Giannis conducts press conference after Bucks win in Hulk costume
Giannis Antetokounmpo is ready for Halloween.
Regardless of roster makeup who plays however many minutes, the Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat always seem to play grind-it-out games, and Monday night was no different in a 122-114 Bucks victory at Fiserv Forum. The Bucks (2-1) were in control through three quarters and led by as many as 25 at the start of the fourth quarter, but the Heat bench whittled that margin down to six in the final minutes before Giannis Antetokounmpo tried to stomp out the last embers of the rally.
With Miami (1-2) down 115-109, Antetokounmpo came out of a timeout with a three-point play and then found Brook Lopez wide open off a near turnover to push the margin to 11 with 37.5 seconds left.
But the Heat didn’t give up and cut it to six with 28.6 seconds remaining. They forced a 5-second violation and Tyler Herro had a chance to halve the lead, but his contested three-pointer over Damian Lillard went long and Antetokounmpo hit two free throws with 17.6 seconds left to effectively clinch it.
“It got a little stagnant at the end,” Bucks head coach Adrian Griffin said. “That happens. We’ll learn from that. I gotta do better. I don’t know if I need to put another ball handler in there, but this is learning for me. But overall I thought the team responded great from (Sunday night’s loss to Atlanta). In a short turnaround. It was great.”
Added Lillard: “I think anytime you get in those types of situations – we had a turnover, we had a 5-second call – you have these moments where you have the opposite thing happen from what you want to be happening, it’s pretty easy to be like, man, we need to be better at this, we need to be better at that,” Lillard said. “But I think this early in the season we haven’t been in those situations specifically.
“I think the one takeaway is we’ve got to look at those moments and just calm ourselves down, give each other outlets and just count on our experience. This is not none of our first time being in that situation. We just gotta be sharper. But like I said, it’s early in the season, it takes time to just click at those types of things. But I don’t think it’s anything that we’ll have trouble with consistently.”
Box score: Bucks 122, Heat 114
Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 33 points, and he made 8 of his 11 free throws. Lillard had 25 points on 7 of 14 shooting and he was 9-for-11 from the free-throw line. Herro had 35 for Miami to lead all scorers. Duncan Robinson hit 3 threes off the bench late to key the Heat rally, and he finished with 15 points.
“Defensively we had one or two miscommunications, but at the end of the day that’s going to happen,” Antetokounmpo said. “But you gotta keep on playing through that and I think the team kept on playing through that and again, we got the win but we didn’t have to do it that way. They came back to the game. Obviously they made tough shots, they got some offensive rebounds, second chance points, they made their threes, they had a transition three. But at the end of the day, once you’re up 20 you gotta put them away.”
Bobby Portis brings the energy
Bobby Portis had a monster game for the Bucks off the bench and he had a direct impact in the opening minutes of the second quarter to give the Bucks a lead they never relinquished. Following a first quarter in which the game was tied at 28, Portis opened the second with ferocity on both ends.
He picked Tyler Herro’s pocket twice, assisted on a Pat Connaughton three-pointer and scored 10 points of his own. That helped the Bucks build a 12-point lead.
Khris Middleton adjusting to new offensive role
The Big Three has existed in Milwaukee since 2020, but Khris Middleton’s place in that triumvirate is different now with future first-ballot Hall of Famers Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard as part of it.
Middleton, a 20-point per game scorer, a three-time all-star and an Olympic gold medalist, is without question No. 3 on the offensive end when the trio are playing together. He knows it, he gets it – but it also means there’s an adjustment period.
It’s different than even last year when he was coming off the bench with a minutes restriction, because he wanted to assert his will as an offensive player. The team needed him to do that, too. In those 14 games coming off the bench, he put about 12 shots in his roughly 20 minutes per game.
In his season debut against Philadelphia, he had five shots in just over 16 minutes. Against Miami he played 17 minutes, scoring five points and handing out five assists.
In his two games played the Bucks are 2-0 and plus-28 when Middleton is on the court.
“It’s different from last year because last year I knew my role and I knew how to execute it,” he said after a practice on Saturday. “Now, it’s a little bit different role and I’m just trying to figure it out. I don’t think it’s a huge adjustment for me. It’s just picking my spots, figuring out where my open spots are going to be, figuring out where I can be aggressive, the times when I have the ball in my hands and the times where I can play off the ball and figure out how to get to that open space.
“So it’s just watching film, playing, talking to these guys, and just trying to find the open spots out there, but it’s not like I’m coming in and I gotta be the Lou (Williams) or Jamal (Crawford), who would come in and get 30 (points) off the bench. It’s just find my role, play the game the right way and let the game come to me.”
Middleton continues to maintain that he feels great physically and is accepting of the slower ramp up in his minutes. In his two games, he has yet to play in a fourth quarter and he was asked following the Heat game if that’s something he’d talk to the coaching staff about.
“It could be,” he said. “I just listen to the game plan, listen to when they tell me I’m coming in or coming out. But, you never know. We’ll see down the road.”
Giannis guards Jimmy Butler
Antetokounmpo started the game defending Jimmy Butler, and the former Defensive Player of the Year picked up Butler at various other points in the contest. Antetokounmpo strongly stated he had wanted a chance to defend the Marquette University alumnus after the Heat bounced the Bucks from the playoffs last year, and he had done that in the first round of the 2021 championship run.
