2021 NBA Finals: Phoenix Suns vs Milwaukee Bucks

yeah this is a cool matchup, mostly homegrown teams with interesting and fun players, chance for both giannis and cp3 to get over the hump, neither team has been to the finals for a long time

tbh i dont actually find the bucks players to be fun but thats ok they have other good qualities

this series has some really interesting matchups that should be fun to track--lopez/ayton, holiday/booker, bridges/whichever buck he ends up guarding. there's no reason for the bucks to try their switching defense at least initially so ayton needs to hold his own or better against lopez and make sure brook is somewhat neutralized as a rim protector. another thing that's interesting is pj tucker does not really have anything useful to do in this series, and bobby portis will probably have to go back to spot minutes.

basically i don't see a ton of matchup advantages for the bucks and the suns should more or less be able to play their game on offense. there are ways you can talk yourself into the bucks having the talent advantage but i have no reason to think their best 3 guys will put together enough good performances to win the series. i'm going to say suns in 7 because i think most of these games will be close and competitive.

wonder if we might see some ayton on giannis

i think more likely crowder draws that assignment to better cut off driving lanes wd be my guess, otherwise youve got crowder on lopez which could be problems but idk

my other guess is tucker gets the "guard book" assignment so that middleton is more focused on buckets

i guess "who guard giannis" is an interesting question--my thought was bridges would get first crack but i didn't see the two regular season games.

i think booker would slice tucker up but maybe the thought would be just be a brick wall and turn him into a jump shooter and make their offense more stagnant.

Honestly you should have Connaughton on Booker a lot. He’s not the world’s greatest defender but those other guys just are too slow and big.

yeah i agree with that, would try him first over pj

So I looked back at the ILH predictions from 2012 onward & tallied the votes for each team. Track record is about 5 right / 4 wrong so far.

2012: Thunder 19 - 5 (wrong)
2013: Spurs 13 - 9 (wrong)
2014: Spurs 24 - 10 (right)
2015: GSW 27 - 9 (right)
2016: GSW 25 - 5 (wrong)
2017: GSW 12 - 8 (right)
2018: GSW 18 - 3 (right)
2019: GSW 21 - 5 (wrong)
2020: Lakers 17 - 8 (right)

2021: Suns 13 - 7 ...

that 2012 prediction margin is crazy. we have collectively picked lebron to win a title...once, last year

lol why did we pick okc by so much, were we more mad at the heatles than usual?

we went 26-9 for the mavs in 2011, I appear to have been the idiot who picked heat in six

in other words we've never picked the eastern conference. even the presence of LeBron did not overcome that bias

Giannis Antetokounmpo has been upgraded from doubtful to questionable ahead of Bucks-Suns Game 1 of the NBA Finals. pic.twitter.com/KhPLX70Dyu

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) July 6, 2021

hes gonna play isnt he

seems like

now a GTD

Reporting with @Malika_Andrews: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo has continued around-the-clock treatment on his left knee with hopes of becoming cleared to play Game 1 of the Finals vs. Phoenix tonight. There’s expected to be a game-time decision on his availability.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 6, 2021

i didn't get a chance to vote but i think i would've gone suns in 7. i want to lean towards the bucks here, it just kinda feels like their year to me despite how bumpy the road has been, but it's hard to figure what giannis effectiveness is going to be and the suns prob have enough scoring between cp3 and booker to overcome that. i also think if this goes to 7 that the bucks are gonna have a struggle trying to win in phoenix in that kind of environment, i don't trust what they're going to get on offense

that said, i did think the suns showed signs of mortality vs the clippers. booker was pretty inefficient, bridges was blah. the bucks have legit size to throw at ayton. they can also have games where they shoot the lights out, which will stretch the suns pretty thin. crowder turned into a pumpkin in the finals last year after a huge playoffs. i think this is a very winnable series for the bucks even if giannis isn't healthy -- maybe more so if he doesn't play at all, we'll have to see what he gives them once he steps on the floor

now a GTD
🐦[Reporting with @Malika_Andrews🕸: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo has continued around-the-clock treatment on his left knee with hopes of becoming cleared to play Game 1 of the Finals vs. Phoenix tonight. There’s expected to be a game-time decision on his availability.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 6, 2021🕸]🐦

whenever a player improves from "doubtful" to "questionable" on game day they pretty always wind up playing so I'd be surprised if he weren't out there. that said, centering your offense around Giannis at 80% feels like a surefire way to lose this game, especially since they seem to play so much better w/ Jrue as the primary ball handler. he isn't gonna be able to take on 3 defenders like he normally does and the Suns will be fouling him and pressuring him to shoot which is how the Bucks get themselves into a hole early in games. and if he's clearly hobbled I doubt Bud will take him out either. of course if they leave him near the paint for lob plays & use him mostly for his defense and ability in transition I think it'll be fine

we'll know in the first ten minutes what he can do and that should certainly start to answer a lot of questions for the series.

