A preview of the Thursday night game between the Boston Celtics and the Milwaukee Bucks.
While the Boston Celtics entered the season as heavy favorites to win the conference (and remain heavy favorites), the Milwaukee Bucks have been the ones dominating the East so far.
The Bucks sport a league-leading 14.8 net rating after seven games and are the only undefeated team left. They have the sixth-best offense in the league and the second-best defense (behind only the Boston Celtics). Coach Mike Budenholzer has totally transformed the team Boston defeated in last year’s playoffs. No longer are they playing an archaic style on both sides of the ball and hoping the excellence of their superstar is enough; they’re playing a modern style and the results are impressive.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is averaging 25 points and 5.7 assists per game. He’s fourth in the NBA in rebounds per game and third in contested rebounds per game. His scoring efficiency is a little down from last year, but nobody is complaining about him shooting 51 percent with a career-high usage rate. The Bucks have a 113.4 offensive rating and a 94.9 defensive rating with him on the floor, which is patently insane even in a small sample. As former President Barack Obama said on a campaign stop, “Giannis is balling.”
The Boston Celtics, meanwhile, look like they’re starting to figure things out. They posted a phenomenal second half against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday, and blew out the previously undefeated Detroit Pistons on Saturday. The defense has consistently been excellent, and the offense looks significantly better than the rock-fight isolation-heavy attack they used in the first few games. They’re still a far cry from where they need to be, but they’re moving in the right direction.
Here are some things to look for as the Celtics take on Milwaukee Thursday night.
Has the Boston Celtics offense turned a corner?
The Boston Celtics might have figured something out in that Thunder game. Their first half was atrocious; they shot 32 percent from the field and put up a measly 34 points. They missed all 12 of their threes, and their shot chart was littered with missed mid-range jumpers.
More from Chowder and Champions
- 3 Midseason Chaim Bloom Decisions That Have Killed the 2023 Red Sox
- 10 Patriots Who Will Be Cut by Tuesday’s Roster Deadline
- MLB Screws Red Sox Fans With Broadcast for Mookie Betts Return
- 3 Most Underpaid Celtics Heading Into the 2023 Season
- Red Sox Continue Rollercoaster Season With Massive Win
In the third quarter alone, they took 14 threes and made nine of them. They took only two mid-range jumpers. They were getting into their offense early in the shot clock, generating good looks before the defense set up. Everything was in-rhythm, and they looked like the world-beaters they’re supposed to be for the first time all season.
Some shot attempts just resulted from horrible defense – Russell Westbrook seemed completely lost guarding Irving off the ball, leading to two straight wide-open three-point attempts. With nine minutes left in the quarter, Terrance Ferguson just gave up fighting through a screen and let Jaylen Brown have an open jumper. Those opportunities and others were the defense’s fault more than anything, but the Celtics deserve praise for readjusting at the half and taking those high-quality opportunities when they presented themselves.
Both Jaylen Brown and Gordon Hayward made difficult passes out to open guys on the perimeter early in the quarter, which is great to see. Those kinds of passes happen when drivers know where their teammates are supposed to be, and seeing it – especially from Brown, who has a reputation of getting overwhelmed in traffic – is a great sign.
Through their first four games of the season, the Celtics ranked 28th in the league in drives per game at 34.3. They averaged 42.5 drives per game in their last two contests, which would be good for 13th in the league. Kyrie Irving is a big part of that improvement. He only scored three points against the Pistons, but was impactful driving to the rim and creating offense for teammates.
The Celtics blew out Detroit thanks to their suffocating defense. They looked better in terms of comfort on the offensive side of the ball, and put up a legitimately strong offensive first half, but fell back down to Earth after that. They shot only 32 percent in the third quarter.
Even after these two relatively improved games, Boston is still 28th in the league in effective field goal percentage. While Stevens has succeeded in getting the group to play more systemically, there’s still a lot of your-turn-my-turn offense.
