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Bucks in the belly: Milwaukee's troubles and the rest of the second round playoffs - Walla! sport

2020-09-04T16:19:27.104Z


Yannis is disappointing but Mike Bodenholzer is even more disappointing, Toronto looks like Boston's least talented twin, the Clippers are showing signs of the scary team everyone expected it to be. Ravitz with first conclusions, including preparation for the battle of the dwarves against the giants between the Rockets and the Lakers


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Bucks in the belly: Milwaukee's troubles and the rest of the playoffs in the playoffs

Yannis is disappointing but Mike Bodenholzer is even more disappointing, Toronto looks like Boston's least talented twin, the Clippers are showing signs of the scary team everyone expected it to be.

Ravitz with first conclusions, including preparation for the battle of the dwarves against the giants between the Rockets and the Lakers

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  • Milwaukee Bucks

  • Toronto Raptors

  • Miami Heat

  • Los Angeles Clippers

  • Los Angeles Lakers

  • Houston Rockets

Assaf Ravitz

Friday, 04 September 2020, 17:00

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Toronto Raptors players reunite with their families in Orlando (from the Toronto Raptors Twitter)

The first round is behind us, after two 7 games competing between who was weirder and who had a more delusional ending.

But there is no time to analyze the series that were, or say goodbye to the ousted first round (bye, Luca), because the second round is already in full swing and already provides its own surprises and dramatic endings.

Here's a preliminary analysis of the three series that started and the one that will start tonight.

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NEWS

The failed exercise saved Toronto: "Everything happened fast, and I was suddenly left free."

To the full article

Who is more disappointing so far?

Yannis Antocompo and Mike Bodenholzer (Photo: GettyImages)

Milwaukee on test

Miami has been considered throughout the season as a team that knows how to make it difficult for the Bucks, and after two games it greatly justifies the title.

Milwaukee did not get into the bubble in good shape and did not make the list in the first round either, although they won quite easily, now that they face a tough and high-quality opponent, all the question marks that have been suppressed throughout the year are floating.

The spotlight, I guess, will be directed at Yannis Antokompo, but for me the big disappointment of the first two games is Mike Bodenholzer.

It could be that in a few days we will already be talking about him as a great regular season coach who does not know how to manage playoff series at the required level.



In the first game Coach Bud put up a weird five for Mani Time, without Wes Matthews keeping an excellent guard on Jimmy Butler, and did not respond when Butler scored offense after attack on Chris Middleton and George Hill.

In the second game, the gap between the coaches was even more pronounced.

While Bodenholzer made adjustments to the problems of the previous game, Eric Spolstra was preparing for the next game with new surprises, it looked like one was playing chess and the other was checkers.

Spolstra used his three-pointers as blockers and attacked Brock Lopez with outside shots so he got some free throws from his three-pointers.

He diversified the pick-and-roll game between Goran Dragic and Butler with early cuts, and took advantage of Milwaukee's inexperience in automatic substitutions to catch the Bucks players unprepared several times.

On defense, however, Miami makes perfect substitutions on the pick n roll between Yannis and Middleton and thus neutralizes a major move by the opponent.

While Miami enjoys improvising and responding in real time to happenings, Milwaukee becomes helpless when its normal game does not work and is constantly a step or two behind.



With a 0: 6 balance in the playoffs, it's time to take Miami very seriously.

She was supposed to have a lack of talent, but alongside Butler there is Dragic who plays like another All-Star, he pounces on every mistake of the defense and his ability to score floaters over Lopez's outstretched hand is a deadly weapon in this series.

If Edbaio plays as a third All-Star of the Draymond Greeny breed, he does so many little things every game that his team achieves passers-by and is the central whitewash on the wall that makes it difficult for Yannis to get to the ring.

The rest of the rotation is made up of either great threes or canned experts, and each one does his job.

The series is far from over, Milwaukee tends to exhaust its rivals and has defensive tools that make it very difficult to hit the attack, but in the meantime Miami is simply better, smarter and tougher.

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Lack of talent?

Not when Goran Dragic and Jimmy Butler are in top form (Photo: GettyImages)

The champion died alive

Boston is the better team in the second semifinal of the East, it earned the right to be 0.5 seconds away from a 0: 3 advantage.

Boston and Toronto are very similar teams: great training, based on a lot of creative players on offense, all of their outside players scoring from the outside and keeping good, not making mistakes on defense.

The similarity between the two highlights the quality advantage of the Celtics stars.

Jason Taitum and Kamba Walker consistently manage to produce small advantages thanks to their talent, which they utilize either to reach shot positions or to force the defense to move and build an attack from a position of advantage.

This is exactly what Pascal Siakam and Fred and Anvolit are unable to do in this series.

Kamba is surprising in defending VanValit, he is perfectly built to deal with it, while Jaylen Brown provides a defensive display against Siakam (who generally got into the bubble in very poor shape).

The question mark over the Raptors was whether they would be able to create good shot situations in front of quality playoff defense, and meanwhile the answer is no.



In the second half of the third game Nick Ners found some solutions that helped his team get back to business, just before the series ran away.

The Raptors' regional defense continues to make it difficult for Boston, although it is clear that Brad Stevens has worked with his players on that.

Celtics players make correct moves in front of the 2: 1: 2 area, but players with the ball tend to miss the delivery opportunities.

The very change, the breaking of the regular structure, seems to throw Boston out of balance.

Stevens even pulled out an Anger Canter to tackle the area, but Vanavit pounced on the opportunity, attacked him with a pick n roll and helped himself get into things.

On offense, Ners uses the most blockers far from the ball, including between VanValit and Siakam, to force substitutions and allow his senior players to attack in front of guards who make it less difficult for them.

