Sports “It was strange”
Celtics and Bucks are creating a first in NBA history in the top game
As of: 3:40 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes
After the big game, coaches and players alike were irritated by the referees’ decisions
Quelle: AP/Morry Gash
In the NBA’s top game between Milwaukee and Boston, the referees whistled an unusual line. The result is a historical record. Afterwards, coaches and players speculate about the background.
Doc Rivers lapsed into sarcasm after the final siren. “Man, Adam Silver is the luckiest man tonight,” the Milwaukee Bucks coach surmised. “One hour and 57 minutes playing time. My goodness, you can go to a game and still have dinner afterwards. Unbelievable.” The reason for Rivers’ barbed remarks had a historical dimension.
In the top game of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Milwaukee Bucks surprisingly won 104:91 against the Boston Celtics. But another fact was more important than the result. During the game, the Celtics were not awarded a single free throw – something that had never happened before in the long history of the league. In total there were only two free throws in the game. Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bucks’ superstar, hit one and missed one.
To put it into perspective: According to the statistics portal “Basketball Reference”, an average of 21.8 free throws are thrown per game this season. The statisticians recorded the highest value in this millennium in the 2005/2006 season, when the professionals were at the free throw line 26.3 times per game.
No foul: There were only two free throws in the entire game between the Boston Celtics and Milwaukee Bucks
Those: USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con
Coach Rivers emphasized that he only realized after the game that there had been so few free throws. In total, the game was only stopped twelve times due to fouls, with the Bucks only committing four fouls and Boston committing eight. Due to the lack of interruptions, the game actually went over relatively quickly for an NBA game. In the past, league boss Silver had repeatedly thought publicly about how the games, which sometimes lasted more than three hours, could be shortened.
Free throw record in the NBA
“I thought it was a physical game and then they handed me the stats and I told them, no, I need the whole game,” Rivers said at the press conference. “I thought it was the halftime stats. I hadn’t watched the minutes. And then I thought, Wow, two free throws in a basketball game. That’s crazy.”
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The Memphis Grizzlies (2014) and the Atlanta Hawks (2018) shared the previous record of a free throw attempted in a game. The two combined attempts from the Boston-Milwaukee game now broke the previous low of 11 free throws, set on November 10, 2019, when the Indiana Pacers made five free throws and the Orlando Magic made six free throws. “Maybe they’re just getting us ready for the playoffs,” Boston’s Jayson Tatum said. “They’re going to run a lot of things in the game, I guess they’re just getting us ready for playoff basketball.”
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What was particularly surprising was that the free throw record was set in a game between the Bucks and the Celtics. As of Tuesday, Antetokounmpo was in first place in the current NBA season with 780 free throw attempts. His teammate Damian Lillard ranked seventh (494) and Tatum ranked eighth (488) in that category.
Lillard noted that the number of foul calls seemed to decline toward the end of the season. “It was strange, but it seems to be the trend,” said the Bucks’ development player. “Fouls are no longer part of the game. There were times when I thought I was going to be fouled, and there were other times when I was surprised that a foul wasn’t called on me, when I might bump into someone or get an arm and they didn’t blow the whistle. “
Injured without outside influence: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo
Those: USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con
Despite the win, the evening ended with bad news for Milwaukee. Superstar Antetokounmpo injured his calf in the third quarter, which worried his coach. “It’s Giannis. Any coach would be worried about that,” said Rivers, referring to the upcoming play-offs. Typical of the unusual evening in Milwaukee: Antetokounmpo went down without touching an opponent.
