https://youtu.be/4ML_u4o5jKk
For some reason, while watching this game, I was getting the impression that Brook Lopez was playing poorly. There were a number of occasions where his lumbering around in the paint, trying to set up his shot rather than just putting it up, caused him to lose the ball. He also picked up his third foul with two minutes left in the first half. I was like “man, Lopez isn’t doing that great, is he?”, and my kitty Japurri Purrker meowed at me in agreement, and then I looked at the damn box-score and he had a game-leading 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting. So maybe Japurri’s meow was a meow of disagreement. Usually I can tell the difference though.
I think the problem was, Lopez did all his bad stuff in the first half, and the second half was only good stuff (he didn’t foul or turn it over for the entirety of the last two quarters). But you have to remember, I’m always a pessimist when it comes to Bucks playoff basketball, so I didn’t notice the good stuff Lopez was doing. I only remembered the bad stuff from the past. Usually my pessimism is absolutely warranted, but in this case it wasn’t, and I apologize to Lopez for not acknowledging his strong play until after I had a chance to look at the stat sheet.
Lopez’ main contribution to the Bucks in the past few seasons has been his outside shooting. But he flipped the script in this one, not even attempting a three, instead savvily positioning himself for easy buckets at the rim. It’s refreshing to see that he hasn’t forgotten how to do these things after spending so much time just floating around the perimeter waiting to shoot three-pointers. Basically every Brook Lopez video description I’ve written in the past half decade has pined for the return of “Nets-era Lopez”, and while this one didn’t have enough midrange jumpers to truly qualify, I think it was close. And that’s good enough for me.