He can be more consistent in this and can be assumed to be later.



But most of all, Toronto has that character of a team that refuses to die.

The one who embodies this character is Kyle Laurie, who opened the third game in a storm and provided a show of the kind we did not know he still had in the repertoire.

The Raptors scraped baskets to get back into the game and put themselves in a position of a shot from victory, then scored that shot.

Deserves Lao Anonobi this moment of glory, he is wonderful in this series on both sides.

Boston is still a strong favorite to win, Laurie will probably have to continue to provide performances for Toronto to stay in business and after playing 46 and a half minutes tonight it is unclear what he will have left for the next game.

But Toronto was in a similar situation last year against Milwaukee: it was 2-0 behind, won the third game in two overtimes and later found a way to win every game anew.

At the time Mark Gasol suddenly woke up on offense, if that Gasol still existed the chances of the champion continuing to stay alive would greatly increase.

The Celtics' qualitative advantage is obvious.

Smart, Taitum and Theis (Photo: Reuters)

The scary version of the Clippers

The first game of the second round in the West was very undramatic, but provided an important statement of intent: those Clippers arrived, the team the whole league fears appeared in the playoffs.

It was a purposeful display of the talented and complete team in the league, all of whose puzzle pieces are finally in place.

It starts with the superstar who dominated the previous playoffs and as the post-season progresses enters this accrual mode again.

In the first quarter of the first game in the series, Kwai Leonard made sure to go through a player-player in Denver and make it clear to each of them that he could not keep him, prevent him from getting the shot he wanted.

The Clippers ’offensive game is starting to resemble last year’s Toronto, only with more talent: either let Kwai build moves at his own pace, or move on to penetration and spending until they get a good shot.

With Paul George and Lou Williams as co-creators you don't have to do complex exercises, you just have to get into the flow and make good decisions.



The defense is still not at the level of the offense in terms of coordination, the Clippers players continue to make a lot of team defense mistakes, but the defensive talent is no less frightening than the offense.

The quintet includes four outside players who can keep each player and Ivica Zubac who defends the ring.

Doc Rivers is very happy to have Patrick Beverly back, whose combination with Kwai, PG13 and Marcus Morris seems ideal.

In the good defensive minutes of this quartet, early in the third quarter, Denver had no way of getting a good shot.

In the minutes that Monterz Harrell played the whole team worked to help him get into things after a bad series against Dallas (which he got to after not playing in the bubble before).

If the excellent replacement chin also comes back to itself, it will be another significant addition of strength to a team that does not lack strength.



Exhausted Denver gave up the game in the middle of the third quarter, a good decision that might allow its senior players to come more prepared for the next game.

But Mike Malone will have to start thinking outside the box as soon as possible.

His defense absorbed 120 points per 100 passers from Utah’s midfield plus offense and looked hopeless against the Clippers ’excellent offense.

A double-team on Kwai opens up other options, but his delivery ability under pressure is still his least perfect offensive feature so this may be the preferred way of dealing with him.

The attack will have to be based more on Nikola Jokic far from the basket, because Zubacs has a hard time defending chins that hit from the outside.

He can reach free throws relatively easily and his passing ability is the way to take advantage of the coordination mistakes in the Clippers defense.

Jamal Marie, meanwhile, has a very difficult time against the Clippers' high-quality personal guards, in the regular season he scored 13.3 points against them on 37.5 percent from the field and tonight his numbers were quite similar.

Caution: The scary group we all imagined has arrived.

Paul George and Marcus Morris, tonight (Photo: GettyImages)

The Houston Experiment Moves to Phase II

Tonight will begin the final series of the second round, and this is a series that has never been seen before.

The Lakers, the team that knows how to make the most of its size, will face Houston's bottom five.

The battle for size can be critical.

So far, Houston has consistently managed to force rivals to respond to it and move on to play with the low-scoring lineups, but it has not met Frank Vogel's huge collection, which knows how to control rebounds and color.

If Mike D'Antoni's gang makes players like Jabeil Maggie and Dwight Howard irrelevant to the series because it forces them to go out for threes and pounce on them every time they get a ball, it will leave the Lakers' rotation very sparse with reliable players.



On the other hand, it could very well be that this is the series that will put an end to the Rockets' experiment, that this is the opponent that such a low quintet cannot face.

Mostly, it will be an interesting test for Anthony Davis, who struggled in the game between the two in the bubble (where LeBron James did not play).

Will he take control of the color, get caught up in anyone who tries to keep it and provide a statement that such a low team just can't stop him, or will he struggle with the intensity and toughness of players like PJ Tucker and Robert Covington, and the Rockets' nimble defense that forces a lot Lost?

Davis has quite a bit of playoff experience, and if the series gets complicated it could come into play.

LeBron, on the other hand, is the most experienced playoff player of all time, and it will be intriguing to see how he approaches the Rockets riddle.



The Lakers met a tired opponent in the first round and will meet one in the second round as well.

Houston will arrive exhausted after seven intense games against OKC, but it could be that the Rockets were actually happy that this series was extended because it allowed Russell Westbrook to recover from an injury and return to an ability reminiscent of himself.

Russ looks great in two games against the Lakers this year and could be the difference between a competitive and easy series.

James Harden will arrive after another disappointing Game 7 that ended in a winning defensive move.

Mike D’Antoni will hope that after an entire series against Lou Dort, the Lakers ’guards will feel like getting out of jail for his bearded star.

The Rockets' offense got stuck in front of an opponent who got along with him one-on-one, for her to get back on track she would need Harden to consistently force a double-team.

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Source: walla

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