Cade, Book, Hayes, Beef Stew, Bey and future core players = instant champion with LBJ retiring. Who says no?
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Chris Paul is a surgeon. Not even like Jr’s defense has been at all bad.
To be fair to the Pistons, a bunch of teams passed on Book. It was also a pretty bad draft - from my count, 17 of the 60 draft picks are actually in an NBA rotation now, and only two are all-star caliber (Towns, Booker).
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I just watched Game 2. Wow. It’s hard to criticize Milwaukee until they fail to hold serve, but Phoenix looks really strong. Book and Paul making tough shot after tough shot, and then a role player here and there too. I guess the big Q is if the role players’ contribution travels to Wisconsin.
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Booker so much more comfortable without PatBev out there.
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I think this series is still up in the air if the game two Giannis is what we can expect (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) going forward. The Suns canned 50% of their threes in game 2, including a bunch from some role guys - not sure if that travels to Milwaukee.
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Agreed. Quite frankly in a vacuum game two was more encouraging for Milwaukee than Phoenix IMO. To lose the points in the paint battle 54 to 28 is real discouraging and that is much less variable than 3 point shooting. Like if you shoot 20/40 from 3 and the opponent goes 9/31 you should win in a comfortable blowout, not a game that Milwaukee was basically always within striking distance.
Of course it’s not in a vacuum and it did give the Suns a huge 2-0 edge and eliminates the Bucks margin for error going forward. In a short series pulling out a game like that is sometimes all it takes to be able to pull it off.
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The Bucks simply cannot have Middleton and Holiday shoot 12-37 again. At least one of those two needs to post.
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Yeah more games like that and the Bucks can do it. Importantly, Middleton and Holliday combined for 50% from the field a d 50% from the floor (and Giannis made his FTs).
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I can only get the skycam feed (which has the benefit of on-court audio and no Mark Jackson) so I had no idea what caused Ayton to miss that alley oop.
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That’s one of the best defensive plays you’re going to see.
At the end of the day, the Bucks won because through a combination of turnover margin and offensive rebounding they took 24 more shots (if you include being fouled on shots as well).
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How bout Devin Booker intentionally fouling Holiday but the refs just covering their eyes for a second?
A complete embarrassment for the NBA.
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He fouled Holiday pretty egregiously like 2 minute later!
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I thought that JVG voiced it well late in the fourth: the players are confused because the refs are calling it differently than the regular season, when it takes less contact to draw a foul. But then again this is the finals, and since the players are actually playing defense all the time the standard has to change or everyone would foul out by halftime.
I don’t think the players should be confused – playoff basketball is different than regular season basketball and the finals is different than the rest of the playoffs, etc. But this does say something about the structure of the game, the meaningfulness of the regular season, and it’s off to the races with the ``there’s too many games/they’ll never shrink the schedule’’ discussion.
As for Booker himself, I think he’s learned a few things from PatBev. Which, in the big picture, is Adam Silver’s problem. He seems to be a big-picture guy, and that view includes a reasonable expectation that if you let a guy make a mockery of the spirit of the rules whilst often following the letter, you’re just making the game harder over time to referee properly.
It was a weirdly officiated game to be sure. The NBA refs went 90s style and let them play more last night, though the fact that Booker had to sit for a long stretch with 5 fouls likely impacted the outcome. But when they’re letting guys not even step out of bounds to do an in-bound pass after a basket and when Giannis somehow can refuse the ball from the ref when going through his ridiculous free throw routine I guess it is what it is - let the players put on a show rather than have the refs call much.
Seems headed for a game seven to me - Phoenix will come out strong at home and maybe stay out of foul trouble while Giannis may not get or hit as many FTs on the road. Then Bucks win again at home and everyone gets what they want - game 7. Should be fun.
Other than the nuts Booker one (and then the somewhat less nuts but still nuts second one) I didn’t think the refs foul calls were that bad. I think the three shot foul on Tucker for his fifth was pretty sketchy but also the sort of call that gets blown a ton.
We all know they hate to foul out the stars, but Booker himself has to be smarter about foul trouble. I didn’t feel like they were calling nonsense on him as they were in the Clipps series.
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No - and foul 6 was also an intentional foul! He wrapped up!
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The NBA is such a tough game to ref. In an ideal world you wouldn’t have all of these off-ball ticky tack fouls…but, if you don’t call them, it turns into a grabby wrestling hands fest. Plus every NBA player is now an Oscar-level actor/improv artist.
I think the 5th foul on Booker was a garbage call, but you have to make that egregious 6th foul call (especially if you are going to call a foul on that 3 pointer a few minutes earlier - definitely caught his wrist, but it was after the shot/follow through).