The NBA finals stage has finally been set. The Phoenix Suns and the Milwaukee Bucks are the two teams who will be playing for the Larry O’Brien trophy starting tonight in Phoenix. Both teams haven’t made a finals appearance in quite some time. The Suns last made the finals in 1993 where they lost to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. The Suns have never won a championship and are 0-2 in finals appearances. The Bucks on the other hand have one championship victory in franchise history with it coming in 1971 where Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson led the Bucks over the Baltimore Bullets. Since then the Bucks have only made one other finals appearance 3 years later where they lost to the Boston Celtics.
It’s been a long time coming for both of these teams and only one will be crowned champion. In both games that these two teams have played against each other in the regular season, the Suns have won both but by a combined 2 points. They have been exciting which I hope to be the case in their finals showdown. There’s a lot to be excited about this matchup so let’s take a look at what this series will come down to.
I think the #1 thing and the biggest factor of this series is going to be Giannis Antetokounmpo’s health. The Bucks star suffered a hyper-extended left knee in game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals after landing awkwardly on an attempted block on Atlanta Hawks center Clint Capela. Giannis has yet to play since suffering that injury, but reports are that he is “making progress”. Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer declined to comment on whether or not Giannis will play in game 1 but there were reports that Giannis if he had to could’ve played in the event if the Bucks and Hawks series went to 7 games. He is currently a game-time decision so we’ll see if Giannis can be there for game 1 and going forward.
The Bucks are still a very good basketball team even without Giannis on the floor but they are going to need him if they want any shot of winning this series. It remains to be seen how healthy/effective Giannis is going to be if he does play but even then Giannis is still too dominant of a player to be completely ineffective. Especially with the Suns not having a lot of size on their roster, Giannis can drive at will and draw fouls which is when he is at his best.
The Bucks are a team who have had a style of defense where they like to give opposing teams good looks from the mid-range and 3 and drop more guys around the paint. After Trae Young scored 48 points in game one, they quickly changed up their defense and you saw the difference it made. They will need to pick up where they left off and run this style of defense against the Suns. If you consistently give Chris Paul 15 foot shots from the basket, he is going to eat you alive on those shots. If the Suns focus on that, it still is going to be difficult because you can almost always count on Paul to dish the ball out to someone else on the perimeter who has a better look if he is defended. Budenholzer will need to adjust away from running a “drop coverage” style of defense. They can’t let Chris Paul and Devin Booker beat them because Paul certainly can with him being an elite floor general and with him being able to knock down those shots as well as Booker being a very good shooter/scorer.
Chris Paul is coming off of one of the best games of his entire career. The age 36 veteran dropped a playoff career-high 41 points on 66.6% shooting with 8 assists and 0 turnovers. The player who will be most responsible for matching up against Paul will be Jrue Holiday. Holiday is one of the better perimeter defenders in the NBA who made first-team all defense this year. Holiday isn’t going to be able to stop Paul but if he can lock in and slow Paul down that can be a huge difference in this series. Paul, in the only game he was guarded by Holiday this season, scored 22 points on 50% shooting with 13 assists and 2 turnovers. This matchup will be key to watch to see who gets the best of one another because it may determine the series.
The other stars on both teams like Devin Booker and Khris Middleton have continued to have very impressive postseasons respectively. Middleton has proven to a lot of people that he is one of the better players in the league. He stepped up when Giannis was injured to propel the Bucks over the Hawks and has even shown up in the games Giannis has played in, especially in the clutch. Booker obviously with him we have seen a historic postseason, having multiple 40 point games, highlighted by a 40 point triple-double in the first game of the Western Conference Finals. They will both show up, but which one is going to play better at the end of the day? These two will certainly see a lot of each other throughout this series which will be key to see who can out-duel one another.
Deandre Ayton has been fantastic in the playoffs, he has taken his game up a notch where he has averaged 16.2 PPG on a whopping 70.6% from the field which is the most in a playoff run in NBA history along with his usual fantastic rebounding numbers averaging 11.8 rebounds per game. He’s been able to take advantage of guys like Andre Drummond and Ivica Zubac guarding him, will he be able to with Brook Lopez? Lopez is a bigger body than Ayton who has fallen off defensively from his first couple seasons with the Bucks, but he is still a solid shot blocker. Ayton has sometimes been the reason why the Suns have won games during their playoff run. He will need to continue his dominance with a tougher challenge than some of the other centers he was matched upon.
For who I think wins this series, I think the Suns could run away with this series if Giannis is not playing or not fully healthy. The Suns would have no answer for Giannis because the Suns are such a small team where I don’t believe that they have the size to match up on Giannis. I think if we see a fully healthy Giannis and he plays in game 1, then we have a really interesting series. However, I still believe the Suns pull it out because they are by far the better shooting team and I think they match up well overall against this Bucks team. This series could go 7 games if we get Giannis but it’s too unknown whether or not he plays and how effective he is truly going to be. This Suns team is hungry and CP3 I think more than anything knows what is on the line here, he wants that ring that has eluded him for his entire career.
Prediction no Giannis: Suns win 4-1
Prediction Giannis plays: Suns win 4-3