Milwaukee Bucks: 3 things to watch for in Game 2 against Brooklyn Nets

How will Milwaukee Bucks respond in Game 2 against the Nets?

The scales were already tipped against the Bucks’ direction going into their Conference Semifinals series with the Nets for so many obvious reasons.

Now after having dropped Game 1, the Bucks have to craft the perfect response to come back to Milwaukee after having potentially evened up the series. And there are no shortage of ways that they can improve their performance.

Whether that’s the play of both Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton, who combined to score 30 points on 13-for-42 shooting, or the limited contributions they received from their bench unit, there’s plenty for the Bucks to be better at. In regards to the former, Holiday told Brian Mahoney of the Associated Press that he’ll better his poor offensive showing from Game 1:

"“But when it comes to kind of the guards and myself, I’ve got to finish better,” Holiday said. “There was a couple of them in there that I should have made and I didn’t and next game we’ll turn that around.”"

Putting that aside, what’s more important is the tone that the Bucks will look to set in the early going.

We saw the Nets feed off bounce back from their early loss of Harden and Blake Griffin, in particular, forced the issue by diving for loose balls and putting the Bucks on the back of their heels. That all fed into the great showing that Griffin put together and the Nets certainly fed off of that.

Given the circumstances, how the Bucks respond going into Game 2 will very much tell us about the character of this team and whether they can find the right formula that will be necessary to battle back against the favored Nets.

Game 2 of the Bucks’ series with the Brooklyn Nets will tip off at 6:30 p.m. CST and you can catch the action on TNT where it will be nationally televised.