GT: Bucks @ Nets Playoffs 2ND Round Game 1

[Prokorov]

Hard to really talk about the game or take joy from the Win with Harden out. so bittersweet....

1) Mike James was an enormous pickup. He allows us to keep Kyrie at SG and facilitate Kyrie/KD. He also plays like he has the biggest D*** in the room. He isnt scared of the moment, how big the game is, who he is playing. Dude plays with enormous confidence.

2) Kyrie shot poorly, but you saw a different gear tonight from Kyrie. This was NBA finals mode Kyrie. Tough finishes, blowing past whoever is in front of him. elevating on his shots. And despite being off, still him some big timely shots. Dug in on defense and pitched in on the glass. Kyrie also gave us 44 minutes. that was huge. Allowed us to avoid an all-bench unit.

3) Blake hitting his shots was huge. That is the 1 thing they are giving us every time. the pick and pop blake three. if he hits those, their entire house of cards comes down. Blake was great tonight.

4) PJ tucker played Durant really well. No one else did. not middleton, not jrue, not giannis, not brook, not portis. Nash needs to run some double screens to force a switch. no one besides PJ can check durant.

5) We only turned it over 8 times. that was huge. i dont think they can beat us if we keep it to 10-12 turnovers or less. They can beat us on 2nd chance points or beat us on points off turnovers. in either of those we still win. if they beat us in BOTH, we are gonna struggle to win. Great job.

There is a lot to like. We shot poorly and still blew them out, without Harden. But when we go to milwaukee, its likely the opposite, where our role guys miss everything and theirs come through. on the road, role guys usually shrink.

Also, i woudnt discount they game planned for harden, when he was out, all out the window. they now get to prepare without harden. there will be adjustments.

going into milwaukee up 2-0 would be enormous.

[Whiskey Slick]

Never in my life has a win felt more like a loss.

Pains me to say it, REAL PAIN, but we're not winning this series without James and we all know it.

Heck, the Bucks know it too. I never saw a team come off a loss looking like they won in the pressers like this.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW

Big deal, we won a battle, yippie, but what good is it when we lost our most important player, the conductor?

What good was winning a battle when we lost the war, and we don't even get to make the F'ing Bucks earn it.

[ArksNetsSince99]

Never in my life has a win felt more like a loss.

Pains me to say it, REAL PAIN, but we're not winning this series without James and we all know it.

Heck, the Bucks know it too. I never saw a team come off a loss looking like they won in the pressers like this.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW

Big deal, we won a battle, yippie, but what good is it when we lost our most important player, the conductor?

What good was winning a battle when we lost the war, and we don't even get to make the F'ing Bucks earn it.

I feel exactly the same but hope we both wrong

[Pelly24]

Hard to really talk about the game or take joy from the Win with Harden out. so bittersweet....

1) Mike James was an enormous pickup. He allows us to keep Kyrie at SG and facilitate Kyrie/KD. He also plays like he has the biggest D*** in the room. He isnt scared of the moment, how big the game is, who he is playing. Dude plays with enormous confidence.

2) Kyrie shot poorly, but you saw a different gear tonight from Kyrie. This was NBA finals mode Kyrie. Tough finishes, blowing past whoever is in front of him. elevating on his shots. And despite being off, still him some big timely shots. Dug in on defense and pitched in on the glass. Kyrie also gave us 44 minutes. that was huge. Allowed us to avoid an all-bench unit.

3) Blake hitting his shots was huge. That is the 1 thing they are giving us every time. the pick and pop blake three. if he hits those, their entire house of cards comes down. Blake was great tonight.

4) PJ tucker played Durant really well. No one else did. not middleton, not jrue, not giannis, not brook, not portis. Nash needs to run some double screens to force a switch. no one besides PJ can check durant.

5) We only turned it over 8 times. that was huge. i dont think they can beat us if we keep it to 10-12 turnovers or less. They can beat us on 2nd chance points or beat us on points off turnovers. in either of those we still win. if they beat us in BOTH, we are gonna struggle to win. Great job.

There is a lot to like. We shot poorly and still blew them out, without Harden. But when we go to milwaukee, its likely the opposite, where our role guys miss everything and theirs come through. on the road, role guys usually shrink.

Also, i woudnt discount they game planned for harden, when he was out, all out the window. they now get to prepare without harden. there will be adjustments.

going into milwaukee up 2-0 would be enormous.

