Giannis Antetokounmpo: Bucks’ crunchtime synergy ‘like heaven’ in win over Heat

MIAMI — The Milwaukee Bucks have seemingly spent the entire first month of the season playing tight games.

In those games, they have put the ball in the hands of Damian Lillard and watched as their superstar point guard did what he was brought to Milwaukee to do: delivering multiple wins in clutch situations. But, on Tuesday, against the Miami Heat , two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo told new head coach Adrian Griffin that they needed to go in a different direction with the game on the line late.

“Down the stretch, I was looking at Dame hit a couple of big threes and I was trying to get a play for him again and Giannis was like, ‘Hey, we gotta go to Khris,'” Griffin said. “And they they’re like twins. They read each other and they have such great chemistry and he was right. Khris down the stretch, man, really took his home.”

Middleton played just 23 minutes in his return to action after missing most of the second half of the Bucks’ game against the Washington Wizards on Friday with left Achilles tightness and the entirety of Sunday’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers . Both Antetokounmpo (33 points) and Lillard (32) nearly doubled Middleton’s scoring total (17 points) on the night, but no one was more important to the Bucks’ closing effort than Middleton in the Bucks’ 131-124 win over the Heat on Tuesday.

With the win, the Bucks finished the In-Season Tournament group play atop East: Group B with a 4-0 record. As the East’s top seed, the Bucks host the New York Knicks on Dec. 5 at 7:30 p.m. ET.

On their first possession under three minutes of the fourth quarter, the Bucks used a middle pick-and-roll with Lillard and Antetokounmpo, but Antetokounmpo’s screen led to a switch from Bam Adebayo . The Heat’s perennial All-Defensive center held up well on that switch against Lillard and eventually swatted a floater from the Bucks point guard out of bounds with just two seconds left on the shot clock.

From there, the Bucks ran one of their regular out-of-bounds plays, which created a tough look for Middleton in the corner, but he hit the shot fading away out of bounds into the Bucks’ bench.

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— Milwaukee Bucks November 29, 2023

“I knew (Khris) would at least have a step on (his defender) and the guy was on him, he almost hit the ball,” Lillard, who also had nine assists, said of Middleton’s shot. “I haven’t been on his team to see it, but I’ve seen it just watching games and I know he’s comfortable in those situations. I know he’s a gamer. So, once I saw him coming open, I knew that was the shot we were going to get. I just wanted to make sure I could get it to him and he ran through the pass and hit a tough shot. That’s what good players do.”

With a two-point lead, the Bucks went down to the other end of the floor and tried to get a stop, something they struggled to do once again on Tuesday as they gave up 125.3 points per 100 possessions to a Jimmy Butler -less Heat squad. But this time, they managed to hold on to their two-point lead when Adebayo’s mid-range jumper rimmed out. As soon as the Bucks secured the defensive rebound, Antetokounmpo started directing traffic.

Knowing that Adebayo, the Heat’s most dangerous defender, would be stuck to him throughout the possession, Antetokounmpo told Lillard to bring the ball up the floor and then directed Brook Lopez to take his spot on the right elbow, while he pulled Adebayo away from the action to the right corner of the play.

With Adebayo as far away from the action as possible and Lillard occupying the nearest help defender, Middleton and Lopez had the entire left side of the floor to themselves to work in a two-man game against rookie forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Caleb Martin . With the rest of the Heat defense occupied, Middleton worked in isolation against Jaquez and got to one of his favorite spots on the floor.

The Bucks were not able to get a stop on the next possession with Adebayo drawing a foul on a drive and hitting two free throws, but their communication on offense did not stop and neither did the team’s trust in Middleton. With the game on the line, the Heat turned up their pressure and denied Lillard the basketball. Instead of forcing something, Lillard just told Middleton to inbound the ball to Beasley and let him bring the ball up as they all found their spots.

Eventually, Beasley entered the Bucks into their set with a pass to Middleton on the right wing and the Bucks’ two longest tenured teammates showed off their chemistry with a play only they could make.

The pass was audacious.

When Middleton let it fly from the right wing, Antetokounmpo had just barely reached the free throw line and turned his head around to see the pass.

“It’s trust and just knowing where the high jumper is. Bam was on me, so I know if I get it over him, not many guys are gonna be able to jump and compete with Giannis at the rim,” Middleton said. “So, I put it somewhere where he could grab it up high. More times than not, he’s going to come down with it or get a foul like he did.”

In Antetokounmpo’s mind, Middleton was just doing what he has always told him to do in these situations.

