After a long stretch of time that saw the team breezing by their opponents and flying high above the clouds, the Boston Celtics found themselves crash land back on earth Sunday afternoon, as they were outplayed and seemingly looked overmatched in the first game of their Eastern Conference Semifinals bout against the Milwaukee Bucks.
Now, granted, the Bucks are still the reigning league champions and went on to finish the regular season with the exact same record as the C’s themselves, but considering just how flawlessly they took down the star-studded Brooklyn Nets in round one (Boston was the only team to not allow their opponent a single win in throughout the Quarterfinals), there was strong reason to believe that their successes would carry on over into Game 1, and were even considered the favorites coming into the contest.
Unfortunately for the ball club and their faithful followers, however, Sunday’s matinee did not go as expected, as the shamrocks simply could not put forth the type of two-way production that guided them to one of the best midseason turnarounds in NBA history and to their great start to the 2022 postseason.
Right from the jump, it was evident that it was going to be a big day for Milwaukee and their All-World talent, Giannis Antetokounmpo, who, in the first quarter alone, filled the stat sheet with six points, five boards, and four assists whilst holding Boston’s own cornerstone, Jayson Tatum to a lackluster one point on 0-for-4 shooting.
By game’s end, both players’ production continued to venture down these two vastly different paths, as the former ended up registering his second triple-double of his playoff career (24 points, 13 boards, 12 assists) while the latter struggled mightily to put the ball in the basket (finished with 21 points on just 33 percent shooting from the floor) which, sadly, was a theme for the hometown team as a whole, who finished the night with a putrid overall shooting percentage of just 33.3.
In turn, the Boston Celtics fell to the Bucks 101-89 and fall behind in this best-of-seven series zero games to one.
Though the outcome was quite grim and the team as a whole played rather poorly, shockingly there were still a few positive contributions made from specific individuals of the C’s during the outing.
With this in mind, we at HH present to you 1 stud and 1 dud from Boston’s depleting Game 1 loss to Milwaukee: