Make no mistake, this series is easily worthy of being the Eastern Conference Finals. And if Joel Embiid does not return 100 percent healthy, the winner of this series could be heading to the NBA Finals. The first round of the NBA Playoffs is fun and good to wager on, but this is when the real chase for the championship begins. In the East, we have two heavyweights with real aspirations of not only winning this series but two more after that.
Milwaukee has evolved its roster and team the last few years and they are firmly convinced this is the best group. They have the one component that all championship-type clubs have, three important difference-makers in Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton.
Brooklyn this season put together their own power trio and few would argue that it’s not the best in the NBA in Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. The Nets have more visible defensive flaws than the Bucks, yet, they have a key component to break down Milwaukee’s defense.
Saturday, June 05, 2021 – 07:30 PM EDT, 2021 , at Barclays Center
The oddsmakers at YouWager have Brooklyn as a -200 series favorite, with Milwaukee at +175. They and other betting sites have the Nets -4 betting odds with a total of 240 for the opener. Buckle up, this should be fun.
The rap sheet on the Bucks the last few years has been – great regular season team, just softer than cotton candy when the playoffs arrived. Credit the Milwaukee front office and to whatever degree coach Mike Budenholzer for reshaping the team and roster.
The addition of P.J. Tucker, Bobby Portis, and to a lesser degree Jrue Holiday, has added toughness and barking to a collection of mostly nice guys. That attitude will have to manifest itself because Brooklyn will offer a lot of defensive pressure with their three stars and collection of role players who can fill the basket. This series and many of the games could come down to courage and attitude in the final four minutes of each battle. Will this team rise to the occasion?
On Twitter this week, there posts and comments wondering if Brooklyn will go down as one of the all-time great teams if they win the championship. With 12 wins still needed over the next three rounds of action, that is a bit presumptuous a question it seems.
Nonetheless, having three players like Harden, Durant and Irving is very challenging to defend. Yet, one still has to wonder just how connected these three are with their teammates because they played so few games together.
As we saw with the Lakers, not playing together, you can survive on an individual player’s big game or two, but if the crew is lacking togetherness throughout the roster, they might not be able to come through at crunch time. And as brittle as DIH was in the regular season, one has the sense something could go wrong at any time.
There is also talk of the Nets being stronger on defense in posting a 9-1 SU and ATS record in their last 10 tilts, however, look at who they played and how healthy those teams were before buying in.
Brooklyn’s defense will focus on keeping Milwaukee out of the paint. The Nets will try to let Antetokounmpo have all the 17-foot or longer shots he wants to take, as that was their strategy in the regular season and they had generally success with that approach.
The Bucks offense no longer goes exclusively through Giannis, with Middleton a master of the midrange game and going to the basket when open. Holiday fits this offense and he’s a bull going into the paint to shoot or pass. Milwaukee has a good collection of outside shooters along with those who can score in the paint that will be hard for the Nets to stop.
Brooklyn is the best shooting team in the league, ranked first in two-point percentage and second in three-point accuracy. Though Budenholzer’s bunch did a much better job against Miami, on the season they were 28th in three-point percentage defense and last in the NBA in allowed made treys.
Little doubt this is an area coach Steve Nash will seek to exploit with his deep shooters and that will matter how this Game 1 and the series will play out. For NBA picks, we believe the Bucks will split the first games in Brooklyn. The point spread seems dead-on, but we’ll side with the Nets in a tight outcome because they are better at the free throw line.
NBA Picks: Nets -4 points (-110) at YouWager (visit our YouWager Review)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.