Tatum stuck to Holliday on the sideline, completely blocking his passing route, and Giannis Antetokounmpo ran all the way from the edge of the penalty area to near the midline to get the ball. When he received the ball, there were only 11 seconds left on the attack. Grant Williams took a big step back, steadily stuck in the path he had cut from the middle.
At that moment, Tatum was on the bottom line, Jaylen Brown was sneaking in from the top of the arc, and Horford had let Jevon Carter back into the box. Alphabet brother swept a glance, continue to choose from the middle of the road hard, he used his left arm to push Gwe, Gwai did not move, so he collected the ball backwards, to the left made a shooting fake action, Gwee quickly stepped forward, clinging to him, forcing him to become his dead ball.
If it had been an ordinary defensive round, the Celtics' defense would have been a success: Giannis had moved away from the basket, lost shooting space, and could no longer dribble. The Green Army players, who had been piling up in the penalty area in the last moment, had turned their attention to their original defenders and began to watch out for the alphabet brother's shot.
But Giannis's behavior surprised everyone, he twisted his body to the right, took another step into the box and threw the ball up. Tatum had already chased the empty Holliday back to the basket, and he saw the basketball draw a strange arc to fly towards the rebound, so he relaxed, ready to grab the rebound, and quickly pushed back. Then he was stunned to see a correctional shadow rise up, directly tucking the ball bouncing back from the rebound back into the basket with both hands, widening the point difference to 16 points.
Tatum still had a lingering feeling when he mentioned the ball after the game: "It was a hellish round. That round taught us that we had to play more steadily, never eat his fake moves, stick between him and the basket every round, and not give him room to rush and jump under any circumstances, otherwise the result would be like that. ”
Alphabet Brother's comments on the ball after the game looked a bit versailles: "I was dead at the time, so I casually threw the ball on the rebound, but God forbid, I snatched the ball back, I was so lucky, haha." ”
That's how the two sides compare in this game. The Celtics, who had just emerged from the joy of sweeping, were hit in the head in this game, crushing the Nets in the last series with talent, physique and athleticism, and then in this series they met better opponents than them in this series. There are no dragic, Curry Jr. or Mills in this team who can easily single, and you have to face challenges for every point you score on their heads. At least in the first game, the double probe challenge failed: 10 of 31 shots, a total of 33 points.
Of course, against the strongest defense line in the league, last year's Finals MVP didn't always take advantage. Udoka almost carried the spirit of the last round of defense against Durant on him: Horford or Gwicka stuck to the line to prevent him from hitting the basket directly, if he called for cover, he would give him a pinch or a big delay, once he broke through the paint, one of the league's best basket guards, Robert Williams, would let go of his defender to cover him, and if he wanted to hit his opponent on the edge of the box, someone would release his defensive object to attack him at any time.
This defensive system is a heavenly net, completely blocking all the easy scoring opportunities of the alphabet brother. In this game, Giannis threw his third-lowest career playoff shooting percentage, shooting just 9 of 25 and 6 of 17 in the box. But Udoka made the dogmatic mistake: The letters were not Durant after all, and he delivered 12 assists.
After the game, Udoka admitted that the team's defensive strategy needed to change in this game: "In the first half our defensive rotation was not sharp enough. Our players need to analyze the specific problems, should they pinch him or should they let their teammates defend alone? Defending a player like him would have been like choosing one of two bottles of poison, and I think we sometimes give too much unnecessary defense. Giannis would deliberately lure us to wrap him up and then shoot the ball to find the shooter when the weak side rotation wasn't in place, and our pinch sometimes went up too fast, giving him too much time to find our rotation flaws. ”
Middleton was sidelined with an injury and Holliday received two foul breaks early in the first quarter, but Giannis was not intimidated by the defensive pressure that the Celtics piled up on him. Alphabet is not Durant after all, he is stronger, younger, healthier, and most importantly, he is not a scorer like Durant, he has always been a passing player.
