Stars collide in 2nd round
NEW YORK — Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving on one side. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday on the other.
Three former MVPs. Seven NBA scoring titles. The two highest-scoring teams in the league.
Brooklyn against Milwaukee is only a secondround series.
Yet with all this talent, there’s a little bit of an NBA Finals feel.
“I think it’s meant for a lot of the best players in the league to go up against one another and show why we are who we are,” Irving said.
The teams played three thrillers during the regular season and Brooklyn coach Steve Nash said the potential is there for this Eastern Conference semifinal between the No. 2-seeded Nets and No. 3 Bucks to be a classic.
“We’ll see how it plays out, but they’re playing as well as any team in the league right now,” Nash said. “We have the talent to match any team in the league, and it’s just a matter of who performs, who has that grit and toughness to try to get ahead in the series and then see how the other team responds.
“Definitely, on paper, you could see this being a classic series, but let’s see who brings it and who has the rhythm and timing and performances that are sharper.”
Game 1 is Saturday night in Brooklyn, with both teams rested and ready after cruising through the first round. Milwaukee blew away Miami in a sweep that emphatically avenged its second-round ouster a year ago. The only thing stopping the Nets from a sweep of their own was Jayson Tatum’s 50point outburst in Game 3 in Boston.
Plenty of guys can go for 50 in this series.
Antetokounmpo, the two-time NBA MVP, nearly did against Brooklyn on May 2, pouring in 49 to outduel Durant, who had 42, in the Bucks’ 117-114 victory. Milwaukee won 124-118 two nights later to sweep the two-game set that Harden missed with injury.
He made it back for the playoffs and Brooklyn’s Big Three combined for 85.2 points per game against Boston, including 104 in Game 4 to match the highest total for a trio in NBA postseason history.
Milwaukee has good defenders, with Antetokounmpo the defensive player of the year last season and Holiday long considered one of the league’s best defensive guards.
But nobody is even pretending this series will be won with stops, not with the Bucks averaging 120.1 points to Brooklyn’s 118.6 — despite just eight games with Durant, Harden and Irving — during the regular season.
“They’ve got three of the best scorers of all time on their team,” Milwaukee’s P.J. Tucker, a former Rockets player, said. “They’re going to score a bunch of points, we know that, but we’ve just got to make it as tough as possible. We’ve got to make them work, earn every single point, nothing easy and whatever happens, happens. But we’re going to go battle and compete. Blood, sweat, tears. Leave it all on the floor.”