Can Celtics Continue to Shut Down Giannis Antetokounmpo?

BOSTON — The Bucks began their series against the Celtics trying to screen Al Horford away from Giannis Antetokounmpo. Boston had been known to switch everything for much of this season, but Horford squeezed through Wes Matthews’ pick on this game-opening play, staying tight to Antetokounmpo and forcing him to catch a pass from Jrue Holiday at the three-point line. Giannis drove baseline, hit Horford’s brick wall frame and fell to the floor as Jayson Tatum rushed away from Holiday to force Antetokounmpo out-of-bounds.

“(Al) was a lifter, always been a lifter, and you asked the thing that separates him from everyone else,” Larry Turnbow, Horford’s old trainer told me last month. “Similar to LeBron would be similar to Al, and that’s Joel Embiid, the Greek Freak, all those guys, why Al plays them so well is he’s so strong. I don’t think people notice that, but on the Celtics they call him the Incredible Hulk.”

Boston turned Antetokounmpo over three times in the first four minutes of Game 1, an eventual loss for the Celtics, but the start of a long 36 hours on the road for Antetokounmpo. Robert Williams III and Horford met Antetokounmpo at the rim on his drives, forcing him to shoot 3-for-18 in the paint outside of the restricted zone. He’s shooting 38.5% from the field in the series, 16.7% from three with Antetokounmpo’s 5.5 turnovers undermining his 9.5 assists per game. Giannis is requiring 26 shots per game to average 26.0 PPG.

His 9-for-25 performance in Game 1 ranked third-worst among his playoff games with at least 20 shot attempts, but he carved up the Celtics with 12 assists. Keep finding solutions, Antetokounmpo told himself several times after Game 2. The Celtics have tried to anticipate them, rarely giving Giannis the same looks.

“Sometimes we’re going to go after him,” Ime Udoka said after Game 1. “Sometimes, based on who’s defending him and in what position, we want to let those guys guard him straight up. Especially when he’s looking right at you trying to bait you with that pass out of the double team. We went too quick at times when he’s looking at us and our rotations aren’t sharp. Obviously, those guys rely on him to get those open three-point shots.”

That meant Horford, who forced another Giannis turnover and pair of trio of missed jump shots to start Game 2, and Grant Williams, who gave Antetokounmpo no ground and forced an off-balance hook shot that flew closer to the rafters than the basket. Williams hauled it in on its way down, successfully stopping the two-time MVP on his own giving up five inches.

Even though Tatum would claim he’s the strongest in the team’s post-win lifting sessions, Williams approaches 100 pounds on the dumbbell chest press. With a low center of gravity and sturdy legs, he’s handling Antetokounmpo’s blows without sacrificing his space. Despite frustrating foul calls, the Celtics have also tried to beat him to his spots and draw charges, Antetokounmpo picking up seven personal fouls in the two games.

The Celtics stopped sending help as often in the second. Horford and Williams both boasted the ability to stay with Antetokounmpo on their own. With Grayson Allen, Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton, Holiday and Matthews spacing the floor effectively for the Bucks in Game 1, Boston stayed attached to Milwaukee’s shooters and held them to 3-for-18 (16.7%) during Tuesday’s win.

“I view it as guarding him on an island,” Williams said. “Where it’s just you and him. You have to do your job and, for us, that was kind of how we viewed it for this game to see how it would go. He tried being a lot more aggressive in the second half and getting downhill and creating for himself. It’s just one of those things where you have to kind of hunker down and trust in the work that you’ve done and do your best to contain one of the best players in the world.”

Boston doesn’t expect that to hold, though it’s probably their best approach to slowing the Bucks offense as a whole. The Celtics prefer to keep Williams III in help position, where he held the Bucks to 0-for-11 shooting in individual matchups in Game 1.

Other times, Williams III ended up in Antetokounmpo’s crosshairs, Giannis eager to knock him off-balance and leverage himself into the lane. Antetokounmpo also successfully put Tatum on the floor racing to the basket in Game 1, and after an 0-for-6 start in Game 2, he shot 8-for-11 out of halftime by barreling into contact, scoring 18 points in the third quarter and piling up fouls on Boston’s bigs.

Marcus Smart, who missed Game 2 with a quad contusion, pulled Williams III aside during a timeout and coached him through the Antetokounmpo assignment.

“I was just telling him to embrace the bump, take the hit,” Smart said at practice on Thursday. “Don’t be afraid to be physical. Giannis is a physical player, so you have to take that bump and just not give him that space. You’ve got to hold your ground, that’s what Al and Grant do a good job, very well, at. Just telling Rob the same thing and trying to help him out on that end.”

