NBA postseason is on the way. First games of this season's playoffs will be played on Saturday night as the Cavaliers will host the Pacers, and in Canada, the Raptors will face the Milwaukee Bucks. The Raptors will have home-court advantage in this best-of-seven series. Toronto finished the season with a 51-31 record as the number three seed in the East, while the Bucks finished the regular season with a 42-40 record. Milwaukee comes into this matchup as the number six seed in the Eastern Conference. Milwaukee's previous appearance in the postseason was back in 2014-15 season when they lost to the Chicago Bulls 4-2 in the first round.
Raptors, on the other hand, come into this postseason with hopes of repeating last year's success. In the 2015-16 season, they won a franchise-best 56 games and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. They were eliminated in the Conference Finals by the eventual champion Cleveland Cavaliers in six games. It was the best postseason run in franchise history.
Toronto is 3-1 against the Bucks this season
These two teams have met four times this season. Dwane Casey's team won three games while the only Bucks' win came in their final regular season meeting one month ago. Toronto averaged 109.6 points in those three wins, while in their lone loss to the Bucks this season they scored 94 points. Jason Kidd's team finished the season allowing their opponents to score 103.8 points per game.
Having said all that, it's obvious that the key for Milwaukee in this series will be how well they play on the defensive end of the floor. The Bucks will be without Jabari Parker in this season's playoffs since he's out for the remainder of the season due to torn left ACL.
Battle of All-Stars
We will have three players from this year's All-Star game playing in this series.
Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan for the Raptors, and Giannis Antetokounmpo for the Bucks. All three of them have had phenomenal years. DeRozan finished the season averaging 27.3 points. He had seven games of 40+ points and 32 games of 30+ points and in addition to all that, he became Raptors' all-time scoring leader. In his three games vs.
the Bucks this season he's averaged 22.3 points and shot an efficient 50% from the field. There's no doubt that he will be the focal point of Toronto's offense in this series.
The Bucks have an all-star of their own to rely on. Giannis Antetokounmpo finished the season averaging 22.9 points, 8.7 rebounds, 5.4 assists, 1.6 steals and 1.9 blocks. He became the first player in NBA history to finish in top 20 in each of the five major categories. In his four games against the Raptors this season he's averaged 24.8 points on 58% shooting.
We expect a fully packed Air Canada Center on Saturday night as this series gets started.
