Boston Celtics

Celtics fall to Bucks as Giannis Antetokounmpo is injured in bizarre contest: 7 takeaways

The Celtics dropped a 104-91 loss to the Bucks on Tuesday in one of the stranger games of the season thus far. 

Brook Lopez hit five 3-pointers as the Bucks shot a blazing 47.2 percent from deep.

By Tom Westerholm

4 minutes to read

The Celtics dropped a 104-91 loss to the Bucks on Tuesday in one of the stranger games of the season thus far. 

Here are the takeaways. 

1. If TNT was hoping to get a better game than the last time the Celtics and Bucks faced off (back in January when the Bucks trounced a visibly exhausted Celtics team 135-102), the network was presumably sorely disappointed by Tuesday’s result. The Celtics, of course, have the Eastern Conference locked up and didn’t bother playing Al Horford or Kristaps Porzingis. The Bucks were coming off a four-game losing streak and badly needed a win to hold off the Magic and Knicks, who both sit one game back in the Eastern Conference standings. The result wasn’t one-sided enough to prompt Joe Mazzulla to rest his starters for the entire second half again, but it was never particularly competitive or compelling. Sam Hauser guarded Giannis Antetokounmpo for a stretch. The Celtics shot 52 3-pointers and made 17 of them. Jayson Tatum scored a team-high 22 points (and nobody else reached 20). Tuesday’s game was not good basketball. 

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Before we get to our big-picture notes, two takeaways need to be unpacked. 

2. First, Antetokounmpo went down in the third quarter with a noncontact leg injury. The Bucks diagnosed their superstar with a calf strain, which they narrowed down to his left soleus.

Here’s a look.

Doc Rivers told reporters after the game that Antetokounmpo will undergo testing Tuesday night for his left calf, adding that his concern level is “high.”

“But he’s Giannis,” Rivers added. “I think everyone probably feels the same way as I do right now. We’re just going to hope for the best.”

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Rivers sounded more confident during a fourth-quarter in-game interview than he did postgame, which could mean nothing whatsoever but also is kind of a downward trend that fans won’t be thrilled to see.

Here’s a breakdown of the calf and where the soleus sits. 

The soleus is connected to the heel by the Achilles tendon which, of course, is the first thing everyone worries about when they see a player hit the deck and grab the back of their leg. A 2015 study of soleus injuries found that the average recovery time was 29 days, but with a big standard deviation of just under 19 days. The worst news for Antetokounmpo would be the central aponeurosis, which would have an average recovery time of 44 days. An injury to the lateral myotendinous junction would lead to an average recovery time of 19.2 days.

In other words, if Antetokounmpo’s injury is in fact a soleus strain, the prognosis is somewhere between 10 and 60 days, which is a long way of saying, “We’ll see what gets announced next.”

Here’s hoping Antetokounmpo is fine. 

3. More evidence that Tuesday was an unserious game: The Celtics became the first time in NBA history to go an entire contest without attempting a single free throw. 

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The Bucks, meanwhile, were 1-for-2 at the free-throw line (Antetokounmpo took them).

We won’t say much more than that other than to note that a statistic as striking as “zero free throws” and “two total free throws between both teams” feels like a conscious choice made by the people who award the free throws, rather than a random anomaly. 

4. What do we make of the Celtics/Bucks rivalry this season? 

The Bucks won two big blowouts, but both came with circumstances that essentially made them disqualifying for any kind of real analysis. The Celtics had so many mitigating factors in their January blowout, it’s easiest to organize them in bullet points. The loss was:

  • Their fifth game in seven nights 
  • Their third city in four days
  • The second night of a back-to-back
  • Immediately following a tough overtime game the night before

Meanwhile, the Celtics have the best record in the NBA locked up, and Tuesday’s game came at a time when it would be more advantageous to lose than to tip your hand and give valuable film to a potential Eastern Conference finals opponent. Locking up the overall No. 1 seed two weeks before the end of the season allows you to play around with factors like that a bit.

When the Celtics dealt Grant Williams last offseason, they traded away a player who is capable of making Antetokounmpo’s life difficult 1-on-1. They still have another in Horford, and he had a light load for the Celtics coming off the bench during the regular season. Expect big minutes from Horford if the Celtics face the Bucks in the postseason. Still, he’s 37, and we don’t yet know how effectively he will hold up over the course of a best-of-seven series against a bruising presence like Antetokounmpo.

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The Bucks have enough talent to beat the Celtics in a series. The Celtics have plenty of talent to beat the Bucks. Trying to parse anything beyond that from how the Bucks and Celtics have matched up this season isn’t really a useful exercise, and Tuesday’s game added precisely nothing to the mix.

We’re guessing that’s what Mazzulla wanted. 

5. If you’re in search of games with some feeling behind them as the Celtics twiddle their thumbs through the rest of the regular season, the Maine Celtics are up 1-0 in the G-League championship after a dominant 106-86 victory over the Oklahoma City Blue on Tuesday, and rookie Jordan Walsh is doing stuff like this. 

Crustacean Nation is electric.

6. The Celtics have no more road games until the playoffs. They finished the regular season with the best road record in the NBA at 27-14 (the Timberwolves could tie that mark if they beat the Nuggets in Denver on Wednesday).

The second-best road record in the East? The 8-seed Heat at 24-17.

7. The Celtics will wrap up their regular season in Boston with back-to-back games against the Knicks and Hornets on Thursday and Friday before their Sunday matinee against the Wizards. 

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