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BOSTON — The Milwaukee Bucks leaned on their championship pedigree in Sport 5 on Wednesday evening, rallying from a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit to flee Boston with a 110-107 victory towards the Celtics and take a 3-2 sequence lead within the Japanese Convention semifinals.
The winner of Sport 5 in a best-of-seven sequence tied at two has gone on to win the sequence 82% of the time in NBA postseason historical past, and Milwaukee rallied to take management of the sequence by outscoring Boston 33-21 within the fourth quarter, together with 13-6 in clutch time.
Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo completed with 40 factors and 11 rebounds, whereas guard Jrue Vacation added 24 factors and sealed the sport with a block and steal on back-to-back possessions towards Marcus Sensible.
“They’re defending champs,” Sensible mentioned after the sport. “They made some championship performs. And now we obtained to reply.”
Although the Bucks had been trailing by double digits with about 10 minutes remaining within the fourth, Vacation recalled speak within the huddle throughout a timeout about how there was nonetheless loads of time for a comeback. The Bucks have relied on their expertise all season to information them by tumultuous conditions — an injured participant, a tricky loss and now the ebbs and flows of a playoff sequence.
“We have seen 14 factors [disappear] similar to that,” Vacation mentioned after Sport 5. “We all know it is the playoffs, and we all know it is an awesome offensive group and defensive group, however we have additionally finished it ourselves.
“We simply all the time play with that confidence. That there is going to be time left, and if we deal with enterprise, we’ll all the time give ourselves an opportunity.”
The Celtics managed the sport and appeared on their method to closing out the win when Al Horford threw down an emphatic putback dunk with 2:12 remaining to place them up six factors. It wound up being their final area purpose of the sport.
The Bucks outscored the Celtics 11-2 from that time on.
After Horford’s dunk, Antetokounmpo knocked down a 3-pointer on the subsequent possession — his second of the evening and solely his fourth this sequence — to chop the deficit to 3, and Vacation, who completed 9-for-24 from the sphere on the evening, hit a wide-open trey to tie the sport.
“After all, we’re gonna be down,” Celtics coach Ime Udoka mentioned. “Guys are going to be pissed in regards to the end result after we outplayed them for 3½ quarters. And so we talked exhibiting our resolve, we made it harder on ourselves now. It will make it sweeter after we bounce again. However we all know we gave up a golden alternative tonight.”
After Celtics star Jayson Tatum hit a pair of free throws, Antetokounmpo cut up a pair of photographs on the foul line. However Sensible and Tatum each tried to seize the rebound off Antetokounmpo’s miss on the similar time, and the ball ricocheted into the arms of Bucks ahead Bobby Portis, who put again a layup with 11.4 seconds remaining to provide Milwaukee its first lead because the second quarter.
“Playoffs are all about moments,” mentioned Portis, who completed with 14 factors and 15 rebounds. “It isn’t about what number of photographs you make. It isn’t about what number of factors you rating. It is about moments. We obtained lots of guys on this group that may have moments.”
The Celtics’ remaining half-court possession was set as much as get Tatum the ball downhill towards a matchup Boston wished, however with the play creating slowly, Sensible ended up with the ball and tried to drive towards the basket towards Pat Connaughton. Nonetheless, Vacation made a play to dam Sensible from behind, and Sensible by no means noticed him.
The Bucks hit a pair of free throws to increase the result in three factors, and Boston by no means obtained off one other shot. Vacation stole the ball from Sensible at midcourt on the Celtics’ remaining possession to seal the victory.
“Only a nice instinctive play by Jrue,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer mentioned. “He is a winner. Jrue Vacation’s a winner. You ask any participant on this league, any coach on this league, he is a winner.”
To gas their comeback, the Bucks shot an ideal 6-for-6 from past the 3-point line within the remaining quarter, tied for essentially the most such makes with no miss within the fourth quarter of a playoff sport up to now 25 years, based on analysis by ESPN Stats & Data. The San Antonio Spurs hit all six 3s they took towards the Miami Warmth within the fourth quarter of the 2014 NBA Finals.
The win put Milwaukee on the verge of the Japanese Convention finals for the third time in 4 years. The Bucks will host Sport 6 on Friday evening.
“It feels good [to win], however on the finish of the day, cannot get too excessive, cannot get too low,” Antetokounmpo mentioned. “We had been up seven or 10 the earlier sport; we misplaced it. They had been up; they misplaced this one. It is simply — preserve it going forwards and backwards. On the finish of the day, you possibly can’t get too excessive for this.
