Milwaukee Bucks: 3 takeaways from big Game 4 win vs. Celtics

2. Defense flustering Kyrie Irving

For all the credit that former Coach of the Year Mike Budenholzer has gotten for elevating a stagnating Milwaukee Bucks team on offense, he doesn’t get nearly enough attention for the job he’s done maximizing the defensive potential of the same nucleus the renowned Jason Kidd had problems with.

The picture above does not truly illustrate the Bucks’ swarm tactics that they’ve been utilizing to greatly hinder the pick-and-roll maestro, Kyrie Irving. They’ve almost religiously swarmed the guards (and Tatum for the most part), startling Kyrie into 37.3 percent shooting from the field and a horrid 24 percent from beyond the arc.

This has stagnated the Celtics’ firepower surrounding their All-Star and transformed a once ball-dominant, shot-creating nucleus to hesitant jump shooters.