Quick Reaction: Bucks 112, Raptors 118 2OT (Bucks lead series 2-1)

Man, life must be hard when Giannis is guarding you. Not if you are Siakam, though. He ditched the three-point attempts and decided it was time to get buckets inside, hitting some ludicrous shots over Giannis and was active as an off-ball cutter given the attention Kawhi garners. Siakam redeemed his crucial free throw misses in double overtime and fouled out Giannis. This is what is needed from Spicy P.

Kawhi came up limping after a dunk in the first quarter that clearly limited his mobility. The heart and grittiness he showed to drag Toronto across the finish line was absolutely incredible. Leonard stifled Giannis when guarding him (also, shout out to the help defence). Not enough superlatives can be said about him.

Aggressive from the opening tip. As soon as Gasol saw that first triple go down you could feel everything calm down, great passes and defensive moments quickly ensued. His ability as a playmaker is necessary to lessen the burden on Leonard on the offensive side. Momentous defensive performance.

Fouling out that early into the fourth quarter is not optimal. Lowry couldn’t find his groove with the foul issues, despite hitting a couple of threes. The game surely wouldn’t have been that close if Lowry was on the floor in the closing minutes.

His shooting numbers were made to look even uglier today given that he had to huck a few prayers up at the end of the shot clock, but it has been established now that Green isn’t going to rediscover his form against Milwaukee. Still, Danny G hit a huge overtime triple and made a handful of game-changing deflections.

Fred Van Vleet running aimless pick-and-rolls may be the death of me. These stagnant actions continued, thankfully Powell bailed him out with timely buckets late in the shot clock. Van Vleet’s defensive workrate cannot be questioned, but it isn’t good enough to offset his lack of impact offensively. The made three late showed huge cajones, though.

Playoff P is back! Powell was the bench spark needed, especially given Green’s woes throughout the series. His decisiveness prevented the Raptors from stalling out on the offensive end and his willingness to attack the rim finally put the Bucks defence on the back foot.

Showed some spunk early, but began to settle a bit too much in the second half. The mid-range is where Ibaka thrives, but the looks he was taking didn’t feel like they were coming with the flow of the offence. Did work his ass off double-teaming Giannis off-ball and occasionally trying to contain the Greek Freak one-on-one.

Spelled Powell due to foul trouble, didn’t have any discernible impact on the game.

Nurse made the necessary adjustments to give Toronto a chance in this one. I loved the change-up in defensive assignments, it short-circuited the Buck’s half-court offence. Gasol repaid his faith by sticking with the same starters, and Nurse was quick to yank Green when it was clear where his game was headed. Nurse was far better sprinkling the bench in with starters and had to maneuver around significant foul trouble.