Heading into Game 5 in Milwaukee, the two major storylines revolved around key injuries to the best players on both teams. Hawks’ Trae Young has been dealing with a right foot bone bruise since Game 3 and Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo suffered a hyperextended left knee injury in the previous game. 

Fortunately for the Bucks, Antetokounmpo’s MRI came back clean and showed no structural damage to his knee, but he was held out of Game 5. His status moving forward is highly questionable given how significant this injury looked, but Milwaukee may not need him to finish this series. 

The Bucks beat the Hawks 123-112 in this game, taking a 3-2 series lead and moving themselves one game away from reaching the NBA Finals for the first-time since 1974 when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was leading them. 

The narrative in Game 5 was simply that the Bucks overpowered the Hawks offensively and pretty much got every single shot they wanted offensively. Jrue Holiday was fantastic leading the Bucks offense, as he had 25 points, 6 rebounds and 13 assists, but this entire Bucks’ starting unit was fantastic. 

Milwaukee’s starters combined for 111 points and everybody except P.J. Tucker in the starting rotation had 22+ points. As a team, the Bucks shot 50.5% from the floor and without Trae Young, the Hawks really struggled to get anything going offensively. 

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Bogdan Bogdanovic put together another solid outing as the Hawks’ leading scorer, scoring 28 points on 7-16 three-point shooting, but this team could never really get anything going offensively. They hit some big three-pointers to keep them in striking distance of the Bucks, but ultimately, their 14 turnovers really hurt their chances of making this game interesting late. 

Foreshadowing Game 6 in Atlanta, it seems realistic to think that Trae Young will suit up and try to play in any capacity for his team, as their backs are up against the wall, but Giannis Antetokounmpo will likely remain sidelined for the Bucks. Giannis is very lucky that his injury is not as severe as it is, but Milaukee is not going to risk him getting injured further. 

There is a lot we learned from the Bucks’ Game 5 victory and while all the talk will be about what adjustments both teams will make heading into Game 6, let’s take a look at the three biggest takeaways from this game and what these could mean for the rest of the series.