The Milwaukee Bucks collapsed in the big moment
The Bucks, staring at a golden chance to win a championship, lost in an all-time upset. What does this mean for the Giannis era?
Maybe all anyone will remember from this Bucks-Heat first round upset is Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Game 1 injury. But that would be overlooking Jimmy Butler’s all-time clutchness, and perhaps even more so, the opportunity that stared this Bucks team in the face.
Back at full strength in Game 4 and trailing 2-1, they blew a fourth quarter lead, their offense dissolving in a familiar way. Facing elimination in Game 5, remarkably, the exact same thing happened in more dramatic fashion. Miami won in overtime and clinched the series — a rare 8-seed beating a 1-seed.
It can’t be overstated how brutal of a loss this is for the Bucks. They entered the playoffs as favorites. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the consensus best player in the NBA. They have a deep, physical roster stocked with playoff-ready contributors. Last season, they barely lost to the Celtics in seven games despite Khris Middleton’s injury. Most thought this was their year.
This era of Bucks basketball — based around Antetokounmpo, Middleton, Jrue Holiday, and Brook Lopez — is facing the end of the road for the first time. Lopez and Middleton could be free agents this summer. Antetokounmpo will be up for an extension. Three of those guys are past 30. The Bucks are a veteran team with little cap space and zero young talent. You only get so many chances.
They can always look back on the 2021 championship. Win a trophy, and you are forever validated. But Antetokounmpo, a pantheon star, has higher aspirations. The best of the best win multiple. Fans will always have doubts about that funky year in the NBA.
No championship should be diminished, but 2021 was unusual. The stands were half-full. Milwaukee barely scraped by Kevin Durant and the Nets in the second round. Most agree that if not for injuries demolishing that Brooklyn super-team, the Bucks wouldn’t have survived that series. Milwaukee’s half-court offense notably collapsed at crucial moments even against the remnants of the Nets.
They had the benefit of facing the Trae Young Hawks in the conference finals and beat them in six. That Hawks team has run back the same team and gone nowhere since then. Their Finals opponent was Phoenix, a very good team, but far from a juggernaut.
That championship silenced doubters about Antetokounmpo’s style of play and the Bucks’ fundamental style. The Bucks had been demolished in both 2019 and 2020. But even after that near-miss 2022 Celtics series, when Middleton was hurt, it seemed that Antetokounmpo and Milwaukee had exercised their playoff demons.
Perhaps we’ve overlooked that the same flaws lurk under the surface. Maybe those flaws still existed in 2021, rendered irrelevant by flawed opponents.
This loss to the 2023 Miami Heat requires such re-thinking. This version of Miami has no business in the second round of the playoffs. They were the league’s worst offense in the regular season. They’ve suffered multiple injuries and barely have enough offensive threats to survive. The Heat lost to the Hawks in the play-in tournament and needed a fourth quarter comeback to beat Chicago in the second chance game. The Bucks far out-class them in overall talent.
And yet: the Heat won four out of five. Two of those came without Antetokounmpo, who injured his back 11 minutes into Game 1. Even without Giannis, the Bucks might have been favored in a series, and grabbed Game 2 without him. But these past two games came with massive stakes and opportunity for the full cast of Bucks. They failed.
We don’t need to rehash the specifics of the collapses. But compare them to prior Bucks playoff failures, and they don’t look all that different. Antetokounmpo ran into walls in the half-court, unable to generate little advantages. He relied on transition points to score, and when Milwaukee floundered offensively late in games, he didn’t have answers. His ultimate flaw as a superstar — perhaps even the flaw holding him back from a place among the best 10 or 20 players in history — is his inability to uphold a stable half-court offense against elite, locked-in playoff defenses.
Holiday took boatloads of poorly-chosen shots, especially in Game 4, and never gave Milwaukee the All-Star level offensive production he provided in the regular season. Middleton played well, but couldn’t kick into gear in the big moments the way he did in the 2021 playoffs.
Giannis also missed 13 free throws in Game 5. Yikes.
Consider how the Bucks lost Game 5. They gave up an inexplicable lob to Butler to tie the game with under a second left, and then coach Mike Budenholzer failed to call a timeout with 0.5 seconds left, fumbling an opportunity for a buzzer-beater. You’ve probably seen Grayson Allen dribble out the clock in overtime. A terrible way to lose.
Milwaukee’s defense also failed in familiar ways. A superstar wing player tore them apart, for one. Butler ate them up for the entire series, and Milwaukee was unable to counter. As good as Holiday is, and as awesome as he has been for the whole season, it was a very bad series for him.
Plus: Miami was knocking down open threes all series. The Bucks have seen that movie before: their drop coverage defense, built to protect the rim, getting done in by slick shooters.
This era of Bucks basketball can never be called a failure — they won a championship only two years ago, and they all count the same. But the general weirdness of 2021 sticks in fans’ imaginations. A failure on the scale of this one, a loss so inexplicable in a potential championship season, never sits well. The collective memory of this Bucks team won’t forget these bad losses.
This season was a chance to prove once and for all their place in history as an all-time team. In two games against Playoff Jimmy Butler and a ready-for-battle Heat team, Milwaukee blew it. They bobbled away their chance in a wide open playoffs, ripe for the taking.
Drastic changes may not come yet. More likely than not, they should be able to bring back Middleton and Lopez at least for one more year. But the clock is ticking. Antetokounmpo is 28 — in his absolute prime, at the peak of his powers. Losing in this fashion, at this point in his career, is brutal.
This team will have something to prove next season. For now, they deal with one of the most disappointing playoff losses in recent league history.