Well, it looks like Chris Paul's shoulder is alright!

Well, the hotly awaited Bucks-Nets series was pretty good for like 3 quarters. Now I'm just enjoying the bizarre resurgence of Blake Griffin.

He must have undergone some super advanced, mystical healing therapy in Europe like Kobe did back in the day. He definitely didn't mail it in or anything.

Looks like the Bucks still have hope.

Man, that was a GRIND down the stretch. It wasn't pretty, but wins are wins. Good defense by the Bucks but they can't bet on holding the Nets down that much, they'll shoot better than that more often than not even with good defense. They gotta get their offense firing on all cylinders. And for more than one quarter.

That was an ugly ass game between the Bucks and Nets, but at least Milwaukee got one. I'm starting to think that Giannis is personally trying to kill me himself with all of these early shot-clock 3s. Someone else made this image, but it sums up my experience perfectly:

Well, the Jazz have blown this one open.

And it comes down to the wire again. Win or lose, gotta work on figuring out the zone defense cause that threw them into a serious funk.

After the first quarter, I thought the Bucks would have a chance to make things interesting but then I saw the second quarter. The Bucks ended up winning the game but I just don't have faith in this going more than 5 games, the Nets just seem dominant at times. 

The Bucks managed to make Brooklyn's two stars look somewhat mortal for the first quarter and large periods of the second half - not going to say that they bottled them up or anything implying that Irving and Durant couldn't have popped the lid off at any time. Durant was 11-28, and Irving was 9-22. Every team in the league will take those shooting numbers from them on any given night.

Not only that, but a lot of the shots that Nets role players were hitting left and right in the first two games weren't going there way last night. League leading 3P% Joe Harris was 1-7 from behind the arc and 1-11 overall. Blake Griffin only took three 3s in the game, whereas he made four in Game 1. Man, Bruce Brown had the game of his life though. He was freaking killing it in the second. After the Bucks built up a 21-point lead, he was largely responsible for getting it back down to single digits when he and Durant kept running the same play over and over to get him clean looks right at the goal. Finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds.

The Bucks also finally got the rebounding  battle in their favor. Blake Griffin doing his best Rodman impersonation those first two games, but the Bucks outrebounded the Nets 56-50 and shut off the pump on all of those second chance points they were getting in the first two games. They weren't going to win a single game allowing the greatest offense in the league today so many extra opportunities.

Still, because Giannis personally hates me, he felt the need to take eight 3s last night, most of them with at least 15 seconds on the shotclock or so. And Lopez was once again relegated to being a lowly pleb hanging out on the elbow or above the break instead of gashing his defender in the post like he had no problem doing in Game 1. He had JOE FREAKING HARRIS on him at various points, and I'm screaming at Coach Bud and the Bucks to get him the ball!

I cape up for Giannis a lot on t his site, mostly because of a certain person who pretends to know basketball yet clearly doesn't watch a minute of it,  but I will be the first one to say that he is an 82-game player, not a 16-game player. That booty of his gets super-clinched in June, where he suddenly forgets how to shoot free throws, or even get them above the rim. All of the good habits he's spent the season working on, like finding open teammates when there's a wall in front of him, or a few shot types we think he's added to his arsenal all go out of the window, and he goes back to caveman ball. The Bucks cannot win a championship as currently constructed, and Giannis is not a #1 on a championship team as currently constituted.