NBA Playoffs – playoffs – working day 16
History repeats itself. The Milwaukee Bucks start the season as favorites and when the playoffs, They fall at the first opportunity. Last year it was against the Miami Heat, this time against the Indiana Pacers. In both cases, the tie has been marked by the injury of Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. The Greek power forward has watched all six games of the tie against the Pacers from the bench. His loss has been joined in some games by the team’s other All Star, Damian Lillard.
The Bucks showed their pride in the fifth game of the series, in Milwaukee, despite playing without Antetokounmpo and Lillard. This Thursday they recovered Lillard, although at times he has left doubts about whether he was in full shape. The 33-year-old point guard left the Portland Trail Blazers to join the Bucks in search of a team with which to aspire to his first ring. The Antetokounmpo-Lillard duo placed them among the main favorites. The disappointment lives up to the expectations.
The Bucks were third in the regular season and are the first to fall against a lower-ranked rival, but who during the season has shown signs of being able to beat anyone if their point guard, Tyrese Haliburton, is inspired. He almost always is. They eliminated the Celtics in the NBA Cup and reached the final, in which they were defeated by the Lakers in a strange game in which the Los Angeles team did not need three-pointers to win the title.
In this Thursday’s game, in Indiana, the Pacers have had no mercy (120-98). A seventh game would have taken them back to Milwaukee and they wanted to close the tie at home, where they had already won the first two games. Despite the commendable efforts of veteran Brook López and Bobby Portis to make up for Antetokounmpo’s absence, the Bucks have been helpless against the Indiana whirlwind.
Haliburton’s direction (17 points, 10 assists and 6 rebounds) has been joined by the success of secondary actors such as Obi Toppin (21 points and 8 rebounds) and TJ McConnell (20 points and 9 assists). The Pacers have won in all four quarters. In the first (33-24) they put ground in the middle and every attempt by the Bucks to get closer they responded with a new pull.
With a collaborative game, the Pacers have found the attacking alternatives that the Bucks resisted. They stood in the last quarter with a 15-point lead that seemed like an insurmountable journey for Milwaukee. The yellow stands of Gainbridge Fieldhouse have been able to celebrate the classification long before the end of the game. Now, they wait for the rival to emerge from the confrontation between the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers. The Pacers had not reached the Eastern Conference semifinals since 2014.
The game, however, left an ugly incident when Bucks guard Patrick Beverley threw a ball from the bench to a Pacers fan who was in the front row. He missed his target, but instead hit a fan who was behind him in the head. He asked for the ball back and then threw it again with more force against his goal.
The elimination of Antetokounmpo, the best player in the regular season in the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons, joins those of LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry, dominant figures in the NBA in the last two decades. Joel Embiid (Philadelphia 76ers) has also been left out. James Harden and Russell Westbrook, both from the Los Angeles Clippers, are on the tight rope, as their team loses 3-2 in their match against the Dallas Mavericks. If they were eliminated, the only MVP of the last 12 seasons who would remain in contention would be the Serbian Nikola Jokić, with the Denver Nuggets, the current champions.
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