Giannis Antetokounmpo Broke The Celtics, And Maybe Basketball, In Game 3

BOSTON — “I’m not sure anyone else in the world can do what Giannis does,” Pat Connaughton said.

The 26-year-old is surrounded by reporters who want the Bucks guard born six miles northwest of Boston to say something interesting about beating his hometown team. Connaughton had 14 points and seven boards in a 123-116 Game 3 win to give Milwaukee a 2-1 series lead over the Celtics. But he’s not interested in the local angle. He’s talking about spacing the floor and letting the best basketball player in the Eastern Conference, and probably the NBA this season, do whatever the hell he wants to.

“Giannis was playing his game,” Connaughton said. “It’s on us as his teammates to make sure we get to our spots so the floor can be spaced for him.”

It’s an unremarkable statement, but giving Giannis his space was the theme of a number of Bucks players’ postgame interviews, which took place while Antetokounmpo iced his feet in a mop bucket in the two lockers closest to the locker room showers. Eric Bledsoe mentioned letting Giannis play his game. Everyone deferred to Antetokounmpo and what he can do. And it was actually a little frustrating that no one could completely express what exactly Antetokounmpo did on Friday night to score 32 points in the win.

Perhaps that’s because there was no signature moment in this one for Giannis Antetokounmpo on Friday. He didn’t leap over an opponent or break a backboard or really do anything that made someone not watching turn toward the television as the announcer’s voice raised. What he was, though, was relentless, the force of nature that’s made him the odds-on favorite for league MVP at age 24.

The magic of what made Antetokounmpo so good, though, was more subtle than the earth-shattering moments you’ve seen on social media since he started dominating the league about three seasons ago. The easiest way to explain what he did is this: he made Boston Celtics players and fans really fu*king mad. Giannis made angry Celtics fans completely delusional. He warped reality, a sleight of hand that made the very rules of basketball seem unfair to the partial. He made whistles the enemy, and free throws an affront to the very nature of Celtics basketball.

Through three games, this series has the good kind of potential energy, a frenetic pace with malice that sucks you in, unblinking. It’s the healthy kind of violence, taken out on the rim and the air around fists and chests after a big shot goes in. And it made for a game that was thoroughly satisfying on Friday night. It was tied at 69, then it was tied at 79. For a while it felt like a game that would never truly be decided, although that game came a little later in the evening.

Then the Bucks pulled away — George Hill hit a pair of threes and transformed a turnover into a trip to the foul line. A lightning-quick 12-0 run was the strength behind a 40-point third quarter for Milwaukee, exposing Boston as a team with a sometimes-shaky defense. But Antetokounmpo’s contributions came a point at a time. He had six free throws in a span of 58 seconds of game clock. He attempted 22 free throws, tying a career high, and he drove Kyrie Irving to curse about officiating and the pace of play.

“Guy comes down almost six times in a row, gets free throws,” Irving said after the game. “I mean it’s getting ridiculous at this point. It’s just slowing the fu*king game down.”

Make no mistake — most of the time, the Celtics were fouling Giannis Antetokounmpo. There was no grand conspiracy at play. But when you’re witnessing something transcendent, you sometimes doubt that it’s even happening at all, especially when you desperately don’t want it to sink your basketball team in a 2-1 deficit. It all feels unfair when someone makes basketball look that damn easy, but what even is a foul when Giannis can take a step, palm the basketball like it’s a grapefruit and in two bounds be at the rim, effortlessly placing it through the hoop like he’s weighing it on a hanging scale at a grocery store?

“I don’t complain about the officials,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said. “We’ve got a lot of stuff we have to do better and they have a hard job. And we focus on us, about the controllables, and that’s the bottom line.”

Except it’s not. The Celtics were far from doomed from the start. Milwaukee spaced the floor brilliantly and got some improbable performances from its bench. It was George Hill’s 11 in the third quarter, most of which came with Giannis off the floor, that opened up the Bucks lead that they never gave up. The Celtics, meanwhile, threw haymakers on Friday night, they were just punching at air once the walls came closing in.

In the third quarter alone, Jaylen Brown dunked a ball in such an improbably triumphant way over Antetokounmpo that the in-arena announcer thought Jayson Tatum did it. Tatum later stripped Nikola Mirotic so effortlessly at midcourt it looked like he used the Force to lodge it free, turning an easy dunk into another big moment for Celtics fans to cheer.

But Giannis kept getting to the hoop and the whistle kept blowing. Sometimes it felt late, a pregnant pause after the play had been settled and officials found the results wanting. The Garden crowd roared, then cursed out officials and booed the 6’11 Greek national. He kept on coming, anyway, and he enjoyed every minute of it.

“I love getting to the free throw line,” Antetokounmpo said Friday night. “I’ve worked on it. I’m shooting my free throws with confidence, so it’s easy points for me and my teammates.”

They were easy points. And while basketball is a team game and both of these teams are more than the sum of their parts, it felt like Antetokounmpo took on the whole city of Boston on Friday night and won. The Celtics, meanwhile, joined the crowd around the court in getting upset about the officials and completely fell apart. Milwaukee’s 40 points in the third gave them just an 8-point lead heading into the fourth. But that’s where Boston completely cratered. As they grew more frustrated, as the Garden crowd grew more and more incensed. Tatum waved his hand in frustration at an official after a foul and earned a tech, furthering the Bucks lead.

Boston’s free throws came in the final minutes, but it was already too late — the Celtics shot a dozen free throws in the game’s final 4:39. Take away those shots and Boston shot two fewer free throws than Antetokounmpo did in the other 43 minutes. The disparity was real, but not without merit. Irving astutely pointed out that the slowing the game down — another Bucks talking point in postgame — didn’t just stop the clock. It stopped what could have been big momentum swings for the Celtics, a team that will need to find answers on Monday night. Irving said those answers aren’t coming from the guys in stripes.

“The officiating, we’re going to leave them alone the next game,” Irving said. “We’re going to do a better job of walling up, better job of staying straight up, make sure there aren’t any eye-catching calls — make sure we stay solid.

“We’re not going to adjust to them,” Irving said. “We’re going to make them adjust to us.”