People don't quite get it until they see this. He had a great game and he didn't even score efficiently. It seemed like he was dominating because he literally blew by Jrue or whoever at will and made difficult shows and got rebounds and made great passes and had deflections and had a block and was just everywhere. Honestly, PJ can't guard KD. It's either KD makes the shot or not. Harden is quite possibly gone for the series, but you can definitely expect a few way better shooting performances from KD and Kyrie, so that's great they won this game—it feels like a must-win.

[Pelly24]

Kyrie is usually godly efficient with every team except the Bucks. His moves require very small margins so maybe something about Giannis’s wingspan throws off his mental map haha

He's had issues with them back in 2019, but today it just looks like his three-ball was off. He was 8/15 inside the arc (53%) and only 3/11 from three. The threes have nothing to do with Giannis. With KD on the floor, the Bucks can't guard Kyrie like they did in 2019. And even if they did, he missed a ridiculous amount of jumpers those playoffs, and that won't be the usual.

[Jay555]

Never in my life has a win felt more like a loss.

Pains me to say it, REAL PAIN, but we're not winning this series without James and we all know it.

Heck, the Bucks know it too. I never saw a team come off a loss looking like they won in the pressers like this.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW

Big deal, we won a battle, yippie, but what good is it when we lost our most important player, the conductor?

What good was winning a battle when we lost the war, and we don't even get to make the F'ing Bucks earn it.

No, we are good enough to beat the Bucks without Harden. Green might be good to go too.

Be confident and here is hoping Harden is only out for 1 week max.

[JoseRizal]

Great win tonight! Blake really earned my respect with his hustle, I just hooe he can sustain it.

I also hope Harden can come back. Nevertheless, I'm so proud of this team.

This is the best time to be a Nets fan...

[Whiskey Slick]

Great win tonight! Blake really earned my respect with his hustle, I just hooe he can sustain it.

I also hope Harden can come back. Nevertheless, I'm so proud of this team.

This is the best time to be a Nets fan...

This is the best Nets team ever, too bad we lost a J-Kidd level facilitator who makes everyone around him better, HOWEVER, if he feels like it he can also drop 40+ on you without breaking a sweat.

Go check the poll I posted last week: "Who is the Nets MVP this year?"

James Harden won by a landslide, because everyone knows he was the straw who stirred the drink.

I could live with losing to a better team, but this @#$%#$% sucks!

[Whiskey Slick]

Never in my life has a win felt more like a loss.

Pains me to say it, REAL PAIN, but we're not winning this series without James and we all know it.

Heck, the Bucks know it too. I never saw a team come off a loss looking like they won in the pressers like this.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW

Big deal, we won a battle, yippie, but what good is it when we lost our most important player, the conductor?

What good was winning a battle when we lost the war, and we don't even get to make the F'ing Bucks earn it.

I feel exactly the same but hope we both wrong

Me too, but when AD came up lame for the Lakers I, and everyone I know, knew the finals was a pipe-dream.

It was OVER for the Lakers and most basketball fans knew it.

IT KILLS ME TO SAY IT, but this feels like AD coming up lame for the Lakers, only this time it's personal.

The worst part is, Harden was Harden again verses the Celtics, he looked great, so I figured this was behind him.

[Gooner]

There is more ball movement without Harden, that's one thing that stands out. Harden is great and he will be missed, but Nets are more fun to watch without him.

[Basileus777]

Never in my life has a win felt more like a loss.

Pains me to say it, REAL PAIN, but we're not winning this series without James and we all know it.

Heck, the Bucks know it too. I never saw a team come off a loss looking like they won in the pressers like this.

BECAUSE THEY KNOW

Big deal, we won a battle, yippie, but what good is it when we lost our most important player, the conductor?

What good was winning a battle when we lost the war, and we don't even get to make the F'ing Bucks earn it.

My god you lot are soft.

[MrDollarBills]

There is more ball movement without Harden, that's one thing that stands out. Harden is great and he will be missed, but Nets are more fun to watch without him.

This usually isn't the case. Usually KD and Kyrie go into ISO mode without Harden, but last night they moved the ball and it worked. On the road may be a different story

[MrDollarBills]

There were plenty of times where we punished Lopez. How do you think Blake ended up having 18 pts?

There was nothing wrong with our offense tonight, we played remarkably well on that end, especially given that we lost our star PG in the 1st minute of the game.

