MILWAUKEE — It is not unusual to see Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo on the ground after an offensive play.
The Bucks’ two-time MVP led the NBA with 772 free-throw attempts in the 2022-23 regular season, which means he gets fouled often. And at 7 feet tall and 243 pounds, Antetokounmpo often is fouled forcefully by opponents to ensure he doesn’t get a chance to complete his shot and instead needs to go to the free-throw line, where he shot 64.5 percent this season.
Some teams, however, will go out of their way to try to take advantage of Antetokounmpo’s never-ending attack and draw offensive fouls by sliding in front of him on drives. So it was no surprise to see Miami’s Kevin Love, the league’s leading charge taker, slide in front of Antetokounmpo with just over four minutes left in the first quarter of Game 1 on Sunday evening.
And because it happens so often, despite it looking and sounding like an extraordinary fall, it was no surprise to see Antetokounmpo get back up after writhing in pain on the ground and continue playing.
Over the years, Antetokounmpo’s ability to take a physical beating and quickly recover to continue to play through injuries has come to help define his relentless attacking style. But after another two minutes on the floor, Antetokounmpo came out of the game following a successfully taken charge by Love with 1:46 remaining in the first quarter and went straight back to the locker room.
The Bucks’ MVP candidate remained there for the rest of the first quarter, but eventually came back out with a wrap around his lower back and went back into the game with 9:56 left in the second quarter. Antetokounmpo didn’t remain there long though, as Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer opted to remove him from the game fewer than 90 seconds later.
“He just wasn’t moving, didn’t look comfortable, confident, so it felt like the right thing (to take him out of the game),” Budenholzer said.
Shortly thereafter, Antetokounmpo was declared out for the remainder of the game with a lower back contusion.
“There was (an) X-ray that was clear here, so we’ll monitor him, see how he does,” Budenholzer said. “See how he wakes up, how he feels the rest of tonight and tomorrow. … We have to wait and see what the doctors say. Most importantly, what Giannis says. Certainly, we’ve been blessed with him being incredibly resilient and quick to heal, but you just gotta take it day-by-day and see how he’s doing and see how he feels.”
All the Bucks can do is wait as they try to prepare for Game 2 on Wednesday in Milwaukee. No matter what happens with their star player, it won’t change the fact that they lost 130-117 to the Heat on Sunday and now trail in their best-of-seven first-round series.
In the coming days, the Bucks will need to figure out what Antetokounmpo can do moving forward, but Budenholzer and his staff will need to spend far more time figuring out how to improve on a terrible Game 1 performance on defense.
The Bucks surrendered 130 points to the league’s 25th-most-efficient regular-season offense, a team that scored 130 or more points just three times all season. They allowed the Heat to shoot 59.5 percent from the field, including 60 percent (15 of 25) from the 3-point line.
“We gotta get some stops,” Bucks wing Wesley Matthews said. “Can’t let the Heat go 60 percent from the field and expect to win.”
There was real purpose behind everything the Heat did offensively in Game 1. Jimmy Butler was spectacular, putting up 35 points, five rebounds and 11 assists, but look at his first basket against the Bucks:
That wasn’t an accident. Butler scored three baskets on leak-outs against the Bucks in the first half. (Bam Adebayo got one in the second half as well.) Butler and the Heat essentially stole six easy points by asking Butler to run the floor on misses. (Note: The Bucks did something similar to this against the Hawks in Game 2 of the 2021 Eastern Conference finals.)
In their preparation for this series, the Heat coaching staff must have stumbled across the game film from the Bucks’ Dec. 15 thrashing at the hands of Grizzlies in Memphis or one of the other games this season in which the Bucks struggled with the basics in transition. The Heat found four easy buckets on Sunday by just beating the Bucks up the floor.
“Should have better awareness, just as simple as that,” Bucks wing Khris Middleton said following his 33-point, eight-rebound performance. “They got us a couple of times in the first half with us having poor court balance. So, we just gotta be aware. When guys take a shot, we gotta be aggressive in crashing the glass, but at the same time we gotta do a great job getting back to set our defense.”
Even if you take out Butler’s 3-of-4 shooting in transition, he still made 11 of the 16 shots he took in the paint in half-court settings. And that just isn’t going to be good enough for Milwaukee.
