3 takeaways from the Celtics’ failure to close out the Bucks in Game 6
It all comes down to Saturday.
COMMENTARY
There’s going to be another Game 7 in Boston.
Just days after the Bruins and Maple Leafs went head to head in their winner-take-all matchup Wednesday, the Bucks topped the Celtics, 96-82, to force a Game 7 of their own. The two teams will meet again Saturday night at the TD Garden.
“It’s going to be crazy,” Bucks forward Khris Middleton told reporters after Milwaukee’s win. “It’s do or die at this point. The crowd in Boston is rowdy, just like they are here. It’s going to be a great game. There are no secrets between teams. It comes down to who has more will.”
Thursday’s loss certainly wasn’t the outcome the Celtics were hoping for, but the players expressed confidence in their team’s ability to bounce back.
“This is where home-court advantage comes up,” Jaylen Brown said. “This is where playing the right basketball all year long is going to come to a benefit. Game 7, a lot of people haven’t experienced it on this team. It’s crazy, and I expect nothing short of a tremendous performance from everybody.”
Here’s what we learned from Game 6:
Khris Middleton’s hot hand is not cooling off any time soon.
Although he was limited to 16 points Thursday, Middleton continued to demonstrate his reliability and consistency by shooting 7-for-8 from the field. Despite taking half the number of his average shot attempts — and logging not only his lowest scoring game, but also worst plus-minus of the series — Middleton’s “atypical” stats should be no reflection of his unwavering impact on the Bucks offense.
Through six games against the Celtics, he is shooting 58.1 percent on two-pointers and 62.5 percent from behind the arc.
As Brown put it, “he’s a straight killer.”
“He’s made some extremely tough shots, and he’s comfortable making them,” Brown told ESPN’s Nick Friedell. “We gotta really make it hard for him and keep making him uncomfortable. Hopefully we can wear him down.”
Middleton and Giannis Anteotounmpo have been Milwaukee’s most dependable scorers, tallying 299 of the team’s 617 points in the series.
“Khris is playing great,” Antetokounmpo told Friedell. “It’s great having a guy next to you that plays that well in this series. If I’m not going, if [Eric] Bledsoe is not getting his rhythm, we’ll always have Khris.”
It was a game of runs.
Closing the quarter was a problem plaguing the Bucks to start the series, but the Celtics were the ones who struggled to do so Thursday. The Bucks went on a 7-0 run to end the first quarter and proceeded to squash any of Boston’s later momentum with additional runs: The Bucks outscored the Celtics 24-8 to end the second, 13-4 to end the third, and 17-8 to end the fourth.
Things were seemingly the opposite in Games 1 and 2 — two of the Celtics’ wins:
Joe Prunty talked about the @Bucks closing quarters. The end of the 5-plus quarters of this series so far:
G1 1st, final 2:06: BOS, 11-0
G1 2d, final 2:53: BOS, 8-4
G1 3d, final 2:47: BOS, 9-7
G1 4th, final 2:38: MIL, 13-15
G1 OT, final 2:10: BOS, 9-2
G2 1st, final 2:32: BOS, 8-3— Sean Deveney (@SeanDeveney) April 18, 2018
Boston’s streaky offense is perhaps the biggest reminder that the team is missing Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. For a five-minute period in the second half, Marcus Morris attempted all seven of the Celtics’ shot attempts — missing five. The rise of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum has been encouraging, but there’s still seemingly a void in the team’s offense.
A loss Saturday night would be difficult to digest.
There’s no question the Celtics are going to be fired up Saturday night. Even with all that this team has accomplished in spite of the injuries, a first-round exit would still be an unsatisfying end.
“TD Garden is going to be great,” Al Horford said. “As a basketball player or fan, one of the places you want to enjoy and be, it’s TD Garden for a Game 7.”
If the Celtics defend home court, as they have thus far in the series, they’ll go on to play the Philadelphia 76ers in the Eastern Conference semifinals. If they lose, their season is over. But the emotions surrounding a loss are perhaps more complicated than the usual disappointment.
Given the state of the East, it’s hard not to wonder how the Celtics’ season would have turned out if they had Irving, Hayward, and Daniel Theis. To some extent, it’s hard not to think Boston could have won the East even with just the return of Irving.
There’s the silver living, of course, that other players have been given an opportunity, but their abilities to make meaningful contributions also fuel the “What ifs?” The answers to most of those hypotheticals boil down to a simple fact: This team would have been a title contender at full strength.
