Giannis Antetokounmpo’s midrange mastery highlights Bucks trends

INDIANAPOLIS — Things haven’t been going well for the Milwaukee Bucks over the last week.

After winning the NBA Cup in Las Vegas, the Bucks dropped three of their next five games as Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard each missed four games with injuries then illness. Lillard returned Saturday but in Antetokounmpo’s first game back on Tuesday in Indianapolis, things still weren’t looking good.

Antetokounmpo attempted just four shots in the first half and looked out of rhythm as he tried to regain his breath. Down 11 to the Pacers at the half, Milwaukee opened the third quarter with a lackluster effort and quickly found itself in a 19-point hole just five minutes into the second half.

With so many things going against them, it would not have been surprising to see the Bucks fold and try again another night, especially with their two stars working their way back, but that is not what happened. The Bucks came back to pull off a 120-112 victory, outscoring the Pacers 56-29 in the final 19 minutes of the game.

Asked after the game why his team kept fighting, Antetokounmpo gave a one-word response, “Doc.”

He then elaborated on Coach Rivers’ influence.

“Doc,” Antetokounmpo said. “Doc. He said the same thing he said in Brooklyn. Gotta fight through this one. Just gotta fight through this one. Keep on fighting through this one. They’re going to let us back in the game. And like, when a coach says that and then you start fighting and you see it goes from 19 to 15. And then it goes to 11. And then it goes to seven. And then it goes … it just keeps giving you that dopamine hit.

“And you’re like, ‘OK, fight a little bit more. Fight a little bit more.’ And all of a sudden, you look up and it’s a tie game. And now when you’re there, you’re like, ‘We should just win the game. We’re already here. We should just play a little bit more hard. Two, three more minutes, play good team basketball and win the game.’ And that’s what we did.”

With a win on Tuesday, the Bucks have stopped their short skid, but let’s take a closer look at the micro and macro trends that have affected the Bucks over the last week. Let’s play some ones.

One play: Giannis Antetokounmpo, midrange maestro

After the Bucks’ comeback win on Tuesday, Antetokounmpo went through his normal postgame routine. As he made his way through the hallways of Gainbridge Fieldhouse, however, he was forced to walk past this reporter, at which point Antetokounmpo began pantomiming typing on a keyboard, with his hands bouncing around in the air in an exaggerated manner.

“Fax,” Antetokounmpo said. “I’m back.”

It was unclear if the first word Antetokounmpo said was “fax” or “facts,” but whether he was referencing Michael Jordan’s famous 1995 fax announcing his return to basketball, or simply stating what was apparent to all who watched his second half performance, Antetokounmpo was correct.

After struggling to find a rhythm in the first half, Antetokounmpo started to find his way in the fourth quarter with the newest skill that he has mastered this season; the midrange jumper.

With the Bucks still trailing, the two-time MVP caught the ball at the left elbow, cleared out his teammates, dribbled down to the left block then spun to the baseline for a contested fadeaway jumper to bring his team within two points.

Four possessions later, Antetokounmpo went to another spot on the floor that Rivers has tried to emphasize for his superstar forward this season and planted himself at the nail.

Once there, Antetokounmpo used his strength to back down 6-foot-7, 235-pound forward Jarace Walker, and then comfortably leaned back to hit a one-legged fadeaway, made famous by Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki.

With a couple more buckets from Antetokounmpo and a bevy of big shots made by his teammates, the Bucks eventually took control of the game and set the stage for Antetokounmpo to put the finishing touch on the comeback win.

This time, Antetokounmpo opted for a midrange stepback jumper from the left wing.

Antetokounmpo knocking down midrange jumpers in three different spots on the floor, in three different situations, in the fourth quarter of a Bucks comeback win, is just the latest example of Antetokounmpo’s year-over-year improvement and further development of a skill that could come in handy in the postseason.

“It’s huge,” Rivers said of Antetokounmpo’s confidence in his midrange jumper. “Because it’s a shot in the playoffs you just kinda need. He works on it, we encourage it.”

Having other options to puncture an opposing defense has always been a priority for Antetokounmpo as his game has matured over the last 12 years. Teams will always do everything in their power to keep Antetokounmpo from living at the rim. If Antetokounmpo’s midrange mastery proves to be a consistent part of his game, that task will be much tougher come playoff time.

“It’s great, to even just add to his game, and add that aspect to his game on top of being dominant how he is on the offensive end, attacking the rim,” Gary Trent Jr. said. “Man, you do that, it gets real scary.”

One player: Damian Lillard

With 31.8 seconds left in the Bucks’ loss on Saturday, Bulls guard Koby White came off a pick-and-roll and knocked down a jumper to give Chicago a two-point lead. Rather than calling his final timeout, Rivers encouraged Lillard to get the ball up the floor and get to work.

Brook Lopez set a screen at halfcourt to free Lillard, but Bulls guard Zach LaVine avoided it. With Lillard on the left sideline, Lopez set another screen, but a high hedge from Nikola Vučević kept Lillard from finding an open look. Lillard kept his dribble alive and Lopez set one more screen for him:

With all the attention from the defense, Lillard made a great play to step through the trap to find AJ Green on the right side of the floor, who made the extra pass to Middleton for what eventually became an open midrange jumper when he attacked a closeout.

