Bucks earn NBA In-Season Tournament top seed with win over Heat
Giannis, Middleton and Lillard speak on Bucks’ win over Heat
Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Damian Lillard speak on Bucks’ win over Heat and advancing in the NBA In-Season Tournament.
MIAMI – The Milwaukee Bucks edged the Miami Heat, 131-124, at the Kaseya Center, snapping a five-game, regular-season road losing streak in the venue and securing an additional home game next week in the In-Season Tournament quarterfinals.
Khris Middleton provided clutch baskets late, giving the Bucks the lead for good in the final two minutes and Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard made five straight free throws in the last 78 seconds to clinch it.
Antetokounmpo had 33 points, 10 rebounds and five assists to lead the Bucks while Lillard had 32 points and nine assists. Middleton had 17 and Brook Lopez finished with 12.
Bucks win In-Season Tournament East Group B
With the victory, the Bucks went 4-0 in group play and clinched a home game for the quarterfinal “knockout round” next week. They will host the New York Knicks, who beat Charlotte on Tuesday. The Knicks advanced thanks to a point-differential tiebreaker.
Immediately after the win over the Heat, Bucks head coach Adrian Griffin and Antetokounmpo both said they did not want to look past Chicago (Nov. 30) and Atlanta (Dec. 2) but Antetokounmpo added, “we’ve played extremely well in the In-Season Tournament. Hopefully the next game we can still keep this up and get another win and if we win we go to Vegas? Great, man. I haven’t been in Vegas in a long time. So hopefully we can go to Vegas.”
Khris Middleton took a step further and added that winning the inaugural NBA Cup would be a feather in the organization’s cap.
“It would be pretty cool to be part of history,” he said. “You always want to be the first to win something. So, it would definitely be cool to win the first In-Season Tournament. We still got some work to do, but we’re excited about it, about the opportunity.”
Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra had been an early proponent of the In-Season Tournament and felt that as group play came to a close there had been a different feel to the contests than a “normal” regular season game.
BOX SCORE: Bucks 131, Heat 124
“I think there has been,” he said. “I think it built up momentum. Naturally, you really don’t know what to expect going into it. You want to be open minded to it. It’s good for competition. And then you started seeing the other games and then the players and teams start to get into it more and more it became, I think, interesting league-wide. I think we would all like to be in Vegas playing for something in a week.”
What is the In-Season Tournament?
Modeled after various European soccer “cups,” the NBA is introducing round-robin group play featuring all 30 teams to help make regular-season games more important to players and fans.
Each game counts toward the regular season standings. The two finalists will end up playing 83 regular season games.
The teams that win their groups advance to single-elimination games for the final eight teams, which are the quarterfinals (Dec. 4-5), semifinals and final. The semifinals (Dec. 7) and final (Dec. 9) will be held in Las Vegas.
Along with claiming the NBA Cup, each player on the winning team gets a lump sum of $500,000. The second-place team receives $200,000 apiece. Semifinalist players get $100,000, while quarterfinalists get $50,000. Coaches will receive the same.
Pat Connaughton leaves game with ankle sprain
With just under three minutes left in the first half, Bucks guard Pat Connaughton drove to the lane and drew contact. He tossed up a no-look, over-the-head floater as he headed to the floor – which somehow went in – he landed awkwardly on his right foot. He immediately grabbed at it and stayed down for a bit as play continued at the other end. He was able to get up and walk to the corner as the Bucks’ brought the ball back downcourt, but a Heat foul allowed him to get off the court. He headed right to the locker room and was ruled out with a right ankle sprain.
In 15 minutes off the bench against the Heat, Connaughton was 3-for-5 from the field for seven points. He also had one rebound and one assist. The 30-year-old guard has been averaging just under 24 minutes per game for the Bucks.
Griffin said Connaughton will be evaluated further on Tuesday.
Bam Adebayo, three-point shooting keys Miami
The Heat was without its two top three scorers in Jimmy Butler and Tyler Herro (right ankle sprains) so it leaned hard on two-time all-star and defensive player of the year candidate Bam Adebayo. The 6-foot, 9-inch big man not only drew Antetokounmpo on the defensive end, but carried the weight on the offensive side.
Adebayo, who entered the game averaging a career-high 22.7 points and 10.4 rebounds per game, was a force no matter who the Bucks threw at him. He finessed Brook Lopez to the basket one-on-one. He powered over Middleton. He used both skills to create separation against Antetokounmpo. He pulled up from midrange. He streaked to the rim for thunderous dunks.
