The Toronto Raptors may have been a little winded after their exhausting series against the Philadelphia 76ers, and that may have been behind a fourth-quarter fade that allowed the Milwaukee Bucks to cruise by them and handle Game 1 of the NBA Eastern Conference finals. Now the Bucks have a chance to go up by two games in the series, with the second game beginning at 8:05 PM ET at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee.

The first game ended up 108-100 on the Milwaukee side, despite outstanding performances by Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry of the Raptors. The problem was that Toronto didn't get a while lot from their supporting cast.

Remember that the Bucks had an entire week since their last game, so they figured to be the team that was fresher. It's altogether possible that this really took hold in the second half, as the Raptors scored just 41 points. Leonard and Lowry were like men on an island, as the rest of the Toronto roster combined for just ONE second half field goal.

Looking at the NBA betting odds on Game 2, the Bucks are laying points:

Milwaukee Bucks -6.5 (-109)
Toronto Raptors +6.5 (-101)

Over 216 points (-105)
Under 216 points (-105)

You'll see lower prices than -110 there. That's because they came with "reduced juice," which allows you to avoid laying the full price when you bet the NBA playoffs. And you'll get it at BetAnySports.

The Bucks shot poorly, and that wasn't anticipated. They were just below 40% overall and 25% from three-point territory, and we should probably expect that they'll do better in Game 2.

One of the reasons Toronto even had the lead for most of this game was the shooting of Kyle Lowry. The point guard hit seven of nine shots from three-point territory and wound up with 30 on the evening. This was clearly an outlier, though; Milwaukee stopped him cold from long-range in the regular season, making just one out of 20, and if you look at what he's done through the first two series, he was 32% against Orlando and just below 26% against Philadelphia. So logic dictates that he's going to come back to earth. When that happens, the Raptors need to look elsewhere for points.

The numbers indicate that Milwaukee had a lot of wide-open shots and missed them, and that another thing that could regress (or progress, as it were) to the "mean." If that happens, Toronto has more trouble to deal with.

You can't ignore that Milwaukee carved out a huge rebounding edge, with 75 of them, compared to just 54 for the Raptors. As a team that tends to collapse toward the middle on defense, they shouldn't be yielding too much of an edge to Toronto as they defend their own glass.

I don't know if we would call this an "X-Factor," but Malcolm Brogdon is back in action, and when he plays, the Bucks have extracted a big edge over the Raptors. During the regular season, Milwaukee outscored Toronto by 26.9 points per 100 possessions with Brogdon on the floor, and in Game 1 his plus-minus was +18, which is phenomenal. And it's no accident, as Brogdon, who was the rookie of the year a couple of seasons ago, is a 50/40/90 guy (50% FG's, 40% triples, 90% free throws) and really knows how to play defense. He's just come back from a foot injury, so this is good timing. And he has to figure huge in the outcome.

We see the Bucks improving their output here a bit more than the Raptors, so we're going to go ahead and lay the points again.

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