This series of differences also changed the course of the game, when the Celtics' assistant defenders came to interfere with and pinch Giannis, the alphabet brother could dribble and protect the ball for a longer time with the bag, lure the opponent's defensive formation to appear bigger, and then he could find Grayson Allen, Pat Connaughton and Bobby Portis in the vacant position - this one-star offensive process we are all familiar with, but in the face of the Celtics, the league's top defensive intensity remains calm and smooth, It is even more revealing of Giannis's ability as a ball carrier in recent years - of course, the congenital gap has always existed, Giannis played 38 minutes under the all-pervasive defensive pressure of the Celtics, but the Celtic players who took turns defending him took the lead in showing fatigue.
Throughout the game, there are three stats that prove that the defensive strategies that left Durant breathless and error-prone on the offensive end did not work for Giannis: When Alphabet Brother was on the floor, 55 of the Bucks scored or assisted directly from him; the Bucks won 23 points against the Celtics while on the floor and lost 11 points in his absence; and the Bucks' shooters shot 12 of 18 (including 7-of-12 from three-pointers) when they received his pass. After the game, Giannis praised the team's shooters: "I know they are all great shooters and they wouldn't hesitate to get that chance. ”
But in fact, the Bucks' three-point shooting in this game is 12-of-34, shooting less than the Celtics in both shooting and shooting. So why is it that from the scene, the Bucks shooter can throw dead people, and the Celtic shooter can not shoot dead people? On that note, we have to revisit the Bucks' defensive strategy.
Since Budenholzer took office in Milwaukee, the Bucks have been one of the best teams in the league to guard the basket. They allow their opponents to shoot some three-pointers, but once they can't shoot, they have the opportunity to grab long rebounds and push back. Budenholzer didn't believe opponents could always shoot them, and this basketball philosophy worked out early this morning, with Giannis and Brooke Lopez handing out 5 blocks, but they interfered with a lot more shots than that. The Celtics shot just 10-of-31 in the Bucks' box, shooting the lowest percentage from the 32.3 percent box than any NBA playoff game in the last five years. To make matters worse, while the Celtics shot 18-of-50 from beyond the three-point line (36 percent shooting wasn't bad), the Bucks scored 28 points on a fast-break pushback. The Celtics didn't shoot badly, but that level of long-range shooting wasn't enough to wreak havoc on the Bucks and change their defensive strategy. In the rhythm of the game that the Bucks are accustomed to, Giannis is good at, the Celtics are knocked down by technology and lose the first game of the series.
The Celtics have countless reasons to excuse themselves: Brown is still in Ramadan, his hamstring injury is not completely better, the game is 4-of-13 and has seven turnovers, looking completely inactive; Smart's injury has made the Celtics worse. Since his injury, the Celtics' transfer of the ball has clearly stagnated. But if this year's ups and downs have taught the Celts anything, it's never to make excuses for failure.
Veteran Horford concluded: "There's nothing to say, they just played better and worked harder than us in this game. We'll have to figure out a way to turn this series around in the next game. ”
Turning a win against a win is the main theme of the Celtics this season. Since 2022, this team has come a long way. On January 21, their record was still dismal at 23-24, and now everyone recognizes them as title contenders. They know very well that they can use a lot of physical confrontation to increase the intensity of the game, so that most opponents are afraid of them. They know how to face strong enemies and how to learn from failure.
Having lost home-court advantage in this series, the Celtics should have realized that their opponents have gone from a team that struggled to figure out who they were in the playoffs and the head coach didn't know who could play before the game to a team that just carved their name into the O'Brien Cup last year. Before this series began, there were a lot of questions about the Celtics' quality. They swept the biggest pre-season title favorite 4-0, was the Celtics too strong or the Nets too weak? It's hard to jump to conclusions from just one game, but at least from this game, we can tell that at least this season, the Bucks are a much stronger team than the Nets, and Alphabet Brother is a player more difficult to deal with than Durant — looking at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends, we don't have to admit that he is the strongest man in the active league. His talent is too high, his progress is too fast, if the Celtics want to tie his hands and feet and restrict his play, they can not follow the previous defensive strategy, they have to change to a new set of "anti-alphabet armor".
Here's the scariest thing: If the Celtics, who are the number one defensive player in the league, can't find a way to hold the letters, it's hard to imagine anyone who can.
The "Bing with Ball" program continued this week
The live broadcast time is still 18:00 on Monday evening