Photo via Twitter / Bucks
Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jason Tatum
It was fitting that Ultimate Fighting Championship president Dana White was spotted by television cameras in the stands at Sunday’s game seven between the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics. The game certainly had all of the elevated stakes of a heavyweight fight. Unfortunately, it would end with a knockout blow rather than a late decision.
The Bucks went into Boston reeling from a loss on Friday that felt deflating. However, the team had been in this exact same spot last year, having to go on the road for a decisive game in the Eastern Conference semifinals. That game, however, was against the Brooklyn Nets, and thanks to Kevin Durant’s foot being on the three-point line in a shot that would have put the Bucks away, Milwaukee lived to fight another day. The Bucks would have loved to even make it that close to victory on Sunday.
The first half of the game was a tight, physical affair, as the majority of this series had been. Milwaukee jumped out to a lead thanks to a short Celtics cold streak. Boston responded with a run of their own. The Bucks would jump out to as much as a 10-point lead in the first quarter, only to see it disappear by halftime. There was still hope for a thriller, or that the halftime talk from coach Mike Budenholzer would ignite some of the playoff magic that Bucks fans had witnessed in last year’s championship run.
Then the third quarter happened, and it was a nightmare.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
The Boston Celtics were content with beating the Milwaukee Bucks on the three-point line, and that very much was the case on Sunday. On several trips down the floor, Boston opted to not push the ball into the paint and make the Bucks’ centers defend. Instead, they simply outshot Milwaukee, with 22 three-pointers overall, the most ever recorded in a game seven situation. Seven of those three-pointers came from Grant Williams, who emerged as a breakout player for Boston in this series, and many of them were part of a third quarter run that took the Bucks out of contention for making a comeback. In the box score, it will show that the Celtics only outscored Milwaukee by 10 points in that period. From a momentum standpoint, however, TD Garden was rocking, and it felt like a situation that the Bucks couldn’t get out of fast enough.
The offensive momentum carried into the final quarter, with the celebrations beginning before the final buzzer was even close to sounding. The 2021-22 Milwaukee Bucks season ends with a 109-81 loss to the Celtics in game seven of the Eastern Conference semifinals. While it would be easy to put the blame elsewhere, or think about the ‘what if’ scenarios that could have been reversed, the Bucks were simply beaten by a very tough Celtics team on Sunday. The final series of Milwaukee’s season was some of the highest levels of basketball that they would have to play all year, and it made for an objectively entertaining set of games for the neutral fan. Milwaukee’s reign as defending champions comes to an end now, but that doesn’t mean they will be out of the running for an NBA title for years to come.
