Milwaukee Bucks: 3 big things to watch for against Boston Celtics

Hey, the Milwaukee Bucks are back at 0.500! After a wonky start to their road trip which saw them fall two games below 0.500, they are even at 6-6. They’ll play the fourth of their five-game road trip tonight against the Boston Celtics, a team going through some turmoil of their own.

The Bucks, somewhat surprisingly, took both games of their back-to-back road set with wins over the very shorthanded Philadelphia 76ers and survived a late push from the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden recently.

The Bucks lost the season series to the Celtics last season, going 1-2 in their meetings, and have gone 5-4 in games against Boston since head coach Mike Budenholzer took over. Like the Bucks, the Celtics are a bit shorthanded as Jaylen Brown is out multiple weeks with a hamstring injury. That being said, the Celtics are still a talented team and have won three of their last four games.

Will the Milwaukee Bucks patchwork starting lineup continue to play well against the Boston Celtics?

Following their loss to the Knicks at home on November 5th, the Bucks have gone with the same starting lineup in their last three games. Jrue Holiday, George Hill, Grayson Allen, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Bobby Portis have settled in as Budenholzer’s trusted lineup.

It has led to a 2-1 record in those three games, including a near-comeback win against the Washington Wizards, and the five players have fit in well together. According to NBA.com/stats, the five-man unit has produced a plus-8.3 net rating in 23 minutes together, which isn’t a huge sample but a nice indicator that they may have found something that works while they continue to wait for their usual starters to come back.

That net rating is powered by a 95.9 defensive rating which isn’t sustainable but still very good to see. Of note to Bucks fans, they have an 85 percent defensive rebounding rate with those five players on the floor, so it has shored up that problem a bit as well.

In particular, the three-man combination of Antetokounmpo, Allen, and Holiday has produced a plus-15.3 net rating in 203 possessions, per Cleaning the Glass (subscription required). We have still yet to see in an extended sample how all four starters look with Allen on the floor, but it’s a good start that he is performing well with Antetokounmpo and Holiday.

The Bucks frontcourt tandem of Antetokounmpo and Portis was able to match up well against the Knicks’ duo of Mitchell Robinson and Julius Randle and they’ll face a similar challenge in Robert Williams III and Al Horford with the Celtics.