3 keys for Milwaukee Bucks to steal Game 1 on road vs Boston Celtics

The Milwaukee Bucks will need to contain Jaylen Brown to steal Game 1

Similar to the last series, it feels as though we aren’t giving enough attention and respect to the opponents’ second-leading scorer. It was Zach LaVine in the first round, now it’s Jaylen Brown.

Brown averaged 23.6 points on 57 percent true shooting this season and had a productive first round with 22.5 points on 55.4 percent true shooting. Against the Bucks specifically, he averaged 22 points on 56 percent true shooting.

Brown has developed into a very talented individual scorer and created a solid tandem with Tatum. In the regular season, Middleton was the primary defender against Brown with around 12 matchup minutes and Brown shot 5-of-10 on 2-point attempts with three turnovers and shooting foul drawn.

That means Holiday and Wesley Matthews will see more of Brown in this series with the Bucks essentially without a true wing to defend either Brown or Tatum. Holiday and Matthews combined to hold Brown to 4-of-10 shooting inside the arc with five turnovers and three shooting fouls drawn across three regular-season games.

One of the biggest knocks on Brown’s (who I’ve been a huge fan of) offensive game is that he hasn’t developed into a great playmaker. He’s gotten better this season but hasn’t taken that leap that Tatum has.

If they can force him to play iso, one-on-one basketball against Holiday, Matthews, or even Antetokounmpo and continuously switch, that would gum up the Celtics’ offense quite a bit. We saw it when they closed out Boston on Christmas Day by switching everything and making them take tough contested jumpers.

They don’t have as much size to guard the Celtics’ two wings but they can certainly find ways to bother them and make things difficult as they did for DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine.