ITS THE OFFS BABY THE 2023 NBA PLAYOFFS

Just sucks so much, on paper this is an easy series but instead I got to watch every single thing I was worried about actually happen in real time. Giannis injury? Check. Heat having their best 3 point games of the season? Check. Blowing huge leads in the 4th? Yep, they did it twice (Bucks were over 95% win probability late in both). Giannis bricking free throws down the stretch? Holy shit yeah. In some ways I’m actually relieved I don’t have to watch this team anymore.

is this the first playin team to make the second round

In the 4th Quarter and Overtime, the Heat made 11 shots in the paint. The Bucks made just three.

Miami also took more threes in that stretch.

— Couper Moorhead (@CoupNBA) April 27, 2023

i think i saw that at one point the bucks were 3-21 in the fourth?

7 and 8 seeds have won before but not since the play in no

the real excitement will be when a 9 or 10 seed makes the 2nd round

Bucks are the 10th team to lose a playoff game after heading into the 4th with a 15-point lead.

They're the first team to lose after a 15-point lead after 3 in a win-or-go game.

— Keerthika Uthayakumar (@keerthikau) April 27, 2023

spo saying they were going to run end of reg play for someone else, guessing it mustve been bam, but jimmy demanded it be for him

wow
also lol
also congrats j0rd

go dubs

i’m thinking back now to the bucks-nets series two years ago where the bucks did similar shit at the end of game 6 but jrue was able to bail them out

― J0rdan S., Thursday, April 27, 2023 12:49 AM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would like to give our poor pal frogs some time to grieve but there will be a lot of people this summer who take a closer look at the giannis-era bucks playoff resume and come away with some revised conclusions

draymond first time scoring more than 20 since christmas 2019 lol. everyone played well for the dubs. looney another wild stat line 4/22/7

i gotta go watch this heat bucks game now

well k3v you can’t take back a title. and they did everything you would want a champ to do in that suns series incl giannis putting up 50-14 in the close out game. people still talk about how close the nets were to winning that series, it’s not exactly a forgotten part of history

but i do think this isn’t going to age well for bud bcuz nobody associates him w/ any tactical genius during their title run. we’ll just remember that they had a superhuman on their team & the coach kinda froze up for some reason in the playoffs

kevin love put up 15-12 tonight on 5-11 from three. very bizarre the cavs just cut him i feel like we never got a full explanation there. they literally had 4 good players

giannis put up 38-20 and it felt like a C+ kinda game from him

Giannis Antetokounmpo: "They were playing to beat us and we were playing to win a championship....We were a little bit ahead of ourselves, to be honest."

— Eric Nehm (@eric_nehm) April 27, 2023

Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked if he wanted to guard Jimmy Butler more in the Bucks series loss to the Heat:

"Yes. Out of respect, you gotta let the coach make that adjustment. We have our best defender on him. There are conversations with Jrue. Whenever he gets tired, I can…

— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) April 27, 2023

man jimmy got me hyped talking trash relentlessly to the best perimeter defender in the league. incredible performance. insane that this is the same team that lost to the hawks in the first play in game a couple weeks ago.

We have just witnessed the fourth biggest series upset in NBA history since odds have been tracked to 1988.

1994: Nuggets def. Sonics (-2000)
2007: Warriors def. Mavs (-1800)
2012: 76ers def. Bulls (-1400)

and now...

2023: Heat def. Bucks (-1200)

— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) April 27, 2023

i'll never forget that nuggets sonics series or that dubs mavs series

i have zero memories of sixers bulls 2012 lol

https://hoopshabit.com/files/2014/04/02_Nuggets_SuperSonics.jpg

burned into my brain for 30 years

that was awesome for sure. we believe dubs prob the most hyped ive ever been for a sporting event.

the bulls series is the OG derrick rose injury iirc

UPDATE: Keith Sweat, Guy and special guest Tank will continue their Friday as planned. Please schedule your evening accordingly. https://t.co/FJdO9ZRjXl

— John Hollinger (@johnhollinger) April 27, 2023

happy for miami

Holy crap I picked a hell of a night to pass out on my kid’s floor while putting her to bed

Lol I passed out with my kids too.

Really wish the hawks would’ve matched up with the bucks

I'm sure the Bucks do, too

something that stood out to me this whole series was despite the heat running out a bunch of poor defenders and the bucks having multiple players who can iso they didnt really capitalise on it

if duncan robinson or love are on the floor you should attack them every time but it just didnt happen

its tough cause outside of giannis the bucks dont have guys who are necessarily worthy of breaking the offensive flow to set up an iso, middleton has at times in the past been that guy but he clearly wasnt at peak powers this series

btw worth mentioning the Bucks got the #1 seed despite Middleton missing like 50 games and Giannis missing 19, they finally got to full strength by the playoffs and faced a Heat team that was ravaged by injury and still somehow lost. the Heat had 3 players foul out by overtime! idk I know shit happens in the NBA but this is the most inexcusable series loss I've ever seen, if heads don't roll over this the Bucks are just not a serious organization

