For the second time in three years, Pat Connaughton and the Milwaukee Bucks are headed to the NBA Eastern Conference finals. In a hard-fought seven-game series against the second-seeded Brooklyn Nets, Connaughton tied with Bryn Forbes as the Bucks’ leading bench scorer for the series at 4.6 points a game. His 3.6 rebounds a game were the most in the series for out of the three bench players who played in all seven contests.
Connaughton’s high mark against the Nets came in the Bucks’ Game 5 loss. He scored 10 points on 57.1 percent shooting from the field and grabbed six rebounds. He came close to matching that in Game 7 with nine points and four boards. Perhaps his biggest impact came in a Game 4 win, during which he scored eight points and collected a playoff career-high four steals, a number he also achieved as his career regular-season best Feb. 12 against the Utah Jazz.
Connaughton shot 40.7 percent from the field for the series and 28.6 percent from 3-point range. Those numbers could have been a bit higher, but he went scoreless twice during the series. That included a Game 6 showing in which he missed all five of his shots, all of which came from beyond the arc. While it’s become clear at this point that he is nothing more than a supporting player for the Bucks, he undoubtedly will want to avoid games like that again as the playoffs continue.