Milwaukee Bucks: 3 things to watch for in Game 2 against Miami Heat
By Adam McGee
Milwaukee Bucks: 3 things to watch for in Game 2 against Miami Heat – Cutting down on errors
The truth is that the Bucks may well be 1-0 up in this series if they hadn’t given the Miami Heat such a considerable helping hand in Game 1.
Put simply, the Bucks just made way too many mistakes on Monday, and against a team as good as the Heat, they can’t afford to do that. Whether the Bucks’ season ends in the second round or stretches all the way to the Finals, they need to understand that they’ve now reached the point where margin for error has shrunk to zero.
The biggest issue with Milwaukee’s opening performance of the second round was turnovers, which meant it had tracked along with much of their play since the restart in Orlando.
On this occasion, the Bucks committed 19 turnovers, from which the Heat scored 28 points. While the Heat also turned it over 16 times, they crucially allowed just 10 points to the Bucks off those opportunities. Part of that difference comes to transition defense, but mostly the Bucks simply can’t afford the number of live ball turnovers they were guilty of on Monday.
Where the Heat often seemed to overthrow passes out of bounds, for the Bucks it was more a case of coughing up the ball in the half court.
There was enough good about Milwaukee’s play for them to believe that simply tidying things up could go a long way toward getting them a victory in Game 2.