Coach Bud is the Mike McCarthy of the NBA

I really love Giannis and am bummed they are out of the playoffs but it does feel great to see Twitter roasting Grayson Allen all day

oh god yes practically everyone I know is saying this

remember before they won the ship a lot of Bucks fans were calling for Bud to be fired, and I kinda wondered if maybe they were destined for the same fate. perennial MVP candidate, super talented team, the 1/2 seed every year, only to get their hopes crushed in a series of baffling playoff losses where everything unravels in the same exact way every time. something that really hit me at the ends of both these last two losses is how the Bucks just kinda stopped running offensive plays at the end of the game, nobody wanted to take a shot, they played as though they were just as nervous as all the fans were

man those last two heat bucks games were the most exciting basketball ive seen in a long time, march madness vibes with nba players, salute

ok just watched heat bucks full game highlights... that has to be one of the worst losses i can recall, there are like 4 separate bill buckner/charles smith/chris webber level fuckups. condolences frogbs, only consolation is that it's so egregious they *have* to fire bud, right?

it was so bad it actually made bill simmons' "levels of losing" reenter my brain for the first time in many years

if they dont fire bud, man

especially with nurse just sitting there

Coach Bud is the Mike McCarthy of the NBA

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, April 27, 2023 8:43 AM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

yeah it reminds me of the Packers NFCCG loss to the Seahawks, just so many easily avoidable errors in a row, combined with the other team doing exactly what they needed to do to force OT and win. main difference is the Bucks did it in *TWO* consecutive games, which is pretty wild

I wonder what happened to Giannis in the 4th here. Game 6 of the Finals in 2021 he was a man on a mission, physically overwhelming and extremely focused. he shot 90% from the FT line which was previously his weakness. here it was just the opposite, he was just lost offensively and seemed to not want the ball in his hands. he wasn't even getting close on some of those free throws and bricked like 6 or 7 of them down the stretch. the play that sticks out to me...okay so Bucks up 4, 14 seconds left, Heat hit a quick 3, they mess up the inbounds, winds up being a jump ball, which tips over to Giannis. Giannis then anticipates being fouled, knows he's not shooting FTs well, and just whips the ball out of bounds, which Middleton makes an insane play to save and get to Jrue. Holiday of course misses a FT setting up Jimmy's circus shot to force OT with 0.5s left. but like why Giannis did that, I dunno, it's the sort of mental mistake that he did so well to clean up to get to the level he's at now

idk maybe there's something to be said about the stress of playing an unexpectedly tough series vs. a team you know you're supposed to beat. Bucks do this shit all the time. they go up 10-12 with 4 minutes to play and as soon as the other team gets a couple buckets they completely unravel.

all the criticisms of playoff giannis dried up when he won a ring but they prob still apply at least to some extent

obvs hes still great and you can win with him but there are real issues too

also not hard to imagine jimmy as goat-level at getting under his opponents skin and getting them shook. certainly moreso than anyone on the suns team they beat in 21

suns dont have anyone like jimmy buckets lol

wasnt like that was a dominant run either if they hadnt found their way through the discourse around giannis would be intolerable yb now, glad he got one

I'm sure the Bucks do, too

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, April 27, 2023 9:03 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

The hawks beat the heat! Not to say the heat didn’t play a great series or that the hawks would have had the same outcome (they played the bucks really well this year) but the Celtics were the last team I wanted to play. Disciplined, deep, athletic is the hawks kryptonite unfortunately

yeah that 2021 run was stressful as hell. they blew a huge lead to the Nets as Durant scored 50 thanks to Milwaukee's refusal to switch up their defense. they probably should've lost it but Durant's toe was on the line which gave them a chance to win in OT. vs. the Hawks they came out flat again and had Giannis suffer an injury that looked so gruesome it looked like he was gonna miss an entire year. they lost the first two to the Suns and then squeaked out 4 straight. especially considering the injuries to Harden and Kyrie you could very much argue 2021 was a fluke run.

But that's the thing -- EVERY run is a fluke run!

There are too many good teams. You can't win a title in the modern NBA without a lot of luck falling your way.

all the criticisms of playoff giannis dried up when he won a ring but they prob still apply at least to some extent

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 27, 2023 10:55 AM (forty-three minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

obvs hes still great and you can win with him but there are real issues too

― lag∞n, Thursday, April 27, 2023 10:56 AM (forty-three minutes ago)

i don't think giannis' reputation will take much of a hit. i guess we can say that he can't just summon at will the ability to make 90% of his free throws in a huge game. and that is a structural flaw in his game that will likely flare up in playoff games again in the future. but the guy still put up 38-20 and looked physically overwhelming. maybe we also saw that he can be stopped late in games if you can prevent him from getting to the rim, but in both of the last two games he also made a lot of baskets in crunch time including several and 1s, fouled bam out etc

to me the bucks ppl who will be getting reevaluated from most to least severe are

1. bud
2. middleton
3. jrue

bud it goes w/o saying. his reputation may never recover. middleton had a very weird series... he had no hope on defense and despite some big scoring nights never took over a game and did numerous stupid stuff at the end of last night's game. jrue i think ppl will just chalk it up to jimmy being historically great in that series. he also shot 10-30 from the field incl 4-17 from the 3 in the final two games.

on the other hand brook lopez was a beast the entire series and looks like one of the best 16 game centers in the NBA. he clearly outplayed bam in all 5 games altho bam did have a great second half and OT last night.