Grant Williams held Antetokounmpo to 8-for-18 shooting through the first two games, while Horford boasts a 6-for-22 Antetokounmpo shooting line, forcing five turnovers to only three assists alongside two blocks. That’s compared to Antetokounmpo’s 5-for-6 shooting against Brown and Tatum, and 4-for-8 line against Williams III. Derrick White, Payton Pritchard and Smart have rarely faced him at all through the first two games, a change in the way Boston usually guards.

Smart snuck in too far with help often in Game 1, Antetokounmpo not even needing to look on one pass to find his outlet in Portis. The defense kept him guessing by flipping that game plan, and they’ll probably need to change again. Antetokounmpo, not one to admit when a defense gives him problems, chalked up his performances to missing shots around the basket. Milwaukee head coach Mike Budenholzer pointed toward the Bucks needing to generate more three-pointers, and Antetokounmpo and Holiday needing to create more shots for themselves after the loss.

“Getting hits early, I think meeting him around the free throw area and not letting him bury you too deep. You want to push his catches out,” Udoka told CLNS Media was the key to slowing Antetokounmpo. “That’s the first part, making him do his work early. I think they did that, bodied up and didn’t let him get deep position. Then you have to go two, three, four dribbles to get into your move. We’ve got, obviously, pretty good defender down there that can guard and body up, but the big part is doing your work early and then keeping him off-balance some. Even though we didn’t double as much in the second game, guys were in-and-out, playing a little bit of cat-and-mouse and kept him guessing. We wanted him to shoot those fadeaways and go away from the help.”

The game plan reflects how the Celtics slowed Kevin Durant in round one. They beat him to his mid-range sweet spots, got underneath him on his pull-up jumpers and banged around with him in the paint. While Antetokounmpo embraces the physicality that seemed to bother Durant, who shot 38.6% in that series, the Celtics can dare him to shoot jump shots and send him to the free throw line more comfortably (65% FT these playoffs).

The Bucks are scoring 89.2 points per 100 half court possessions in the postseason, second-worst only to Chicago. They’re No. 1 in transition.

The Celtics executed at a high level offensively to keep the Bucks away from their fast break, drilling 47.5% of their shots and 46.5% from three. Milwaukee played only 12.5% of its possessions in transition in Game 2, compared to 17.3% in Game 1 when the Celtics turned the ball over 18 times and shot 33.3% from the field.

“He’s a phenomenal competitor, one of those guys who’s going to seek out contact and not shy away from it, which is where you kind of give him his respect, because as a star player in the league he doesn’t flop, he’s not a big time play the refs guy,” Williams told CLNS on the give-and-take against Giannis. “He’s going to compete with you one way or another. If you’re fouling him, he’s gonna foul you back. He’s going through, he’s gonna try to dunk on you. If you meet him at the rim, he’s not even gonna say good block, he’s going to keep playing. It’s super exciting to play against him because he takes every game just as serious as if it’s his last.”

Boston saw that creativity emerge on a self-pass alley oop slam to cap Game 1. It gave the defensive win an offense exclamation point, but also revealed the Bucks’ biggest problem in this series. With Khris Middleton out, Antetokounmpo lost the teammate who fed him 21.3% of his passes received and his most assists (1.5 APG). He currently has to generate most of Milwaukee’s offense.

Now, Holiday feeds 39.4% of the passes to Antetokounmpo, accounting for effectively all the assists (2.4) Giannis receives since Middleton’s injury. Outside of an early cutting dunk in Game 1, teammates haven’t been able to set Antetokounmpo up for easy shots as he faces a wall in the half court before he had his transition runs cut in Game 2.

Will the defense last? It didn’t seem possible the Celtics could hold Durant down for an entire series, but after Game 4 the star looked up and finished with arguably the worst playoff series of his career.

“I’m very excited for (Horford and Williams),” Smart told CLNS. “The way they’re stepping up and taking that challenge. We all know that, it’s not an easy task to be tasked up against Giannis. They’re doing a great job, as we expected them to. We got confidence in those guys and everybody that’s on the floor in that position to step up to the challenge. It’s a whole team doing it, everybody’s stepping up, but those two in particular, we’re very proud of them, but they’re going to continue to have to do that for us. They’re going to take everything that they have on any given game night to go out there and sacrifice, literally, their bodies for the team.”