While they hope to continue improving the offense every game, the Bucks pose a significant challenge. Not only is their defense elite (second best in the league, and 3.2 points per 100 possessions better than the third-place Denver Nuggets), it seems engineered to encourage Boston’s worst habits.
If you watch some game film of the Bucks, you’ll see that teams take a lot of midrange jumpers against them. The Bucks are great at encouraging those low-efficiency looks (a HUGE schematic change from Jason Kidd’s prehistoric design). It will be very interesting to see whether Thursday night looks like a setback or a step forward.
How the Boston Celtics will defend the Bucks
As great as Milwaukee has been, they have had one Achilles’ heel – turnovers. This isn’t particularly shocking given that they’re playing within an entirely new offensive system. Growing pains are to be expected, though having the fourth worst turnover per game mark in the league is a bit worse than we might have predicted.
The basic transition stats on NBA.com are a little wonky (only stats from games where teams had at least ten transition plays counted; as a result, most teams have only half of their games counted), but they do tell a story that matches the eye test. Boston is 14th in transition frequency, 9th in transition turnover rate, and 9th in transition points per possession.
Long story short, the Boston Celtics generate a pretty decent amount of transition opportunities (a surprisingly low amount considering how stout their defense is, but a good amount nonetheless), and are efficient when they get those opportunities. Taking advantage of turnovers will be a key for Boston in this game.
Milwaukee’s offensive scheme is interesting. Its players aren’t moving around off the ball constantly in a Beautiful-Game style attack; it’s simple. Coach Budenholzer has talked about how they’re emphasizing keeping it simple right now as he tries to avoid overloading his players.
They’re 5th in isolation frequency and 11th in spot-up frequency, which confirms the eye test. They love to give the ball to Antetokounmpo (or their other capable drivers, including Malcolm Brogdon, Eric Bledsoe, and others) and let him create. As guys penetrate and defenders collapse, they’re excellent as a team at either moving the ball to open shooters or cutting to the basket for easy layups (they’re leading the league in points per possession on cuts).
Boston has the best defense in the league by far, and they have the personnel to handle virtually any matchup. Milwaukee feasts off of defensive miscues, but the Celtics are significantly less prone to those than other teams. As good as Milwaukee has been, you’d expect the Celtics to slow them down significantly.
How the stars could impact the game
We don’t yet know whether Giannis Antetokounmpo is going to play. He was in the concussion protocol as of Monday night, and there has been no update at the time of this writing.
Him not playing would not mean this isn’t a game. The Bucks are an insane +18.5 per 100 possessions with Antetokounmpo on the floor (184 minutes), but are +10.8 per 100 possessions with him sitting (152 minutes). They have other creators, and they’ve been scorching hot from deep. As important as Antetokounmpo is to what they do, they are still playing like an elite team without him.
That being said…if the Greek Freak plays, you will notice him in every facet of the game. He is so athletic and so skilled that the entire defense reacts when he has the ball in his hands (and he’s a monster cutting to the basket, too). If you haven’t seen him yet this year, you’ll be shocked by how much bigger and stronger he looks after bulking up this offseason. You can’t say enough about him; he’s an insanely impactful player on both ends of the floor.
The Boston Celtics are fortunate to have multiple options to throw at him. Semi Ojeleye hasn’t played too many minutes this year, but had success in the playoffs against Giannis, as Simon Pollock wrote about extensively for CelticsBlog. Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, and Al Horford will probably all take turns guarding him.
On the other side, Celtics fans have to be thinking about their own star: Kyrie Irving. Irving doesn’t seem to be physically impaired, but also hasn’t found his way back to elite scoring yet. Part of this is probably because he’s trying to get everyone involved, but part is just him struggling. He’s in the 6th percentile (very bad) in points per shot attempt among combo guards after being in the 91st percentile (very good) among point guards last season, per Cleaning the Glass.
You have to expect that he’s going to snap out of this funk at some point. It’d be really helpful if that could happen against the team that’s been the best in basketball so far.