“Clearly, it is nice to win the sport, it is nice to return dwelling and be ok with ourselves, however the job just isn’t finished.”
ESPN’s Andrew Lopez contributed to this report.
Local News
A Boston man who allegedly assaulted a transgender woman at a Blue Line MBTA station on Halloween is facing charges of assault and violating the victim’s civil rights, officials said.
Gregory Burnett, 53, pleaded not guilty to assault and battery causing serious bodily injury, assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon (his foot), and a civil rights violation with injury, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said.
The woman, 41, told police that another passenger boarded the train at Maverick, immediately approached her, and shouted “derogatory terms” at her, the DA said. Burnett allegedly said statements including “you’re not a woman, you’re a man.”
Burnett then punched and kicked her, including in the crotch area. The woman tried to defend herself, the DA said, but Burnett grabbed her foot and caused her to fall and fracture her wrist.
Other passengers helped the woman defend herself against Burnett and get him off the train, officials said.
The woman reported the incident to police the next day and said “she felt targeted due to her gender identity based on Burnett’s remarks during the assault,” the DA said.
MBTA police used witness descriptions and surveillance video to identify Burnett and apprehend him at Maverick last Tuesday, according to Hayden’s office.
Burnett was initially held in jail after being found dangerous in court, but was released last week on conditions to stay at home outside of work hours, according to court records. With a GPS, he is confined to his home outside of 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday. He is also required to maintain employment, stay away from any witnesses, not commit any further offenses, and not possess any firearms.
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Book Club
Last month, “The Boston Globe Story of the Celtics,” a comprehensive book of nearly every recorded moment in Celtics history, was released. The book’s editor Chad Finn, a sports columnist for The Boston Globe and Boston.com, collected hundreds of Celtics stories written by renowned sports reporters, such as Bob Ryan and Jackie MacMullan, since the team’s inception in 1946.
For Boston.com’s Book Club, Finn joined Boston.com sports writer Hayden Bird to discuss his process and insights in editing his book. Watch the full video, or read highlights of the discussion below.
Below is an abbreviated version of the discussion, which has been edited and condensed for clarity.
With something like this, where it’s a compilation of the Globe‘s coverage of the Celtics throughout their mutual histories, the one thing you’re really wondering about is: Was everything covered?
I think it was a little bit more complicated, a little bit more reason to worry about it, with the Celtics book because of the race element with Bill Russell. Did they cover some of the stuff that players endured back then? Not being able to eat with their teammates when they would go to North Carolina for an exhibition game or something like that. So it was very satisfying, and also a bit of a relief, to find out that the Globe … had covered every single step, every single significant story along the way with the Celtics, from their launch in 1946 until putting out banner No. 18 a couple of weeks ago.
The first thing you have to do is sit down and make a thorough list of every significant thing chronologically that happened in Celtics history. Once you have that list of 450 different things that happened in Celtics lore, then you go into the archives and you say, “Do we have this?”
A lot of it is also our researcher, Jerry Manion, who’s just an absolute expert at finding what you’re looking for. I can’t tell you how many times in putting this book together where I would message Jerry and say, “Can you find that?” and I’d have it five minutes later. To be able to have that kind of support when you’re putting together a project that could be overwhelming is incredible. I’m incredibly grateful for that.
The game stories and the stories from the coverage tended to be play by play, whereas nowadays, it’s a little bit of a look ahead, or a little bit of context on what you just saw, because you know about Jayson Tatum’s dunk and Jaylen Brown’s three-pointer that tied the game. Back then, that was news to you in the morning. You didn’t see it yourself.
One is Bob Ryan’s lead when they drafted Larry Bird. Red Auerbach took him while he still had a year left of college in Indiana State because back then there was a loophole … where you could draft a player if his college class had graduated.
Bob Ryan had seen Larry Bird play in person. He knew what Red had just pulled off, and his lead basically said Red didn’t just look like he swallowed the canary, it looked like he swallowed the whole aviary — perfect lead for Larry Bird. The whole column turned out to be prescient about how Larry’s career would go. I have some favorite stories in the book, but that one would be right up there in the top five just because of how he started it, how he wrote it, and how right he was.
I learned that the quality of writing really elevated in the late ‘60s. People took more chances with their writing.
In 1969, Leigh Montville got hired at the Globe, and I think if you asked every Globe columnist that has worked here the last 50 years, they would tell you Leigh Montville was the best columnist of all in terms of pure writing ability. He was lyrical, and he joined the beat covering the Celtics in Bill Russell’s last year.
