Jaylen Brown delivered the best game of his season — of his career — in Game 4. You can’t assume that he won’t have a new one soon, because he is very young and very good. But you have to feel good about the Bucks having the day on his.
1.2 That is how many seconds were left in the first quarter when the Celtics had the ball on an inbound under the basket they were defending. Ever-charming Marcus Morris rolled the ball toward teammate Shane Larkin on the inbound, and then Matthew Dellavedova made the Matthew Dellavedova Play of the season and scooped up the ball and flipped it in one-handed under-handed for two points. (The Bucks won by two points.)
5 For the second game in a row, Thon Maker blocked more shots than the entire Celtics team (5 to 3 and then 5 to 2). Dating back to last year, Maker has three straight playoff games of five blocks each (if you exclude the one minute he played in Game 2 against Boston). Below are his victims so far this postseason.
Brown
Tatum
Monroe
Larkin
Monroe
Tatum
Tatum
Ojeleye
Morris
Tatum
3 and 2 Jabari Parker racked up three blocks (on Monroe, Morris, and Brown) and two steals (Rozier, Baynes) within his first 10 minutes on the court. Parker had never racked up three blocks and two steals in any single of his 186 career games before that. Parker stole the dominant second quarter for the Bucks, and his defense earned enough trust in Joe Prunty to have him out there on the final defensive possession of the game, with the Bucks up two. The Bucks had a team-best 88.0 defensive rating when Parker was on the floor on Sunday.
+39 Starters carried the Bucks throughout the regular season. Milwaukee statistically had one of the worst benches in the regular season; they finished the year ranked 25th. On Sunday, the four-man bench of Maker/Parker/Snell/Dellavedova had a combined differential of +39. (Meaning the starters had a combined -37 differential). After four games, the Bucks have the third-ranked bench of the 16 teams in the playoffs, based on point differential.
16–2 On the first possession of the game, the Celtics hauled in three offensive rebounds (and they finished with 16 on the night). In the entire game, the Bucks had two offensive rebounds. But the Giannis tip-in on the offensive glass was the game-winner. Also of note: The Bucks gobbled up 14 out of the possible 15 defensive rebounds in the second quarter, which was not coincidentally their best quarter.
1 Each player on the Bucks registered at least one assist (everyone who played also scored and grabbed a rebound, for that matter). Giannis talked about the value of trust post-game, and that trust was never more evident or critical than on Brogdon’s late corner three, as the ball went from Giannis to Bledsoe to Brogdon, to go up 102–100.
3 Khris Middleton — who has very much stepped up as the second-best (or at the very least, the third-best) player in the series — made most of his field goals (8–14), most of his threes (3–5), and all of his free throws (4–4). In each of the first four games, Middleton has made at least three three-pointers — and has made the majority of his attempts from beyond the arc in each game, too.
87.3 For the second game in a row, the Bucks contested 76 of Boston’s shots. Below is the percentage of Boston shots that the Bucks have contested in each game. (Contesting shots is good.)
Game 1: 81.9 percent (loss)
Game 2: 78.8 percent (loss)
Game 3: 95.0 percent (win)
Game 4: 87.3 percent (win)
9 After piling up turnovers in the first two games, the Bucks committed just nine on Sunday, with no one on the team turning it over more than twice.
22:16 Giannis played 22:16 of the 24 minutes in the second half (40:26 overall in the game), and had plenty in reserve to get up for that game-winning offensive rebound. Giannis is probably good to get up there regardless. But some rest in the Friday night blowout, when he played just 27 minutes, could not have hurt.