The Milwaukee Bucks are one win away from reaching their first NBA Finals since 1974 — when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led the team to its first and only NBA championship — with a 123-112 victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday.
Even without Giannis Antetokounmpo, who got hurt in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals and was forced to miss Thursday’s Game 5 with a knee injury, the Bucks dominated from opening tip to final buzzer as a combination of Brook Lopez (33 points), Khris Middleton (26 points) and Jrue Holiday (25 points) all came up large in the two-time MVP’s absence.
Injured stars
The NBA has a major problem on its hands and all you needed to do was tune into just five minutes of Thursday’s game.
Once again, Hawks star Trae Young didn’t play and, for the first time all post-season, Antetokounmpo was forced to sit and watch the game from the sidelines.
Young, of course, suffered a bone bruise in his foot after stepping on an official by accident in Game 3 and was forced to miss Game 4, and Antetokounmpo suffered a hyperextended left knee in Game 4, leaving the contest with about seven minutes left to play in the third quarter.
Full credit to Lopez, Middleton and Holiday, as they all had fantastic performances in a key game for Milwaukee, but this was a tilt that just didn’t feel right, and it’s because of the injuries.
Again, the NBA has a major problem. With Antetokounmpo missing Game 5, that makes 10 all-star players from this season who have missed at least one post-season game and 12 all-star calibre players, if you include Young and the Denver Nuggets’ Jamal Murray.
Whether it be a product a shortened off-season and an accelerated regular season in the midst of a pandemic — to try to line dates back up to a more normal schedule for next year — or any other external factor that you can think of, the bottom line is simply that this can’t happen.
More so than any other pro sports league, the NBA is one that runs on star power, and for this many stars to miss time on what is supposed to be the league’s grandest stage is bad for everyone involved.
When the season is over, there needs to be an investigation or something along those lines looking into what went wrong here and how it can be prevented in the future.
Hawks have no offence
The Bucks’ defence deserves credit, of course, but without Young the Hawks looked completely out of sorts on Milwaukee’s home floor.
The usual suspects on Atlanta did end up putting up scoring numbers, such as Bogdan Bogdanovic, John Collins, Lou Williams and Danilo Gallinari, but without Young’s penetration and playmaking, all of the looks that came for the Hawks were that much more difficult and that was probably the biggest difference in the game.
Milwaukee’s defence is tough, but Young’s vision and penetration softened it up a little when he was able to play.
This wasn’t the case in Thursday’s game, particularly in Milwaukee where the Bucks have been so much better.
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Can the Bucks close thing out?
Saturday will be a big day for the Bucks as they’ll get a chance to reach their first Finals since 1974 if they can beat the Hawks in Atlanta.
The question is: Can they actually do it?
The Bucks have been demonstrably worse in Atlanta during this series compared to at home.
Of course, Antetokounmpo’s status will continue to loom large for Milwaukee as encouraging news came about after his injury that he didn’t suffer any ligament damage. So there’s a chance that he could be play Saturday.
That would be great news for the Bucks, obviously, but perhaps more important to their chances to close the series in six games will be the status of Young’s bone bruise. A brutal-sounding injury, if he’s unable to play again in Game 6 it’s hard not to think Milwaukee will punch its ticket to the Finals along with the Phoenix Suns.
