I’ve always said that Brook Lopez is underutilized in Milwaukee. People who claim that he’s “playing the best basketball of his career” are getting swept up in the excitement of him jacking threes from just inside half-court. The more accurate statement is “he’s playing on the best team of his career”. It’s understandable, though. Not a lot of people were watching Blopez score 20 points per game on some unexciting Nets teams; the view counts from my old Lopez vids (now deleted) told the whole story. He appeared in the casual NBA fan’s consciousness during last year’s stint with the Lakers (a stint where he was averaging more points than he is now, which makes sense because he’s averaged more points in every other season of his career), a stint that ended in tears and sadness. His current situation is, obviously, way better.
Sidenote: do you think LeBron James was watching this game, getting progressively madder and madder until he threw his remote at the TV? The Lakers just let this guy go for no reason so they could have JaVale McGee, and now he’s balling for the Bucks in the ECF conference finals on a cheapo contract.
So, Lopez is in a great situation, but despite the gaudy three-point shooting, he’s not getting to do the old Lopez stuff. The midrange stuff. The post-up stuff. The stuff that made him a low-tier All Star that one year with the Nets. I miss that stuff. I really like his threes, and I also really like his pumpfake threes where he then rumbles into the paint and takes some crazy floater thing. But how Lopez used to play is not how the Bucks want to play. He had to adapt, and adapt he has. I have an archive of all my old Lopez vids that I can watch any time I want; perhaps I will share some of them with you when the time is right.
Lopez has not been very productive in these playoffs. 8 points per game prior to this explosion, but the Bucks didn’t need him to be good. They were destroying the Pistons and Celtics just fine with him standing on the perimeter and occupying a defender. But the Bucks needed him to be good tonight: Middleton and Bledsoe and Mirotic decided simultaneously that they didn’t really want to score. That left Giannis, who is going to score no matter what, and Lopez.
He stepped up. 29 points, a playoff career high (not too hard to achieve considering this is only his third playoffs). This was the greatest game I have ever seen him play considering the circumstances, and it could’ve been even greater had he made some of those open threes that he missed. When the Bucks needed him most, he showed up, hit some shots, did a Siakam-esque spin-move, blocked Kawhi four times, did his three-point celebration made a whole bunch of funny faces, and gesticulated wildly. This game is going to get a two-minute long feature during the upcoming championship DVD, and it will live in the hearts of Bucks fans for a long time.