Guys, 2-3-4 is going to be Cleveland, Milwaukee, NYK. We're going to have to beat two of them. We shouldn't be afraid of it, they're probably despairing of having to play us earlier than they might.
Teams 5+ are cannon fodder at this point, and I include Philly in that unless Embiid's knee has a resurrection worthy of Easter. So it doesn't matter who gets those booby prizes. We're probably going to sweep whoever it is we get in the first round, maybe even if Miami.
I'll say last night made me respect Milwaukee a bit more, though. Portis and Middleton brought more than I thought they had. And our offense did go flat for a while against the new looks in the 4th. They hit 3s (17/35, 49%) and so did we (18/40, 45%), so that didn't skew things.
- part of it was Lillard getting layups on basically every iso possession he took. If we don't have anyone who can stay in front of him and contest at the rim, we need a new strategy there. Yes I know we'll have Holiday, but White is frankly quicker than Holiday 1-on-1 and yet seemed to give Dame no problems at all, other than one block (which might not even have been on Lillard) and one drive in the 1st where he got a Lillard rim miss without fouling.
- our Zone offense usually only looks good with Horford in the middle because his passing and decisions are sharper. KP wasn't stressing their shape, and his post ups were blitzed successfully. I'd put Horford in the middle and KP on the perimeter, let him get it while they're rotating and then drive a few times, see how that goes.
- we did get a pretty favorable whistle last night, including like 3-4 moving screens that usually would only be called once per game ("ok, you got your call, now shut up and play ball"). They probably could've reviewed the Jae Crowder step-over for a taunting T, but overall we probably got a 90th-percentile ref job last night as far as it favoring us. On the road this could be a bigger problem, if we're relying on getting 50-50 calls a lot.
- biggest problem for us, other than Lillard, was probably Lopez. As Scal pointed out, he wasn't as reliably in one or two places on O and D as he was pre-Doc, they were moving him around a lot more. KP clowned him a few times but he also made a bunch of tough 3s, got a bunch of boards, our double bigs didn't really make him uncomfortable much.
- we also allowed a bunch of uncontested put back boards. Yeah, sometimes the ball just goes their way, but I'm talking follow dunks even with bigs near the basket. That's a vision / focus thing, it's not just luck.
Overall, I'm not selling my Celtics stock, but Milwaukee definitely looks more legit to me than they did before this game. Previously I wouldve been surprised to see them beat Cleveland or NY (if they're the 2/3), but now I wouldn't be.