Jaylen Brown scored 25 of his game-high 30 points in the first half, and the Boston Celtics evened their eastern conference semifinals series with the Milwaukee Bucks at one game apiece following a 109-86 win Tuesday night at TD Garden in Boston.
Giannis Antetokounmpo paced the Bucks with 28.
With an barrage of three-point shots, the Celtics built a commanding 65-40 lead at the half. Brown made all five of his first half attempts from deep.
“Jaylen Brown started the game on fire,” said Bucks Head Coach Mike Budenholzer following the game. “He made some high degree of difficulty shots. Got them out of the gate…they were all confident off that start from Jaylen Brown.”
As a team, the Celtics connected on a playoff franchise record twenty three-point shots and outscored the Bucks 60-9 from deep.
“We gotta look at everything,” Budeholzer continued. “They had some good clean looks. We gotta reduce those.”
Not going down without a fight, the Bucks outscored the Celtics 26-18 in the third quarter and 46-44 in the second half, but the first half hole proved too deep to crawl out of.
“They beat us pretty handily tonight, but there were a couple plays late third quarter and fourth quarter it felt maybe we could of got it inside of ten and just find a way, but we didn’t.”
The Celtics three-point shooting came back to Earth in the second half, but the Bucks three-point shooting never got off the ground connecting on just three of eighteen attempts.
Still, the Bucks earn a split of the two games in Boston with games three and four scheduled to be played in Milwaukee.