There was another writer at the same time named Bob Sales. His style was very easy to read and thoughtful, and did not shy away from opinions that probably were considered pretty progressive at the time. He was very supportive of the Black players on the Celtics. I thought Bob Sales, even more than Leigh Montville because he came before him, was somebody who really changed the style of writing about the Celtics and the approach that people took to it.
Then a whole different topic, but Bob Ryan came around. He started the Globe the same day as [Peter] Gammons in 1968 as interns. When he took over the NBA beat in the early ‘70s, it changed everything.
If there was an incident, or if they were not treated as equals — which happened a lot — to their white teammates, the Globe wrote about it. And I wasn’t sure going into the book if that was going to be the case, and it was.
There are still misconceptions about how the Celtics handled race, and a big part of that is because their team — that a certain generation remembers so well — is Bird, McHale, Danny Ainge. There was a perception: Oh yeah, Celtics, Boston, White. I mean they had the best white players, but it had nothing to do with race why they were here, and Celtics history tells you that.
Look at Celtics history, and Red just wanted to win. He didn’t care about the race or color of his players. He just wanted the best players, and that was well ahead of its time back then.
You get into the eighties, and Magic and Bird change the game in a bunch of different ways — saying they save the league really isn’t an exaggeration. To have grown up watching that, it was really cool to be able to get into that phase of the book where we are doing things that I remember and that I witnessed.
But it was the hardest chapter in the book to edit, and it’s by far the biggest chapter in the book, for two reasons. Obviously they accomplished a lot, and they won the three titles in that era, and there were so many memorable games, the Lakers and the rivalry, the Sixers, and later on the Pistons. And with a book like this, you can’t just put the championships in it. There were so many games that resonated with people along the way.
The other thing was the quality of the writing was mind-blowing. It was Bob Ryan at the peak of his powers; it was Dan Shaughnessy, Montville; Jackie MacMullan came along in the late ‘80s. So the hardest thing I had to do with this book was pick which story to use without being redundant when two or three of them wrote about the same subject. Which one do I use?
I dedicated the book to my daughter who’s the biggest Celtics fan I know. I also dedicated to Bob Ryan, who is my writing hero.
I also think just writing about the family aspect of it — that’s become a really big thing with the Celtics themselves. I’ve never seen a team that was as connected and as willing to allow people around the players, their kids, their wives, to be as big a part of things as the 2024 Celtics were.
I think it bonded them together even more where they’ve developed this culture, where it’s just greater than what they have on the court.
Catch up on the latest Boston.com Book Club pick and join the virtual author discussions.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu spoke to a joint committee on Beacon Hill Wednesday to advance her revised tax proposal.
The mayor urged lawmakers to approve it in time for Gov. Maura Healey’s signature. Wu called the revised plan, with more protections for small businesses, a compromise, balancing the needs of residents and the business community.
Boston’s commissioner of assessing used a paperclip as a visual aid during the presentation to lawmakers to illustrate a new balance: An effort to offset revenue losses caused by vacant business space by shifting and increasing the tax burden onto commercial properties.
“We need residents to have enough money in their pockets at the end of every month to go out and support our businesses,” Wu said.
She warned that homeowners could face steep property tax increases without the plan, which would likely be passed on to renters.
Lawmakers, however, pushed back, questioning the city’s financial needs.
“We all have to think about tightening our belts,” said Massachusetts State Sen. Susan Moran.
Wu countered, citing the need to address long-overdue salary adjustments for municipal workers.
“We had to sort of adjust the salaries after about four years of not having cost-of-living increases for municipal workers — the police contract, for example,” she explained.
Mayor Michelle Wu announced that she’s reached a deal to temporarily raise tax rates for local businesses amid a revenue shortfall.
The revised proposal includes measures to protect small businesses, such as raising the personal property tax exemption threshold from $10,000 to $30,000.
Still, some critics remain unconvinced. Business owner Lou Murray argued the tax hike would ultimately trickle down to consumers.
“You tax somebody, they pass on the cost down the ladder,” Murray said.
Supporters like Boston resident Chaton Green said the tax proposal is critical for those already struggling on fixed incomes.
“I was sitting next to a 90-year-old woman, and she said, ‘I still have to work.’ And that broke me,” Green shared.
Because the proposal would temporarily raise Boston’s commercial property tax rate above the state limit, the mayor needs legislative approval to pass it on to the governor.
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