The Next Lamb: The Milwaukee Bucks

Game 5: Milwaukee (1-3) at Boston (3-1)

Date: Wednesday, November 3

Time: 8 p.m. (Eastern)

TV: ESPN

I haven't had much of an opportunity to watch the Bucks this year. As I'm writing this, I'm keeping an eye on a replay of their 90-76 home loss to Portland last night. As I type this sentence, in fact, they're up 23-13, and they look good on both ends of the floor. The box score says they scored 27 points in the first period, which means they got just 49 the rest of the way. I have no idea what happened after such a promising start.

My only other look at Milwaukee this season was a few minutes of their 96-85 loss to Minnesota. I tuned in towards the end of that one, and most of what I saw was Brandon Jennings forcing the action and turning the ball over. That was the tail end of a nice in which the Bucks hit just over a third of their shots, however, so perhaps frustration was settling in.

Jennings, the second-year point guard, is an interesting player for me. I saw him at Summer League before his rookie season and was pretty unimpressed. He got everybody's attention by scoring 55 points on the Warriors early last year, and I personally think that one game colored everyone's opinion of him. Perhaps it's the stubborn Jonny Flynn fan in me; Jennings was a Rookie of the Year candidate, Flynn was widely panned as one of the worst starting point guards in the league. But statistically the players were pretty similar. (I'll have more on this once Flynn gets back and I write my defense of him.)

Anyway, Jennings vs. Rajon Rondo is a matchup of the only two players who have recorded triple-doubles this season (Jennings dropped 20/10/10 on Charlotte last week). Boston has the clear advantage in that matchup. A big key will be limiting Jennings' options; he's not the most patient point guard, and he'll force the action if he can't get what he's looking for right away.

Milwaukee's other big name is center Andrew Bogut. The big Aussie isn't 100% after a nasty arm injury suffered at the end of last season, but he's the first good post player the Celtics have faced this season. I don't know if Shaq is playing tonight, but Bogut isn't overly physical, so hopefully Jermaine O'Neal will be able to handle him. He's got a nice little lefty hook that he loves to use, and word is that his shooting stroke -- not great to begin with -- isn't what it was before the injury. Bogut is one of the best shotblockers in the NBA, so Boston will need to be wary of his presence on drives to the hoop. On the flip side, whoever Bogut is guarding should be open for dishoffs and offensive rebounds.

The Bucks have a bunch of wing players who do a variety of things well. John Salmons is good scorer, Carlos Delfino is having a great year shooting the three, and newly-acquired Corey Maggette excels at getting to the foul line (where he converts at a terrific rate). Reserve power forward Ersan Ilyasova is a good three-point shooter, and the starter at the four, Drew Gooden, gave KG a lot of trouble when he was with Cleveland a few years ago.

Milwaukee was tabbed by most as an up-and-coming team in the East after they took the Hawks to seven games last season (without Bogut). They haven't come together yet this year, but they have been playing very good defense. Boston pushed the pace against Detroit last night and would do well to use a similar strategy against the Bucks. Doing so would keep Milwaukee from setting its defense and force the excitable Jennings into turnovers.

Boston 106, Chicago 104 (Overtime)

I hope you are watching this.

[recap] [box score]

Game 5 lacked the overall quality of some of the previous contests in this incredible series, but it ended up the same: A series of big plays from both teams down the stretch of regulation and into overtime, where the outcome was decided on effectively the last possession of the game.

Paul Pierce is going to grab the headlines, shaking off the torpor with which he seemed to be playing for much of the game to hit the game-tying basket at the end of regulation and three straight jumpers to win the game in overtime. But with Pierce struggling for much of the game and Ray Allen limited to just 26 minutes -- he fouled out midway through the fourth on two very dubious calls -- Boston wouldn't have even had a chance without the stellar play of Rajon Rondo, Glen Davis, and Kendrick Perkins. Rondo was only slightly less magnificent than he's been all series and Davis turned in another solid game, but Perkins played the best game I've ever seen him play Tuesday night.

The big fella played more than 48 minutes without committing a foul, two statistics that should blow the mind of anyone at all familiar with Perk or his game. He had his lapses, such as when he failed to stop Derrick Rose on a drive that put Chicago up four with less than two minutes in regulation, but immediately made up for it, blocking a John Salmons jumper after a Rondo drive to preserve the one-possession deficit. Perkins anchored the defense with seven blocked shots, and did a number of other Kevin Garnett-like things throughout the night, diving on the floor for an early loose ball and hitting Rondo with a nifty assist on the pinch post play. Sixteen points, 19 rebounds, seven blocks in 48 minutes -- and Boston needed every one of them.

Quick things:

-Chicago is kicking and screaming about the lack of a flagrant foul call on Rondo with two seconds left in overtime. They are almost surely right, but it didn't necessarily take the game away from them. Brad Miller would have gone to the line for two shots and Chicago would have had the ball on the side, but Boston was still up two. Assuming that Miller would have missed the first free throw (as he did on the shooting foul), Chicago would have only had a shot to win the game - and with no timeout left to draw something up, it would have been a difficult shot. Ben Gordon has specialized in making difficult shots in this series, but let's not act that Chicago would have won but for the lack of the flagrant. And besides, the failure to whistle Rondo for the Flagrant-1 isn't any weirder than fouling Ray Allen out on a double foul call after he got tangled up with Miller on a (moving) screen by Miller.

-Tony Allen played down the stretch in Ray's place, and in just a few minutes, showed why he doesn't play those kind of minutes very often. Doc doesn't trust him, and with good reason. I had just gotten done explaining to a friend that Tony has a low basketball IQ, when he grabbed a rebound in traffic and threw it to the first white jersey he saw -- Kendrick Perkins, running upcourt. Outlet passes to seven-footers at midcourt don't usually end well; thankfully, Perk was able to make the catch under control and get the ball to a guard. It wasn't long thereafter that Tony then fouled Gordon on a very difficult three-point shot, sending Gordon to the line for three free throws that temporarily tied the game.

-Chicago bailed Boston out by putting John Salmons on Pierce down the stretch. Salmons is closer to Pierce's size than Kirk Hinrich, but Hinrich has done a fantastic job on Pierce this whole series. Boston would have had a speed mismatch on whoever Salmons would have been guarding, but it's not like Boston was going anywhere other than Pierce down the stretch.

-I did like Chicago's four guard lineup, with Gordon, Hinrich, Salmons, and Rose playing around a big man. Boston's counter of the starting five sets up a Davis-Salmons matchup. When you create a mismatch on offense, you end up exposing yourself to the same mismatch on defense. But this clearly favored Chicago. Davis can't stay in front of Salmons, and while Salmons gave up a lot of size on the other end, Big Baby doesn't create for himself all that well. Put it this way: Who would you rather bet on in a one-on-one game? The answer is Salmons, and I expect Chicago to do this again in Game 6.

Speaking of Game 6, it's Thursday, back in Chicago, at 7 p.m. Eastern on TNT.