Heat Look to Sweep Bucks
Milwaukee’s Brandon Jennings predicted the Bucks would beat the Heat in six games in the teams’ opening round playoff series. Hopefully, he didn’t put any money on it.
If he did, he would already be out some dough, but by the looks of things, this series won’t even go five games. The Miami Heat already lead 3-0 and based on the way they are playing, we can safely say the door is quickly closing on the Bucks’ season. In fact, it will almost assuredly end today as the Heat and Bucks duke it out in Milwaukee for game four.
The thing is, most fans wouldn’t have had to watch the first three games to know how outmatched the Bucks were. Just by looking at the regular season records – Miami’s 66-16 mark versus Milwaukee’s 38-44 – you could have easily called this series a sweep before it happened.
Even still, there’s a reason why the games aren’t played on paper and you better believe the Bucks will be playing their hearts out with their season on the line today. Even if they go down, they’ll likely go down swinging. They’ve already lost each of the first three games by double digits, so there’s plenty of pride on the line too. No team wants to get blown out in front of their home fans and see their season come to an end with the same fourth quarter horn.
But there’s no doubt that the Heat smell blood in the water and they’ve played hungry up until this point. Jennings’ prediction fired them up – though they didn’t need anymore motivation. They may be the defending champs, but they still feel like they have plenty to prove, and if you go far enough from South Beach, you’ll find the Heat naysayers – kinda like Jennings.
We know the Heat would be the last team looking to take it easy on the poor defenseless Bucks. The Heat want the sweep and they could use the rest as they await the winner of the Bulls-Nets series, which by the looks of things, could go seven games.
Expect the Bucks to play hard and keep things close early – much like they did in game three – but look for the Heat to pull away late on the shoulders of James. Look for that chip on this shoulder too as he goes in for a ferocious one-handed slam to put the cap on another impressive Heat win. Sorry Milwaukee, you poked a hornet’s nest no team would want to mess with this time of year. Take Miami to cover -8.5 points en route to a first round sweep.