Now, Antetokounmpo did not guard Butler all game long, but when he did Butler was effectively turned into a playmaker for the Heat and it didn’t always go smoothly for his teammates as the Bucks played connected team defense. Butler had a tough game overall in his 29 minutes, scoring 13 points on 4 of 11 shooting. He had four assists and four rebounds.
“I think I did a good job at times,” Antetokounmpo said. “Obviously I try to make it as tough as possible for him. And not just him, whoever I try to guard. This will only make me better and make the team better. Sometimes I have to guard the best player. Sometimes I have to put my feet down, slide side-to-side, contest every shot. Like, I have to do that. I have to kind of push him out of his position. Sometimes I have to play – not dirty – but I have to be physical.”
It was also the second time Antetokounmpo has defended the other team’s best player, as he took on Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid for a stretch in the season opener. It is something Antetokounmpo told Griffin he wants to do when needed, in part because he anticipates having those assignments in the playoffs.
“I feel like I’ve been, at times, I’ve been protected,” Antetokounmpo said. “I think like a lot of players around the league when you have the superstar, the best player, they kind of like protect them. They have them guard like the guy that’s not super aggressive so he doesn’t get in foul trouble, he doesn’t waste his energy on defense. But for me, I believe I’m one of the best two-way players to ever play this game and I want to have that challenge.
“And at times I’m not going to be good and at times I’m going to be good for my team. But at the end of the day I cannot – I don’t feel like I can kind of shy away from the challenge and just see. Obviously my teammates they’re unbelievable, they can also guard, they can also move their feet, but you want to be able to go back home and know that you gave everything to the game and you gave everything to stop the other team’s best player.”
5 numbers
00.1 and 00.2 Tenths of a second left on the clock in the first and second quarters, respectively, when the Heat and Bucks scored. Miami got two free throws at the end of the first and Crowder hit a three-pointer at the end of the second.
10 Points by Antetokounmpo in the opening five minutes of game play. He was 4-for-7 from the floor. The rest of the team was 0-for-3. Khris Middleton and Damian Lillard did not attempt a shot as the Heat took a 13-10 lead in the early going.
24 Point margin in bench scoring for the Bucks in the first half (30-6), led by Portis’ 14. The second unit was aggressive as a whole, mitigating a 9-point combined effort from Brook Lopez, Malik Beasley and Middleton. The bench effort helped the Bucks take a 62-52 lead at the break. It was key for the Bucks victory to build that early momentum, as the Heat bench eventually out-scored the Bucks second unit 45-43.
“I mean, it was really good,” backup point guard Cam Payne said of the second unit effort. “We’re starting to find out the things we can run, starting to find some continuity with each other, starting to find out what everybody good at. Our unit is kind of different, so we’re just trying to figure it out. This is Game (3). Tonight, we were hitting, but also the ball was moving left to right, got a lot of second-side action. But for that unit, we gotta keep moving the ball, keep getting open shots.”
35 Points for Whitnall High School alumnus Tyler Herro. Herro came into the game averaging 18.2 points per game in his 11 career appearances against his hometown team. He was 12-for-21 from the floor overall and was 9-for-10 from the free throw line. He also kept the Heat connected in the first half by scoring 18 points.
Bucks assistant coaches rotate to front of bench
When assistant coach Terry Stotts suddenly resigned a week before the regular season, head coach Adrian Griffin was asked if he was going to look for a new hire to replace Stotts. Late in camp, Griffin said that would be evaluated.
In Thursday’s season opener, Nate Mitchell accompanied Joe Prunty and Patrick Mutombo to the “front” of the Bucks bench alongside Griffin, head athletic trainer Scott Faust and the players. Only three assistants are allowed in that front row.
Sunday, it was assistant Josh Oppenheimer up front. Against Miami it was DJ Bakker.
“Right now it’s just temporary ‘til we come to a more permanent solution, which I don’t know what that is,” Griffin said before the Heat game. “As of now we’re just rotating the coaches.
“Most of the time it’s whoever’s scout it is. When it’s Joe or Patrick’s scout, then I’ll rotate ‘em. And they’re all great coaches. We’ve got a phenomenal staff and just giving them all opportunities to get in front of the bench.”
Damian Lillard plays first game against Heat since trade request
If things had gone the way Damian Lillard wanted, the Bucks would be facing him for the first time in the 2023-24 season as a visitor with the Miami Heat. When the all-NBA guard first requested a trade in July, his preferred destination was Miami.
By mid-September, it was clear that wasn’t going to happen – and the Bucks were added to his approved list of destinations.
So the storyline on South Beach is what might have been while the Bucks are now into their third game of a new era that features Lillard, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton.
Lillard said flatly that while yes, he did want to play for the Heat, “I’ve never played on their team. So, it’s not; I mentioned it that that was the destination for me when I asked to be traded last (season) but I was traded here. I’m excited to be here, I’m happy to be here, I fit in great here. For me, personally, that was the end of it. I never thought about it again after that.”
Because of that, Lillard said there is no odd feeling going up against the Heat even though he has close relationships with Heat stars Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo.
“I play for the Bucks,” Lillard said. “I’m not going into like that’s my former team, or we was tied in or nothing like that. It’s another game.”
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