“We’ve talked about it many times, just throw it in a place that only I can get it and I’m going to try to go get it,” Antetokounmpo said after adding 10 rebounds and five assists to his 33 points. “Sometimes, it’s going to be too high and I’m not going be able to get it, but damn sure nobody else next to me is going to get that ball.”

But that pass was not normal. It was perfect.

Middleton threw it at the right time. With the right amount of arc to get it over the top of Adebayo at the 3-point line. And the right amount of velocity to allow Antetokounmpo to run and jump without wasting any steps and keep his full momentum toward the rim. And at the perfect height where Antetokounmpo could have actually caught it and dunked it, if not for a foul from Jacquez.

“That play is one of the more impressive plays to me, just to throw that jump ball up there like that,” Lillard said. “That’s a play where it wasn’t wide open, but he knew there was only one person that was going to get this ball and you take that type of chance because they have that type of chemistry. He understands who he’s playing with.”

Like Lillard, Griffin is still new to the partnership of Antetokounmpo and Middleton, but he knows that their bond is deep and their level of chemistry is tough to obtain.

“I trust them completely,” Griffin said of their connection. “They’ve done some things as far as just reading each other that we’ve never discussed. They just have a connection with each other and you could tell they’ve been together forever. During clutch time, they know what to do and you just trust them. As a coach, you trust them. They’ve rehearsed this play probably hundreds of times, so I completely trust them down the stretch.”

While Antetokounmpo knocked down both free throws to give the Bucks a four-point lead with 1:18 remaining, the Bucks’ work was not yet done.

Adebayo scored on the next possession to cut the Bucks’ lead to two, but Josh Richardson committed a foul on Lillard three seconds into the next possession and Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was hit with a technical arguing the call, which gave Lillard three free throws. The Bucks’ point guard hit all three to give the Bucks’ a five-point lead, but the Heat once again answered and cut the Bucks’ lead to three to create one final clutch possession.

The Bucks tried to use the two-man game of Lillard and Antetokounmpo on the play, but the ball once again ended up in Middleton’s hands. And the 12-year NBA vet perfectly attacked an out-of-control closeout and found Lopez for a dunk to effectively seal the win for the Bucks.

Even though the play did not end with Antetokounmpo and Lillard, it epitomized exactly what Antetokounmpo wants to see from the Bucks in the clutch.

“I think it kind of helps the flow of our offense,” Antetokounmpo said. “When we initiate our offense, it doesn’t always have to be Dame and Giannis, stay that way, pick and roll. We can go to Khris and Giannis, then it can be swung to Dame and Brook and then we can play from that. I feel like that’s when we are all playing as a team. The energy’s better, everybody’s moving, everybody’s touching the ball and then I think we can be more effective that way.”

With multiple playmakers on the roster, the Bucks don’t have to rely on a single option. If teams overplay against Lillard in the clutch, the Bucks can swing the ball to the other side of the floor and put defenses in a bind with another strong playmaker in Middleton, who has also put together a strong clutch-time resume over the last decade.

After the game, Lillard revealed that he felt like Tuesday’s game was the first time he and Middleton truly shared the closing duties in Milwaukee.

“That was the first time me and him were communicating the way we did down the stretch,” Lillard said. “‘You bring it. I’ll be in the action.’ And ‘If I come off, I’m gonna throw it ahead to you.’ You know, ‘Dame, just fight for a catch. You bring it. We need you to initiate.’ There was a lot of dialogue there to close the game.

“And I think moments like that are necessary. We gotta have that because he’s a guy that can do like he did tonight. And for me, as soon as I see the time start going down under three or four minutes, I’m shifting and I’m going to get ’em. So, it was great to have that interaction and that back and forth with him.”

In the end, the Bucks would probably prefer to just get more defensive stops and beat teams by double digits with greater regularity. It would probably save some wear and tear on their bodies to avoid playing in so many close games throughout the entire season, but what the Bucks went through on Tuesday in Miami cannot be simulated in practices. Seeing new defensive coverages, diagnosing them on the fly and communicating the best ways to beat those defensive coverages will only help the Bucks get better and progress as a team as they try to build the chemistry needed to make a deep playoff run this season.

On Tuesday, for the first time, Middleton and Lillard proved that they can combine forces in the clutch and make the Bucks even more dynamic to close games.

“For me, it’s like heaven when you have two guys that can create their own shot and, down the stretch, I don’t have to make something happen and I can just be like the guy that sets the screen and rolls and kind of play the second side and play behind the defense,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s great. My whole career, it’s been that way. Past couple of years, Jrue and Khris was able to do that and now we have also have Khris and Dame that they can do that.”

Antetokounmpo’s heaven might end up being hell for opponents come playoff time.

(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Damian Lillard: Issac Baldizon / NBAE via )