NBA playoff scores 2017: The Raptors can still beat the Bucks, but it sure doesn’t feel like it

We could have had three blowouts and a boring Thursday evening of playoff games if not for LeBron James. He had to go out and do something about that, didn’t he?

It has now been five years and 20 straight games since James has lost in the first round, a streak he continued by leading a 26-point comeback against the Pacers in Game 3. Cleveland now leads 3-0 in the series, and their mercurial roster has once again turned in a passing performance despite the entire paper being marked up in red ink.

On the other end of it is Indiana, a team that was facing James competitively in the conference finals just a few years ago. Now they’re stuck in a weird limbo, knowing Myles Turner provides them a future but unsure if Paul George factors into it.

James has ended a couple playoff runs by the Pacers, and he’s about to do it again. Indiana fans know that feeling well. Of course it had to be him, and of course he couldn’t even be generous enough to allow them a brief moment of hope. Their first half lead was turned around so, so quickly.

In the other series, the Bucks won to make it a 2-1 series while the Grizzlies did the same, although they’re the ones who trail the Spurs in this scenario. In Milwaukee’s win, our biggest question is clear: how are we getting yet another Raptors playoff collapse?

Here’s more about Thursday evening.

Let’s start here: Toronto can beat the Bucks. They still can. They absolutely are both capable of coming back from a 2-1 series deficit, and last year, they twice won series in which they started off losing the first game. Against the Cavaliers, they won two games at home that no one was expecting. The Raptors have experience, and some moxie, and they’re a quality team all around.

But damn, in Game 3 against Milwaukee, they didn’t look it. Let Raptors HQ’s Daniel Reynolds take it from here.

In the fourth quarter of the Raptors soul-crushing Game 3, 104-77 loss to the Bucks, TSN broadcaster Jack Armstrong, having already veered from mystified to angry and back again, turned philosophical. “Do the Raptors believe they can beat the Bucks?” he asked, as the Raps clanged another jumper (I assume).

It was a difficult question to answer, coming as we watched Toronto’s squad get ripped apart in their every effort (or lack thereof) the entire night. The Raptors started slow (a 19-4 Bucks run closed the 1st quarter), couldn’t shoot (34 percent from the field), couldn’t stop anybody (Bucks shot 53 percent for the game), couldn’t find a lineup that worked, couldn’t finish at the rim, couldn’t hit threes (27%!), couldn’t hold onto the ball (15 turnovers), couldn’t meaningfully pass the ball (11 assists, to Milwaukee’s 29) — am I missing anything? The result felt like more than a loss. It felt like the kind of game that could have a jovial TV personality questioning whether there would even be Raptors games to watch past Monday. Things got dark.

A record of the Raptors’ problems has to start at the top. This was DeMar DeRozan’s worst showing of the season: eight points on 0-of-8 shooting, 2 rebounds, zero assists. There’s no way to sugar-coat it, DeMar was still in Toronto for this game. Whatever mojo he had working the previous contests, it was gone here. There’s no real explanation for it — we know he can, and will, take and make the shots he wants — there was just no urgency from him tonight. And with DeRozan listing, the tone of the evening was set.

You can keep reading from there, and it’s more of the same. The Raptors can, but will they? That’s a question only they can answer, but everything we’ve seen so far allows us to be pessimistic about those chances.

The Cleveland Cavaliers messed around for an entire half, had minimal contributions from Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and still erased a 26-point deficit to beat the Indiana Pacers in Game 3. Sometimes, when you have LeBron James, that’s just how it works.

It was James who damn near single-handedly pushed Cleveland to their 119-114 win on Thursday. He had 41 points, 13 rebounds, 12 assists, a couple blocks, and only three turnovers. No other Cavalier had more than 13 points.

Cleveland seemed completely disengaged for the first 24 minutes, when they gave up two 37-point quarters to the Pacers and found themselves down 25 points at halftime. Their defense has been a sticking point for months now — this season, Cleveland was only 22nd-best in the league, dropping 12 spots from last year’s championship roster. No team has ever won a championship with a defense as bad as the Cavaliers’, but we all remember what they did in the 2016 Finals shutting down the Warriors for the final three games. In theory, that should still be something the Cavaliers are capable of doing.

Ho hum, just a 41-point triple-double and a win for James.

Milwaukee is a young roster and they have the player who could conceivably take on LeBron’s mantle as the “best player alive” within four or five years. That’s reason to believe in them right there, even before they did this in Game 3.

Look, this game was over after a quarter. You can see the actual score after 12 minutes — Bucks 32, Raptors 12 — and if you didn’t watch the game, you might think Toronto was just missing shots and Milwaukee had everything going. No, trust me, if you watched that first quarter, you knew that game was over right in that moment. Indeed, Toronto never even managed the facsimile of a run to get back into the game, losing the second quarter by seven points and the third by five more.

It helps that Milwaukee has the best player on the floor: Giannis Antetokounmpo finished with 19 points, eight rebounds, four assists, two steals, two blocks, and 7-of-10 shooting, while notching a team-best plus-29. But Antetokounmpo obviously isn’t being asked to carry an enormous load — his teammates are swarming all around him, with Khris Middleton popping off for 20 points in the starting five while Greg Monroe dropped 16 off the bench.

Milwaukee didn’t have this defense during the regular season, not for three games like we’ve seen in this series. Much of that is the Thon Maker effect, as the rookie is rapidly learning just how debilitating his massive arm length and craft foot speed are to an opposing offense. Add in another couple dozen feet worth of wingspan from the rest of the starting five, and if they’re playing fundamentally sound basketball, it’s just so hard to score.

You can read the rest here.

The Spurs could just as well win the next two games, move on this series, and pretend like it was never close at all. But the way Memphis won on Thursday, it feels like they are going to give the Spurs trouble for three or four more games, even if they ultimately lose.

It happened sort of how we expected. San Antonio has a wide range of contributors, but no one that could contain Zach Randolph on Thursday. He scored 21 points while Marc Gasol added 21 more. The slow-paced game came down to sparkling execution, and Memphis’ five turnovers and 51 percent shooting carried them while San Antonio just wasn’t as sharp. The other hero was Mike Conley, who lit up for 24 points.

Can the Grizzlies really expect to beat San Antonio? Well ... probably not. But hey, if it’s going to happen, it has to start here. More likely, it feels like their best case scenario is to win the final two home games before falling in a Game 7 in San Antonio. The Spurs may not have played poorly, but they certainly fell short of their exceptional expectations, and the level of play they consistently delivered throughout this season as they locked up the No. 2 seed.

Mike Conley, still so good.

Bucks 104, Raptors 77 (Brew Hoop recap | Raptors HQ recap)

Cavaliers 119, Pacers 114 (Fear the Sword recap | Indy Cornrows recap)

Grizzlies 105, Spurs 94 (Grizzly Bear Blues recap | Pounding the Rock recap)