Watching the warmups, he’s gonna play

there it is

Giannis is a go for Game 1 of the NBA Finals, source tells ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 7, 2021

I just drop knowledge on ILH all the time

thanks matt, what would we do without you

incredible that the suns arena's naming rights are currently not spoken for

coach bud pregame: "compete compete compete. have some fun, play some basketball"

can't argue with any of that

Bucks in 6 here we go baby

incredible that the suns arena's naming rights are currently not spoken for

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, July 6, 2021 9:00 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

it will always be talking stick resort hotel casino arena to me

sick tip by bridges

i genuinely did not think the bucks would come out switching on defense. this isn't going to work.

last two possessions have ended with holiday on ayton and lopez on booker. that does not seem ideal.

yeah was thinking the same

this game is pretty sweet, excellent shot of some pheonix bros just now

this game is pretty sweet, excellent shot of some pheonix bros just now

― lag∞n, Tuesday, July 6, 2021 9:31 PM (three seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah it’s like a college game, it’s fuckin sick

suns in 4

suns fanbase has been a sleeping giant for years, with a good team those people will watch some basketball and absolutely rage

Can’t get over how surreal it is seeing Milwaukee here

Really good game so far

Also surreal to see Badgers hero Frank the Tank Kaminsky getting finals minutes

yeah this has been great xp

suns having good luck getting lopez to switch onto the guards

not frank kaminsky getting finals minutes

suns having good luck getting lopez to switch onto the guards

― circles, Tuesday, July 6, 2021 9:49 PM (thirty-six seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

you can see booker's eyes doing the looney tunes saucers thing when he has lopez in an iso

trying to remember the last finals where one of the teams was not a team i was at least kinda pissed at and i'm not sure it's ever happened before!

lol

It is a surprisingly low bullshit finals

Lol at the inevitable “Knuck if you Buck” music cue

first warriors/cavs showdown is a maybe and lebron was on a redemption tour but those cavs teams were hard to love and there was def some latent THIS guy again stuff w/r/t lebron xp

lol just remembered CP3 saying "everyone expects him to miss" when Giannis is at the line

Yeah I think every fanbase is like that. It's usually an unathletic white guy they latch into tho.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dudley#2010_Oregon_gubernatorial_campaign

dudley lost -- as a republican in oregon in 2010! -- by 1.5%. every subsequent republican has lost by 6+ points. sports, man

Alex Caruso seems like the quintessential example of that

thats ASSISTANT MANAGER caruso to you, pal

caruso's defense is probably good enough for him to rise above that categorization

you think he could be manager? its a lot of responsibility

maybe like night manager, not sure he's ready for peak hours

My nickname for him is “The Accountant”

Scalabrine is the ne plus ultra imo

thats ASSISTANT MANAGER caruso to you, pal

lmao

One interesting thing you can see in the stats -- Giannis really did just stop shooting threes. 31 attempts against the Nets, 15 (in four games) against the Hawks, just 8 against the Suns.

It felt like the hawks were able to bottle him up and frustrate him way more. I mean he was just amazing in these finals

ok I'm watching Budenholzer speak at the parade and I genuinely feel good for the guy. whether you think he deserves this or not you cannot deny the man was the most stressed person on the court day in and day out, it's nice to see him relaxed and actually smiling

I think he deserves it! The thing he has been criticized again and again for in the playoffs is blind devotion to his plan and inability to adjust. I think he has absolutely showed this year that he's able to see what's not working and change it mid-series.

he was pretty good after that horrific Game 5 loss to the Nets. admittedly a lot of the criticism of him was the result of his team shooting 9 points worse from 3 point range than they did in the regular season

he coached a great series, and there's a little bit of "yeah it's about time you coach a great series" but that doesn't take away much imo. i'm happy that he got to finish the job after starting this team on the right path following the kidd years. he seems like a good dude and has accomplished a lot while being someone that guys seem to be really happy playing for.

https://www.theringer.com/2021/7/21/22585355/giannis-antetokounmpo-book-excerpt-the-improbable-rise

this is a great article about Giannis & Kidd. I guess I'm going to have to buy this book. Kidd seems like a genuine psychopath though, this is the sort of dumb shit awful NFL coaches do

Knight searches for the right words. “I don’t want to sound negative,” he says. Knight explains some of Kidd’s methods, such as how Kidd would embarrass the culprit of an error by making everyone but that person run sprints for his mistake. “He just had his way of getting his point across,” Knight says.

Little things were made to be a big deal: At one point center Thon Maker didn’t have an iPhone, messing up the team’s blue-bubble iPhone group chat. Kidd was upset about it and made the team run because Kidd felt that Maker not getting an iPhone was an example of the team not being united.

good lord kidd belongs in the hague

I never understood how his domestic-abusing ass ever got a coaching job to begin with

pic.twitter.com/pLn1TEfz3U

— Moneybagg Yo(hannes) 🇪🇷 (@AronYohannes) July 22, 2021

on cue

The crazy thing about that Kidd article is they have all those sources who say he’s a psychopath but also a basketball genius

Both things are probably true but that doesn’t make you a good HC - knowing what your players are good at, and more importantly, knowing what they are NOT good at, is key

apparently my Fitbit thought I was jogging for 3 hours

https://i.imgur.com/8ZYMXXg.jpg

ball is intense activity

lol it thinks I burned 5500 calories that day

frogbsanteteokounmpo