If the opening four games of the Eastern Conference final have made anything clear, it’s that the Raptors are staring down their best chance yet to advance to the NBA final.
In a series deadlocked at two games apiece, plenty of important trends are breaking their way. In a point-guard-driven league, Milwaukee’s starting point guard, Eric Bledsoe, is in an ugly funk. In a sport now built around three-point shooting, Milwaukee’s three-point shooters are connecting at an abysmal 30% success rate (compared to Toronto’s 35%). And in an era in which the NBA’s gold-standard franchise has won three of the past four championships thanks largely to an uncanny ability to shoot from distance, it’s proving to be a problem for the Bucks that their best player isn’t much of a shooter from anything beyond dunking range.