Post-season intensity and defense can throw some style out of play. There is a distinct beauty in watching the world's best players search, sometimes with visible desperation and sometimes with calmness that is apparently unrelated, to difficult solutions when there are no easier ones.
Games 5 and 6 offered a whole lot of pressure getting-it-out from the Brooklyn Nets and Milwaukee Bucks. With Kyrie Irving out and James Harden almost immobile, Kevin Durant produced a performance for the ages in Game 5 - playing every second and leading the Nets to an impossible comeback.
That defeat may have broken some teams. It didn't break the box. His offense has come and gone, but his defense is adamant. Brooklyn has clearly helped by playing with 1 1/2 Superstars instead of three, but the Bucks have been a great defense for the entirety of the Mike Buddenholzer era. He hasn't let his struggles on offense go to his will at the other end, and that's one of the biggest reasons he lives to watch the game.
The journey here hasn't been beautiful for Milwaukee, or at all exhilarating, but what an opportunity it has been for them—and for Brooklyn. Joel Embiid is playing on an injured knee. Hawks are young. Kawhi Leonard's injury is a visceral punch for the LA Clippers. Chris Paul is in health and safety protocol. Whatever ugliness was there before this game is in the rearview. that does not matter. Teams rarely get as many true shots in the ring as they think they will in the beginning. Each is precious.
Meanwhile, Harden probably pushed himself beyond his comfort level in Game 6 with his hamstrings. The Nets finally rested Durant in the middle of the second quarter, and you could almost see Harden talking to himself: Well, it's time to see what I've got. He called whatever remains of his pick-and-roll game, using craft and trickery to add a floater, a Bruce Brown triple, and a layup for Blake Griffin. It was close to inspirational—a reminder that for all the crisis-time meltdowns and grit of his departure from the Houston Rockets, Harden is an odd baller.
Both teams are switching more, reducing assets to one basketball each. The Healthy Nets are one of the prettiest teams in the league to watch, but the real point of their three-star build is that they are best equipped to win the ugly. He has three of the best one-on-one scorers of all time. Now only one can do so much.
Both teams limited the core rotation to six players, with only spot minutes for anyone else. Landry Shamet and Pat Connaughton are the only reserves seeing anything but token minutes. It's as bare as bones get.
At the bottom, both coaches are on the lookout for offensive threats that don't mortally compromise defense. A series of offenses between No. 1 and No. 4 have turned into an all-defense slogan. Nets average 105.8 points per 100 assets; Milwaukee is at 102. Brooklyn's numbers would have been 28th in the regular season, with Milwaukee finishing last.
Injuries and a sound Milwaukee transition defense have distorted the Nets' fast-paced chaos machine. Nets often aren't coming out in transit, and they're scoring at a pathetic rate when it comes to cleaning glass.
Without exploding, Harden either dribbles on the court at a slow pace or gambles on the hit-forward he will not attempt at full health. Irving was Brooklyn's main fast-brake engine, a raging fury that propelled the Nets to a turbo speed when he played as a singles star. In the regular season, the Nets took 10.5 seconds to shoot after the defensive rebound - the third fastest. Against Milwaukee, they're on 12.6 seconds—a mark that would have been last overall, per the unexpected.
The Bucks may have sacrificed some aggressive rebounding to keep the Nets in transition, but at least it worked. Still: Keep an eye on the offending mirror. Tucker is a fierce offensive rebounder, and the Nets are hiding Harden on him. In Game 6 Tucker bulldozed Harden for a couple of offensive boundaries. If the Bucks can't punish Harden face-to-face with the ball, here's another way to do it. Brook Lopez looped from the corner to the foul line, and made a long rebound late that way. The Nets are among the worst defensive rebounding teams in the league, and three or four extra chances can swing the game.
That's what makes the game 7s so much fun. Stars will appear. Maybe they'll shoot well, maybe they'll shoot poorly, but they're going to put out numbers. The game (like any game, really) is often decided by one role player to enjoy a hot night from the deep, or the other cuts his way into five more points than usual and crashes. Jeff Greene and Griffin 3s feel like bellwether shots.
At half court, Milwaukee has played both Brown and Nicolas Claxton on the fringe, with Lopez ignoring them - patrolling the rim and daring Brown and Claxton to flick floaters. Brown dropped 29 combined points in Games 2 and 3, but Lopez has been a half-step before challenging Brown's pop-a-shots.
Brooklyn Bryan has walked into Forbes, and nearly erased his shooting from the series.
Five of the six Bucks getting actual minutes - everyone but Khris Middleton - are average-ish (or worse, in Giannis Antetokounmpo's case) 3-point shooters. This has made it difficult for the Bucks stars to take a one-on-one attack. Nets transfer their defense, planting the body between the ball and the rim. This problem can be compounded if your best shooter (Middleton) is also your lead ball-handler.
This complicates Milwaukee's (very limited) efforts to hunt down injured Harden face-to-face, which appears to be the easiest way to scrutinize the points. Here's what the stars of the Bucks look like when they come out:
hard sledding. The Bucks can afford a few Bobby Portis minutes to juice up their shooting. Durant will target him in a pick-and-roll, but Portis at least brings size, toughness, and rebounding.
In the first three games, the Bucks averaged 94.6 points per 100 possessions. From 4-6 in games, they're up to 109.6 - a semi-respectable. Perhaps the biggest change has been the effectiveness of the pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo as a screener.
The series marked an important point in the development of Antetokounmpo's role. He approached an optimal balance in Game 6: hitting the rams in transition, the screen-setting second option in the half court that still goes one-by-one at just the right time. Antetokounmpo is shooting 64% on 2s - exactly what he managed in the regular season.
