All of a sudden what appeared to be an easy road to the NBA Finals has become a serious nightmare for the Milwaukee Bucks. Heading into their Eastern Conference Finals round against the Toronto Raptors the Bucks were cruising. They had gone 8-1 SU\/ATS in the playoffs and aside from a focus loss debacle at home in the first game of the Boston series faced very little in the way of adversity. They fought to an 8 point win over Toronto in Game 1 of the Conference Finals and shredded the Raptors 125-103 in Game Two to put them at 10-1 SU\/ATS and just two games short of a trip to the NBA Finals to take on Golden State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, the bottom has fallen out. Kawhi Leonard has been a force for Toronto all throughout the playoffs but now he’s getting help from his teammates. Milwaukee has been shooting poorly and playing ‘Toronto’s game’ of more physical basketball. Now, after two poor efforts at Scotiabank Arena and a shocking home upset in Game 5 at home the Bucks are still two wins away from the NBA Finals–but just one loss away from elimination. Toronto has seized momentum from the NBA’s best regular season team and at the worst possible time for the Bucks. It’s not just Leonard at this point–the Raptors had a total of six double digit scorers in Game 4 and four in Game 5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another problem for Milwaukee–the Raptors appear to be ‘in the head’ of superstar forward Giannis Antetokounmpo, at least to some extent. Antetokounmpo has continued to put up solid offensive numbers like his 24 point 6 assist, 6 rebound line in Game 5. He’s not been his usual intimidating presence and more problematic he’s not energizing his teammates the way that Kawhi Leonard is. As has become the norm during this postseason, Leonard was once against monstrous in Game 5 with 35 points, 9 assists, 7 rebounds and a couple of steals for good measure. For the postseason, he’s averaging 31.2 PPG, 8.4 rebounds and 3.3 assists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem isn’t that Milwaukee can’t win on the road. To the contrary, they were tied with Golden State for the best road W\/L mark in the league during the regular season. Including the playoffs, they’re 31-16 SU\/28-17-2 ATS away from home. They’ve also been one of the league’s most resilient teams coming off a SU loss with a record of 22-3 SU\/19-6 ATS. That’s impressive but a concern is that prior to this series it was 22-1 SU\/19-4 ATS. The problem now for the Bucks is that they’ve got to win in Toronto to stay alive when they appear to have lost the cool confidence that was present throughout the regular season and in the playoffs until three games ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Toronto, we’ve been waiting for them to show the form and intensity of a championship contender. Aside from Kawhi Leonard, they’ve been erratic throughout the playoffs–at least they were until three games ago. Now they’ve got the momentum and for the first time this postseason they look like a team that could give the Golden State Warriors a competitive series. The current NBA basketball pointspread means that they need to do little more here than win this game outright and with the current disparity in terms of momentum and confidence they’ve got every opportunity to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n