After dropping their 2020 playoff series to the Heat, the Bucks completely changed things up in 2021 against Miami by making a simple tweak. Rather than attempting to guard Butler with smaller guards and wings and letting Antetokounmpo try to make an impact defensively as a roamer and shot blocker on the backside of the action, the Bucks just put Antetokounmpo on Butler and kept the Heat star away from the paint.
On Sunday, the Bucks opened with Jrue Holiday on Butler and Antetokounmpo on Gabe Vincent.
“I feel like we’ve got a lot of options to go there,” Budenholzer said when asked why they went with Holiday on Butler instead of Antetokounmpo. “Giannis basically played 10 minutes tonight. We feel good. Credit to Jimmy Butler tonight. He was great. He’s going to see a lot of bodies, he’s going to see a lot of different people. We’ll do better going forward.”
Butler dictated the terms in Game 1 and went 15 of 27 from the field. In the entire four-game series in 2021 against the Bucks, Butler went 19 of 64 from the field.
On top of Antetokounmpo’s injury, the Bucks also dealt with foul trouble for Holiday, who picked up a reach-in foul on Butler early and then an offensive foul that took him out of the game with 4:46 left in the first quarter. When Holiday eventually returned, he couldn’t be as physical as he normally would be defensively against Butler, which caused real problems.
“Mostly, it affects once he gets the ball and he initiates contact,” Holiday told The Athletic when asked what part of a defensive possession is affected most by foul trouble. “At that point, I mean, I’m not trying to pick up another foul. I think before that, trying to deny and do all that, is fine. But trying to be aggressive when he’s being aggressive, sometimes it sucks because they give the offensive player the benefit of the doubt.”
One of Holiday’s greatest assets on defense is his hands, but watch as Butler collected the ball to take that layup over Jae Crowder on the play above. Holiday could not risk reaching in and trying to poke the ball away, something he does incredibly well, because he couldn’t risk picking up a third foul before the half.
But Butler was far from the Bucks’ only problem on Sunday. After Butler scored 24 points in the first half, Adebayo got loose for 17 points on 8-of-12 shooting in the second half and ended the night with 22 points, nine rebounds and seven assists.
Similarly to Butler, the Bucks did not struggle much against Abedayo as they got their revenge on the Heat in 2021, one year after getting knocked out of the bubble by Miami.
In 2021, the Bucks were content letting Adebayo take jump shots over the top of Brook Lopez. On Sunday, the Bucks were content with that strategy to start the game, as Adebayo made just two of the six shots he took in the first half. But then Adebayo made eight of his last 12 shots and gave the Bucks something to think about moving forward.
“He got into a little bit of a rhythm, made them at a pretty good clip,” Budenholzer said. “I think Brook has a good feel and we gotta guard Adebayo better. We gotta guard their whole team better.”
According to Cleaning the Glass, Adebayo has been relatively consistent on short midrange jumpers (4 to 14 feet away from the rim), shooting 46 percent from there in the 2020-21 regular season, 45 percent last season and 47 percent this season. In the postseason against the Bucks, Adebayo hit 50 percent from that distance but saw his rim scoring decrease from the regular season.
Outside of a putback and a dunk, the rest of Adebayo’s shots, whether they were floaters, hook shots or jumpers, happened in that short midrange area on Sunday, which means he went 8 of 16 on them, just slightly above his season average. The Bucks will have to decide if that is acceptable moving forward.
The final problem for the Bucks? Defending the 3-point line. Milwaukee has been markedly better running teams off the line this season and, from a volume perspective, the same thing was true on Sunday. The Heat took 25 3-point attempts, which isn’t many for an NBA team this season, but the Bucks did not contest those shots quite well enough.
That was simply too easy for Love, who ended the night with 18 points (4-of-7 3-point shooting).
And it started with the Bucks’ point of attack defense. In 2021, Antetokounmpo repeatedly went under pick-and-rolls while covering Butler because of his size and length. On the play above, Crowder chose to go over the top of that screen, and it threw their defense into disarray. Lopez and Crowder end up switching on the play, and Crowder was forced to recover to Love on the 3-point line but doesn’t get there quick enough.
Heading into Game 2, much of the attention will be on Antetokounmpo and his health and recovery. But for the Bucks, the attention also should be on their lack of execution and conviction on the defense. Whether the Bucks superstar gets back on the floor, they have to be far better on the defensive end.
Related reading
Mayberry: Jimmy Butler powers Miami on the road
Related listening
(Photo of Grayson Allen and Jimmy Butler: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