Then on the perimeter, the Heat moved the ball and continued to get open looks against a rotating Bucks defense. After a 1-for-11 overall start from the field – and 0-for-2 from behind the three-point line – the Heat caught fire. They were shooting 50% from beyond the arc deep into fourth quarter, countering any Bucks momentum with a triple speed bump.
But down the stretch, the Bucks kept Miami from event attempting a three-pointer. After Kyle Lowry gave the Heat a 118-115 lead with 3:25 left the Heat didn’t get up another one in rhythm until Duncan Robinson missed one with 34 seconds left out of a timeout.
“Communication, attention to detail, staying locked in on shooters, rotations, all that,” Middleton said of the final minute lock-down by the Bucks. “We made tons of mistakes throughout the game so we were fortunate enough to learn what not to do anymore, so hopefully we can figure out how to do that sooner in the games, but it’s coming.”
Adebayo also was held to just one field goal in that final stretch. He finished with 31 points, 10 rebounds and five assists.
Play of the game
With 2:21 left in the game and the score tied at 118, Lillard tried to get a shot off around Adebayo, but it was blocked and fell out of bounds with just about two seconds left on the shot clock. Lillard inbounded the ball on the baseline, and he said there were three options as the Bucks began moving — but he saw Khris Middleton get a step in his cut to the corner in front of the Bucks’ bench.
“The guy was on him – he almost hit the ball,” Lillard said of the inbound play.
Middleton caught it and hit a fading 19-footer as the shot clock expired to give the Bucks the lead. They would not relinquish it.
“I haven’t been on his team to see, but I’ve seen it just watching games,” Lillard said of Middleton’s clutch shooting. “I know he’s comfortable in those situations. I know he’s a gamer. Once I saw him coming open, I knew that was the shot we was going to get, I just wanted to make sure I could try to get it to him. He ran through the pass and hit a tough shot. That’s what good players do.”
Did you notice?
At the 11:31 mark of the second quarter Bucks point guard Cam Payne hit a corner three-pointer off a feed from Middleton, giving the Bucks a 34-24 lead. The teams played on for the next three minutes before the public address announcer informed the arena – and the teams – that the NBA replay center in Secaucus, New Jersey, determined Payne was out of bounds. At that point, it changed the score to 36-35 in favor of the Bucks. Payne was still on the court during the announcement, and he looked puzzled as it was broadcast to the crowd.
Five numbers
0 Losses by the Bucks when they start fast offensively. They are now 7-0 when ahead or tied after the first quarter.
1 Lopez’s rank in total blocked shots with 51 after getting his hands on one against the Heat. The league leader in that category a year ago, Lopez has been on a remarkable run in that regard having swatted 50 in his last 13 games (3.84 per game).
Griffin: “He’s just an (integral) part of what we’re trying to do, especially on the defensive end. He’s elite on both sides of the ball but his size, his feel for the game – I just think he has great feel. The players trust him. They know he’s back there cleaning it up and making up for any mistakes and breakdowns. He’s invaluable for our defense.”
4 Straight regular season victories for the Bucks over the Heat, dating back to Feb. 4, 2023 at Fiserv Forum. It is the Bucks’ first regular season victory in Miami since Dec. 29, 2020.
4-5 Fouls in minutes played by MarJon Beauchamp in the first half.
23 Minutes for Middleton, who returned after missing a game due to tendonitis in his left Achilles. It looked like Middleton was about to see his minutes take a jump after playing 28 against Boston on Nov. 22, but he left the game against Washington shortly after halftime with tightness in the Achilles.
Middleton: “It just tightened up on me, that’s all it really was. I was probably, maybe, too cautious about it but I just thought that was the best decision. I was going to be hurting the team out there more than anything playing so I thought I made the right decision just sitting out, getting treatment, working on it and I felt good enough to go tonight.”
Middleton was a huge factor late, hitting two massive buckets to give the Bucks a lead and then finding Brook Lopez for a dunk that helped clinch the victory.
“Middleton: I was kind of pissed at myself, mostly on the defensive side. I feel like I was letting my team down in a lot of different ways. So I just changed my mindset to be aggressive on both sides. After I was getting killed and torched (on defense) and that’s the mindset I have to have. That’s the mindset my teammates need to have me have, so it wasn’t just aggressive trying to score, it was aggressive playing the game as hard as I can and playing it the right way.”
He scored 17 points, had eight rebounds and handed out two assists.
Griffin: “We had to make a decision during that fourth quarter. We had him, we decided to take him out for a few minutes and play the last five minutes. He’s clutch. We needed every minute of him on the floor.”
More: Bucks guard Pat Connaughton is building careers on and off the court in Milwaukee
