new teammates. Jordan, very susceptible to strips, played more minutes than ever and coughed the ball five times. They were losing their initial owner. Milwaukee should win the turnover battle in this series, but not that much.
Where Bucks can rest easy is knowing that Brooklyn will never outdo them so much. The Nets hit 15 of their 31 points out of 3, which represents more than 48 percent. The Bucks went from 11 out of 37 to about 29 percent. Entering Monday, the Bucks was making 41.1 percent of its 3 points. This was not sustainable, but no team should expect to miss an entire series thanks to an 18 percent margin on 3-point shots. The Nets are a better shooting team than the Bucks, but not much.
How much will this regression matter for each side? Well, we don’t know. The truth is that luck tends to play a much bigger role in the postseason than anyone would like to admit. The Bucks can get hot and hit half of their 3 points in four games and sweep the Nets. They can have a cold run, as they did against Miami last season, and be swept away. Both teams have moves to make on time and in the procurement market, despite their limited resources.
This makes Monday more of an opening salvo. The Nets won the first round. The second round has not yet been scheduled, but will take place at the end of the season. And then the big ones will come in June. The Nets should be favored after tonight’s victory, but a lot can change between now and then. The Eastern Conference is still up for grabs.