“The shot I had, I thought was a great shot,” Middleton said after the game. “I work on that shot many a time. Just missed it. So, hopefully I get another chance at it where I can hit it.”

It’s tough to deny the quality of look that Middleton got on that play, but it didn’t work out and Lillard, who put up 29 points and 12 assists in his return from an illness and has a long history of hitting clutch shots, didn’t take a shot in the final five minutes of the game. Immediately after the game, Rivers told reporters that he needs to do a better job as a coach to make sure that Lillard is taking shots in clutch time.

But asked about that same idea two days later following the Bucks practice on Monday afternoon, Rivers had a slightly different thought.

“If Dame doesn’t have a shot or didn’t have a shot, I don’t care,” Rivers said. “Dame had the ball. So, if he’s choosing not to shoot, he’s a pretty smart basketball player. And for the most part, we got great shots. We had the one turnover with Khris, but other than that, you can’t complain about any shot we had; you can only say it wasn’t Dame. And Dame saw what the defense gave him and he made the right decisions.”

After further examination, Rivers’ assessment was correct. The Bucks had 12 offensive possessions in the final five minutes and Lillard ran the show on nine of the 12 possessions. The three possessions Lillard did not get a touch were a wide-open catch-and-shoot 3 for Portis in transition, Lopez’s subsequent tip attempt on Portis’ missed 3 and an attempted 3 by Lopez on an inbounds play with 7.9 seconds remaining.

Outside of those three possessions, Lillard largely ran the show for the Bucks. The ball was in his hands at the start of possessions and he picked out how the Bucks would be trying to attack on each offensive possession. Sometimes, that meant an isolation for Middleton or Lopez on the block, but Lillard was the one that got the team into those actions and made those decisions.

“We made the right plays,” Rivers said. “That’s what you gotta do and you gotta live with it. But there are times where Dame should still keep it and come off of a pick. We talked about it today. We need him to stay aggressive, but we also need him to be a playmaker and you gotta trust his decisions.”

One trend: Different closers

With the game on the line on Tuesday, Rivers went with Trent at shooting guard to close the game and the 25-year-old stepped up in a major way, hitting two clutch 3-pointers.

GARY TRENT JR. IS CLUTCH! pic.twitter.com/rErTg9Xajr

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) December 31, 2024

“Obviously, you always want to help close out the game as much as you can,” Trent said. “So whenever you get an opportunity, you want to try to hone in and lock in on it, but I’m glad we got the win and keep building and keep learning. Hopefully, we get more reps in and find ways to win.”

Against the Nets and Bulls, the Bucks came up short in the clutch, but with crunchtime shotmaking from players throughout the roster including Trent on Tuesday, the Bucks pulled out a win in Indiana.

In December, the Bucks played games that included clutch minutes — a scoring margin of five or less and five minutes or less remaining — on seven occasions. They went 4-3 in those games and posted a net rating of minus-9.1 points per 100 possessions. In 34 clutch minutes, the Bucks posted an offensive rating of 97.4 and a defensive rating of 106.6.

To be clear, the sample is so minute that it can be significantly altered by extreme performances in single games like the Bucks’ offensive rating of 25 in four clutch minutes against the Brooklyn Nets on Dec. 26 or the Bucks’ defensive rating of 133.3 in five clutch minutes against the Bulls on Dec. 28, so we aren’t going to spend a ton of time obsessing over those numbers, but rather the lineups that Rivers used to close out games during the final month of 2024.

The Bucks have gone through a lot of lineup changes because of injuries and illness this month, so that has certainly played a role in some of Rivers’ lineup decisions to close games, but Rivers also used different closing lineups in all six of the team’s clutch games in December.

“The game tells you who to play, more than anything,” Rivers said. “It’s not like we’re sitting back picking straws. The game is obvious in a lot of instances.”

For Rivers, that has meant plenty of mixing and matching at shooting guard and even some at the two big spots as Antetokounmpo has missed time over the last few weeks. Before Tuesday’s game against the Pacers, Rivers admitted that in an ideal world the Bucks would have a set five-man unit to close games with every night.

“I think every coach would love to know their (closing) five,” Rivers said. “If you know your five every game, it’s a pretty damn good five, I would say that. But with our team, we probably know the four, for sure. The fifth one can always change.”

Asked to clarify what that meant about the center position, Rivers said, “That could be Brook (Lopez) or Bobby (Portis).”

For now, that means Rivers is going to continue searching for the perfect closer at shooting guard alongside the big 3 of Lillard, Middleton and Antetokounmpo and either Lopez or Portis at center.

That means Trent, AJ Green, Taurean Prince and potentially even Ryan Rollins, who closed on Saturday against the Bulls, will get opportunities to be on the floor at the end of games.

According to Green, that makes for a pretty simple job and mindset.

“There might be nights I only play 18 minutes, but then there might be another night I play 30 (minutes), every game is different,” he said. “It’s really just continuing to make the most of the minutes I have. Play super hard, do my role, make shots, try to do what I can to help the team win games in the time that I have.”

No matter where Rivers deploys him at the end of games, Green believes there is only one task at hand.

“If I’m out there, all right, we’re try to win this game. What can I do to win this game,” Green said. “If I’m on the bench, I’m still trying to win this game. How can I be a great teammate? I can let guys know two timeouts left, we’ve got a foul to give, things like that. It’s really the same, I think.”

(Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty Images)