Bucks still C’s biggest threat to reach NBA Finals
Tatum, Brown Boston favorite to get out of conference
As the NBA proceeds through the final month of its regular season, the best teams in the Western Conference are separated by a sliver while a full-fledged chasm exists between the Boston Celtics and the rest of the Eastern Conference.
The West’s seeding order might not be settled until April 14, the season’s final day. Boston, meanwhile, holds a whopping 11-game lead on the Milwaukee Bucks after a 122-119 home win over the East’s No. 2 seed on Wednesday - a gap greater than the distance between the No. 1 Oklahoma City Thunder and the No. 8 Phoenix Suns in the West.
With the present firmly in their control, the Celtics (55-14) are in a race against the best East outfits of the past. Boston, 18-2 in its past 20 games, is on pace for 65 wins, which would be the fourth most in its illustrious history and the most since its 2008 title-winning team (66 wins). If the Celtics maintain their plus-11.5 average margin of victory, they would finish as the second-most dominant East team in history, trailing only Michael Jordan’s 1995-96 Chicago Bulls (plus-12.2). And if they hold their 11-game lead in the East through the end of the season, they would author the conference’s biggest runaway since LeBron James’s 2012-13 Miami Heat (12 games up on the No. 2 New York Knicks).
Those Bulls and Heat teams won championships, and the Celtics’ ruthless attack has delivered a 122.1 offensive rating - on track for the most efficient in league history. This is textbook title-or-bust territory.
Snakebit Celtics fans know better than anyone how the “bust” scenario unfolds, because they experienced it in the 2022 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors and the 2023 Eastern Conference finals against the Miami Heat. Stagnation. Turnovers. Bail-out jumpers. Long scoreless stretches. Opposing stars such as Stephen Curry and Jimmy Butler exhibiting more poise than Boston wings Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Fourth-quarter collapses.
Whether Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard and the Bucks can cancel the parquet parade will probably define the East’s home stretch. Given Milwaukee’s midseason coaching change and injury issues, it’s an unusually thorny subject. The Celtics’ win Wednesday came with Antetokounmpo sidelined by a strained hamstring; the Bucks trailed by 21 points, stormed back in the fourth quarter with help from an effective zone defense and came up just short in front of a nervous TD Garden crowd. Depending on one’s viewpoint, Boston either held a commanding lead for most of the game and overcame its late-game demons, or it flirted with a familiar death against an overmatched opponent by getting thoroughly outplayed in the final period.
“[With an 18-point lead] going into the fourth quarter, you can’t possibly think it’s not going to be a close game,” Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla said. “It was good to be in one of those games. We haven’t been in one a little while there. I thought, start to finish, our defensive intensity was there and our offensive connectivity was there, too . ... You just can’t expect a team like that to go away.”
If and when the Celtics and Bucks reprise their playoff rivalry, which includes meetings in 2018, 2019 and 2022, the leading topic of conversation will be endgame execution. Boston acquired Kristaps Porzingis, a multilevel scoring threat, last summer as an umbrella to protect against Tatum and Brown raining contested bricks. Similarly,
Milwaukee traded for Lillard in October to diversify its lategame offense and reduce its dependence on Antetokounmpo’s bullrush drives into traffic.
The early returns from both trades have been impressive. Boston’s offensive efficiency in the clutch - defined as games within five points in the last five minutes - has improved from 110.9 last season to 121.8. Likewise, Milwaukee’s offensive efficiency in the clutch has jumped from 107.5 last year to 123.2, edging out Boston for the East’s best mark. In turn, Boston (2010) and Milwaukee (22-12) rank first and second in the East, respectively, in clutch game winning percentage. The newcomers, Porzingis and Lillard, each made their presence felt late Wednesday: The former threw down a forceful dunk with a little more than a minute left, then the latter immediately replied with a vintage deep three-pointer.
Therein lies the case for Milwaukee’s upset hopes: Not much separates how the Bucks and Celtics perform in close games, and a good chunk of Boston’s lead in the standings can be explained by its sparkling 26-1 record against teams with losing records. The Bucks have accumulated more bad losses, an understandable development given that they shifted Lillard into a secondary role for the first time in a decade, replaced coach Adrian Griffin with Doc Rivers in January and were without forward Khris Middleton for nearly six weeks because of an ankle injury. Again, depending on one’s viewpoint, Milwaukee has either fallen far short of Boston’s standard of consistent excellence or spent months ironing out predictable wrinkles in advance of a strong closing push.
“The more situations you get in like this, you get better at it,” Rivers said. “The Celtics have that advantage right now. What have they been in, five Eastern Conference finals [since 2017] and one Finals? We’re going to get there, too. We’re going to just keep growing. You can feel the confidence in our team.”
To unseat Boston, Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Middleton - who haven’t taken the court together since Feb. 3 - must fast-track their still-developing chemistry. The whole of Milwaukee’s “Big 3” must be greater than the sum of its parts, something that hasn’t always been the case this season.
Antetokounmpo, who is averaging 30.8 points, 11.2 rebounds and 6.4 assists, ripped apart the Celtics in the 2019 playoffs and pushed them to seven games without an injured Middleton in 2022. But Boston has fortified its front line, adding Porzingis and Xavier Tillman to support mainstay anchor Al Horford.
Lillard, who cultivated a biggame reputation during his 11year tenure with the Portland Trail Blazers, has run hot and cold during a subpar shooting year. In a postseason matchup with the Celtics, the eight-time all-star would need to contend with the league’s deepest cast of perimeter defenders in Tatum, Brown, Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, putting greater emphasis on his two-man game with Antetokounmpo. Middleton, a hero of Milwaukee’s 2021 title run, looms as the X-factor, capable of sniping from the midrange and creating offense for himself off the dribble if defenses overcommit to his superstar teammates.
With apologies to the Heat, who shouldn’t be counted out even though it is languishing in the play-in tournament mix again, the best way for the East’s laughably uncompetitive regular season to be resolved would be a showdown between the Celtics and Bucks. Antetokounmpo vs. Tatum, two years after their most memorable postseason clash. Lillard against Holiday, less than a year after they were swapped for each other in a blockbuster. Middleton vs. an improved Brown, whose efficiency has taken a half-step forward as his volume has taken a half-step back this season.
Let it come down to this: Boston underscoring its historic season by proving it can beat Milwaukee at full strength, or Milwaukee validating its bet on Lillard by taking down the best Boston team of this era.
“No moral victories,” Rivers said. “Let’s not have a party tonight because we lost. But it was just the battle. We didn’t lose the war. [The Celtics] won the battle tonight. The war is ahead of us.”