Terry Rozier's ball-control & accuracy push Celtics to 2-0 vs. Bucks


There are many story lines to the Celtics/Bucks series, but turnovers have been a prominent factor. In Sunday's win over Milwaukee in Game One, both teams had an issue with losing control of the ball. The Bucks had 20 turnovers for the game and Boston had 15. Celtics point guard Shane Larkin had four turnovers in just 16 minutes of play.

There was no Celtics' issue with coughing up the ball last night. Terry Rozier had no turnovers for his second game in a row, and Shane paid more attention to detail and ended the game without losing control even once. The Celtics finished the contest, a 120-106 Celtics victory, with only five turnovers to Milwaukee's 20.

So the two Celtics point guards played a total of 58 minutes without coughing up the ball even once. That is an incredible feat. It is obvious that Coach Brad Stevens focused on the importance to taking care of the ball, and it worked like a charm.

Ball security was not Terry's only accomplishment on the court last night. Jaylen Brown was the high scorer with 30 points, but T-Ro managed 23 of his own, along with three rebounds and eight assists. Those 23 points came on 57% shooting from the field, 60% on threes and 100% from the foul line. That is efficient accuracy!

Milwaukee puts out a starting line-up that certainly is long. Giannis Antetokounmpo and John Henson are 6'11". Kris Middleton is 6'8" and Tony Snell is 6'7". They pride themselves on their length and ability to disrupt opponent offenses, but Boston's length and ball security did not yield the result wanted by the Bucks. Here is the NBA's Taylor Snow on Milwaukee Coach Joe Prunty's thoughts after last night's game:

“We’ve got to do a better job,” Prunty stated after the game. “That’s one of the things that we do well: We disrupt teams’ offenses with our length, whether it’s steals, deflections. The other night we had a lot of those balls that we had tipped, but we didn’t come up with them. That’s part of what we do. We have to be sharper, we have to take on the individual challenges and guard our guys, but we also have to defend as a team as well.”

Another story line in this series is that fact that after two games in which Terry has played admirably and his Milwaukee rival, Eric Bledsoe, has struggled, Bledsoe alleges he has no idea who T-Ro is (see tweets below). Eric may want to find out before the series is over.





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Photo via Michael Reeves/Getty Images North America