He has set 26 or more ball screens in five matches per second across the spectrum over the past two seasons. There are four in this series: Games 3-6.
In the first three games, the Bucks averaged just 0.836 points per capture, when a pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo as the screener led the shot, turnover, or foul, per second spectrum. It's so low, it's almost unimaginable. Since then that number has increased to 1.277.
what changed? Some of it is luck, as is the case for any small-sample blip: Holiday canning some pull-ups, Middleton some shooting fouls in 3s. (Can we see more of Durant taking on Middleton in Game 7? It's hard to imagine Steve Nash asking for more.)
Some of it is a smart crime. When Griffin, Antetokounmpo's main defender, goes back to the pick-and-roll, Halliday and Middleton turn to him for layups and floaters—a trend that began in Game 3:
Those drives suck in help from the outside. The Bucks made just 17 corner 3 attempts in the first three games, but made 27 in Game 4-6. His catch-and-shoot 3 in those three games has surpassed the pull-up nearly 2-to-1 after Milwaukee had an equal split in the first three. (They're still shooting an awful 26% on catch-and-shoot 3s.)
The Nets have begun to switch even more, and the Milwaukee guards feast on a one-on-one against Griffin. I'm not sure why the Nets went to switch when their drop-back plan was working. It's probably a mix of factors: wanting to mix things up; One belief is that Milwaukee's guards began to take advantage of the position Griffin had accepted; And the return of Harden.
Harden has always preferred switching. This limited hardener doesn't have the juice to rotate continuously. In a possession in Game 6, Durant sank inside from the corner to help, hoping Harden would toggle on his man. Harden never turned. Durant pointed to him. More or less shrunken hard.
It's easy for Brooklyn to switch everything up when Green turns Griffin in the center—and defends Antetokounmpo—but Antetokounmpo wipes out Green one by one. Playing Griffin activates Milwaukee's defenders, but shorting Green in the center activates Antetokounmpo.
Even against a tight floor, the Bucks must attack Griffin, Shemet and Harden. Driving in a rush still draws a crowd—and unlocking open 3s, dump-offs, and bumpy close-ranges are likely to lead to fouls.
They just have to be smart. As such, if Shemet has switched to Antetokounmpo elsewhere, Holiday is not a one-on-one against Durant. Making such bizarre decisions in Game 5 ruined Milwaukee. If Schmett is on holiday, Middleton, or Antetokounmpo with less than 10 seconds on the shot clock, play some bully ball. Touch Lopez one post per quarter when he is on guard.
These drives aren't easy with Brooklyn's paint taking off, and it's not something you can do every trip. But it should be part of the plan. I'd also like to see Antetokounmpo attack from the middle rather than from the wings, where it's easier to send assists without conceding near short ranges. Aiming to do more...
... and moving a little less towards the corners:
The Bucks have shown that they can inject healthy randomness into their crime. He got a good look at Game 4 running sideline pick-and-rolls between Middleton and Holiday in semi-transitions. Such fake pick-and-roll – fake screens – can cause confusion:
Using Antetokounmpo as a rapid-fire screener – turning the ball on and off, and sometimes both in the span of a few seconds – can force the switch and open gaps.
Since his return, Green has been at the center of many misunderstandings. With zero margin for error, the net would have to clean it up:
Antetokounmpo passed out earlier in Game 6 more willingly, and will need to bring that mindset into Game 7. For a good shooter, an open jumper is often better than Antetokounmpo tossing himself into a Griffin and another helping defender.
Those Draymond Green-style handoffs can also spring Holiday, Middleton and Forbes for open jumpers; If Antetokounmpo's defenders run around in the paint, he can't run in time to help those Antetokounmpo to the other side of the screen.
The Nets try to catapult Joe Harris into open space using the same tactic, and they need Harris to get out of this funk.
Milwaukee's guards have done an amazing job of sneaking up on those picks and strangling Harris—just like they did with Duncan Robinson against the Miami Heat in the first round.
Harris and Durant's screening for each other has influenced the Bucks' defense:
The Nets need some path beyond shooting Durant at Lopez on the pick-and-roll and taking Tucker face-to-face. In Game 6, Milwaukee began sending more help from baseline to Durant. Durant would be ready for it now.
(As Doris Burke pointed out during Game 6, the Nets get a good look almost every time Lopez's man is around the screen half-court — giving Durant a long runway. I would have wondered that too.) That's what Nets Durant's one-on-one teen against Tucker from the top of the arc is a bit more. Their main lineup has enough shooting to give the floor space, and removing the clutter of the screen sometimes allows Durant to lose his ground. Taking advantage of the speed can help.)
The Bucks can strip Brooklyn's security blanket of Lopez's exploits by minimizing Tucker and Antetokounmpo as their only elders. With Forbes barely playing, they really only have one such lineup: Holiday, Tucker, Antetokounmpo, Middleton and Connaughton. That group is a plus-18 at 26 minutes, and it is the Bucks' second most-used group in the series. 1 group - their starting five - is a plus-29 in 97 minutes. This leaves a time of 165 minutes for all other Milwaukee lineups. With Brooklyn plus-24 overall, that means the Nets won those 165 minutes by 71 points. Eggs. (Forbes is minus -49.)
Bucks could be even tougher on those two lineups in Game 7.
The nets are at home, and the home teams usually win Game 7. Boxes are healthy. If forced to predict a single game - a fool's mistake - given Brooklyn's injuries I reluctantly take the bucks. Nevertheless, the one who loses will feel that he has missed a golden opportunity. Expect the level of urgency only Game 7 brings - and an injured, exhausted winner moves on.