Photo via Twitter / Bucks
For the first half of Saturday’s contest with the Miami Heat, it looked like the Milwaukee Bucks might be the team that we saw in game one of their playoff series, rather than the team we saw in games two and three. Fortunately, that was not the case. Milwaukee already held a 3-0 lead in the series, and no team in NBA history has squandered that lead, but there was a bolstered confidence in seeing Milwaukee come back to take the series in four games.
Miami held a lead for most of the first half, but fell flat coming back out of the locker room, as Milwaukee surged past the Heat with a strong third quarter. There was no looking back from that point onward. Milwaukee led for the final six minutes of the third quarter and held that throughout the fourth, thanks to a rally of offense from all over the court to result in a 120-103 victory.
While Giannis Antetokounmpo recorded his first playoff triple-double of his career, it felt like a quiet game by his unrealistically high standards. He finished with 20 points, 15 assists and 12 rebounds, but was just one of four Bucks to finish with over 20 points. The lone bench player to outscore Giannis was Bryn Forbes, who continues to have the hot hand from beyond the three-point arc, finishing with 22 points and shooting 7-14 from three-point range. All of his points with the exception of one free throw came from behind the line. Forbes has been consistent off the bench when given the opportunity, but has really accelerated in this series, and hopefully throughout the postseason.
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The sweep is just the fifth in Bucks history for a seven-game series, with the last coming in the first round of the 2019 playoffs. The last one before that was in 1983. Milwaukee will now play the winner of the series between the Brooklyn Nets and Boston Celtics, which will go to at least five games thanks to Boston’s 125-119 win on Friday night. The Bucks won’t have another game until at least June 5, giving them a week to recover and rehab before what is sure to be a tough Eastern Conference semifinal.
