No reason to overreact about Milwaukee Bucks after ugly Game 2 loss

The vibes were, as the kids say, immaculate after the Milwaukee Bucks stole Game 1 on the road against the Boston Celtics. They won without their three-time All-Star Khris Middleton and showed off how impressive their defense can be when they’re locked in for a full 48 minutes (or however many minutes until they pulled the rotation guys).

Well, after a tough Game 2 loss the vibes are considerably worse heading back to Milwaukee for Game 3 (which isn’t until Saturday, so they’ll have some time to sit with this mess). A 23-point loss in a game where they were down as many as 26 is always going to sting, but especially so in the playoffs when you had a chance to go up 2-0 without having played a home game yet.

And yet, as I have been all season, I’m not panicking about this.

Why there’s no reason to panic about the Milwaukee Bucks after Game 2 loss

First of all, if I’ve been optimistic all season, why would one loss shake me? I don’t want to sound like a homer but I’ve said all year that you can’t overreact to one loss.

The playoffs mean more and every game is hyper-scrutinized but in the grand scheme of things, it’s still one loss.

One loss, by the way, out of two road games to start the series. They’re going back to Milwaukee tied at one! That’s already better than what could’ve been expected to begin the series. The team with home-court advantage is supposed to win both games, they’re home games and teams play better at home.

If you come out of Fiserv Forum with a 3-1 lead going back to Boston, then you’re laughing as opposed to being forced to win the two home games to knot the series up. It cannot be stressed enough how huge that Game 1 win was.

Anyway, about the game itself.

I don’t want to minimize the problems that the Bucks had in the first half (which was objectively bad, they did not play well) but how often are the Celtics going to shoot 65 percent on 20 3-pointers in a half again?

How many halves will Jaylen Brown have where he scores 25 points on nearly 115 percent true shooting. That’s not a typo. Brown had 25 points on nearly one hundred and fifteen percent true shooting. He went 5-of-5 from deep! According to Shot Quality, the game should have been considerably closer.

Again, there were very real problems that the Bucks had in the first half. Primarily getting Giannis Antetokounmpo easy looks and making his life on offense easier.

They settled far too often with bad iso possessions, whether it was Antetokounmpo or Jrue Holiday, in that first half that saw them down 25 at the break.

The offense had moments of brilliance in the second half like when they went on a couple of runs to get the lead down to 12 at one point and the defense didn’t necessarily do anything different in the second half.

They still dared Boston to hit 3s, they just didn’t shoot an obscene percentage.

The biggest thing, for me, is that Antetokounmpo got going in the second half. He seemed to be more aggressive, picked his spots better, and they made his life easier by having him set screens and roll hard to the basket in the half-court.

He scored 23 points on 62 percent true shooting in just under 20 minutes in the second half. That seems more repeatable that Brown’s 25 points in a half. Also, not as important, but Pat Connaughton got going a little bit as well! They’ll need more of that from him and the reserves going forward in this series.

If they can carry over some of the good things they did on offense in the second half (again, specifically with Antetokounmpo) then there’s no reason to think that they won’t win Game 3.

Boston has been great defensively so far through two games, but the problems are fixable for Milwaukee and you should have confidence that they’ll take the things that worked in the second half into the next game.

That game will be where the Milwaukee Bucks try to re-take the series lead over the Boston Celtics which is Saturday at 2:30 pm CT.