I agree with you in regards to our offense, but how many times did we get Kyrie vs Lopez on an island tonight?

We got plenty of KD vs Lopez, which is really all we need.

Ok I see now. We need even more of that. Force them to take Lopez off the floor and they play right into our hands.

[Gooner]

There is more ball movement without Harden, that's one thing that stands out. Harden is great and he will be missed, but Nets are more fun to watch without him.

This usually isn't the case. Usually KD and Kyrie go into ISO mode without Harden, but last night they moved the ball and it worked. On the road may be a different story

That was early in the season, but towards the end they played great team basketball with Harden out, exceeding 30 assists a few times. With Harden it's mostly iso ball, and it's very effective when you have 3 best one on one players in the game, but it's more fun to watch when they play this way.

[ecuhus1981]

We have a wide range of opinions and emotions circulating through this thread, all of which are valid. The one I won't accept is wagging the finger or moralizing someone for caring about this team. Out of bounds, go somewhere else with that BS energy. Stop the gas, we don't need it.

Bittersweet is the right word for this one. I want our medical staff to be as cautious with James now as they have been all season with everyone. Still, I will hope for a miracle.

If Green and/or Dinwiddie were ready, that would help a bunch. But there's nothing like having the best player on the planet, we will miss him however long he takes to recover. Now about the game...

I agree with others that the refs allowed the Bucks to be way more physical than they would have in the regular season. It's up to us to give the refs to officiate even handed. They called us for 6 more fouls than them, but I say we go even more aggressive and make the zebras show how much they favor Milwaukee.

We will shoot better, so will they. Without Harden, this might be the easiest W we will see.

[Sharcm1]

Why is everyone so bleak? Yes they lost harden. And possibly for the rest of the play offs. Hopefully just this series. I think the nets can beat the bucks without him. They did last night and Durant and Irving didn’t shoot well. Everyone says the nets aren’t battle tested because they haven’t played together. But I say this whole season on line up changes and injuries has prepared them for this exact moment. The guys off the bench have played. Have fit their role and done so the whole season. They are ready. The nets are ready to step up.

[MrDollarBills]

There is nothing wrong with expressing anguish over the Harden situation. We need this guy if we are going to win 11 more games. I'm just hoping that it was just a tweak and not a severe strain resulting in any damage.

I'm curious if Marks and Nash will want to kick the tires now on Spencer Dinwiddie if Harden is going to be out for a lengthy amount of time. Spencer wants to play but the Nets put player safety over winning (which is the right thing to do always).

[HardenGoat]

That was a gutsy win really proud of this team. Type of win that sets a tone. Was reading the bucks forum and they were clowning hardens injury from the start. Mike James really stepped up for us and Blake was awesome with his hustle and energy. They hate him with a passion. Love it. We need Claxton to keep playing at this level. He is such a great defender and if they keep playing Lopez we need him on the floor against him. We dodged a bullet with Durant guarding him in foul trouble. Thankfully Giannis tried playing hero ball instead of feeding him in the paint. We gambled on going small and it payed off. Great game.

If they are feeding lopez in the post on the regular we will sweep them. they cant win that way

I agree. Iam amazed they even tried that strategy but my point was that with Durant having 4 early fouls that would have taken him out of the game. Instead Giannis kept trying to drive it himself and the defining play was a deep three early in the clock he missed which showed his real IQ when handling the ball. I doubt we see Lopez again this series otherwise they will be looking for a new coach.

[ecuhus1981]

There is nothing wrong with expressing anguish over the Harden situation. We need this guy if we are going to win 11 more games. I'm just hoping that it was just a tweak and not a severe strain resulting in any damage.

I'm curious if Marks and Nash will want to kick the tires now on Spencer Dinwiddie if Harden is going to be out for a lengthy amount of time. Spencer wants to play but the Nets put player safety over winning (which is the right thing to do always).

All of this, mon ami.

I too pray that Harden pulled himself out of an abundance of caution, so as not to damage it further.

I will be pulling up Spencer's Twitter every 4 hours for the foreseeable future. I was always hoping he could return now (the 2nd round) anyway, but we need him more than we expected. If Jeff can get a clean bill of health and we actually play a reinvigorated DeAndre, we can pull through this series even if James can't go.

[Hello Brooklyn]

Do you guys think theres any shot the MRI comes back negative and Harden is day to day.

Possibly coming back for Game 5 or 6?

Or is all hope lost?