Bucks’ ‘team basketball’ has them in NBA Cup semis for second consecutive season

MILWAUKEE — For a second straight season, the Milwaukee Bucks are heading to Las Vegas for a semifinal matchup in the NBA Cup.

Carried by 37 points and seven rebounds from Giannis Antetokounmpo and 28 points and nine assists from Damian Lillard, the Bucks secured a hard-fought 114-109 victory over the Orlando Magic on Tuesday to punch their ticket for the trip. On Saturday, the Bucks will face the winner of Wednesday night’s game between the New York Knicks and Atlanta Hawks.

While the Bucks have reached the semifinals in the NBA Cup’s first two seasons, the journeys to this point could not have been more different.

Last season, under head coach Adrian Griffin, the Bucks were 14-6 heading to Las Vegas. They had dropped some games, but they were winning to start the season and scoring a lot of points. They were incredibly successful in starting the season with their first-time head coach, even if problems were brewing underneath the surface.

This season, the Bucks, at 13-11, have already taken a wildly different path to Vegas. They went 2-8 in their first 10 games, and because of those early struggles, they were forced to listen to outside sources wonder about their season outlook, their disappearing chances at competing for a championship this season and the possibility of breaking apart what was supposed to be a championship core.

“We kept fighting — and that’s a hard thing to do when you’re struggling and you’re expected to be winning and people are talking about your team,” Lillard said. “It takes a connected group to be able to bounce back and come out of that and get … to where we’ve gotten to. We just have to understand that and also not reach where we’ve reached now and think that our work is done. You know, we got ourselves back to where we want to be, in a good position, and we’ve got to continue to build on that.”

While advancing to Las Vegas only means the Bucks have won five specific games to start the season, Lillard explained why making it to the NBA Cup semifinals has meant even more to this team this season.

“I just think it’s more than making it to Vegas,” Lillard said. “I think it’s us being able to pull ourselves out of a hole. Being in the NBA, I know that you can’t do that with one person, or two people or three people, four people, you know? It takes the right type of energy to be spread throughout the group. How we come into the practice facility, how the energy is in the locker room, how we engage with our coaches in practice, and how we’re able to just stay connected, even when things aren’t going well and maybe the coaches might be frustrated with us not doing things good enough.

“We might be frustrated with ourselves. And we just stayed connected.”

That connection and togetherness was on full display in Tuesday’s win.

While the outside world might have thought it was going to be easy because the Magic were missing Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Jonathan Isaac, the Bucks fully believed their opponents were going to make things difficult for them Tuesday. Rivers made that clear in his pregame remarks as he complimented the Magic’s third-ranked defense and the culture that coach Jamahl Mosley had instilled in his team to find the ability to compete, no matter who is on the floor, especially on the defensive end.

The Magic took it to the Bucks early and held a 33-25 lead after one quarter, largely because they forced seven first-quarter turnovers and made every shot the Bucks took uncomfortable. Milwaukee flipped the script in the second quarter behind a huge performance from Bobby Portis, who scored 12 of his 22 points in the period. While the rest of the team was struggling to find a rhythm, Portis knocked down his first seven shots, getting the Bucks back in the game.

“He’s just playing great,” Rivers said of Portis. “His emotions are in the right place. His focus is right. You can see his energy. The last two games have been fantastic. Without Bobby, we’d be in trouble.”

Thanks to Portis’ significant second-quarter contributions, the Bucks managed to take a one-point lead into halftime. The Magic, however, weren’t willing to fade away after the Bucks took the lead. They kept fighting in the third quarter and the score remained close.

Then Khris Middleton had his moment.

The Bucks remained close early in the second half through Antetokounmpo’s sheer force of will and took a 71-70 lead with 3:32 remaining in the the third quarter. Then, in a seven-possession sequence that took just over 90 seconds, Middleton grabbed two steals and dished out three assists to help the Bucks take a 10-point lead, their largest of the night.

This was just Middleton’s third game back after missing the first 21 games of the season because of offseason procedures to both ankles. As he continued to try to find his scoring rhythm, Middleton didn’t score in his 20 minutes of playing time but he grabbed four rebounds, made three steals and dished out eight assists.

“Presence,” Lillard said of Middleton’s importance to the win. “Khris just knows. He understands the game. He understands matchups. He understands what’s supposed to be happening. He’s always tracking what’s happening in the game.”

Even with Portis’ second-quarter scoring effort and Middleton’s connective play in the third quarter, the Magic refused to go away. They clawed back and took a one-point lead with 2:12 remaining. Down the stretch, the Bucks did what they have done so many times over the last year and leaned on Lillard, who scored 15 of his 28 points in the fourth quarter, including nine in the final minute.

DAME TIME. ⌚️ pic.twitter.com/8mkNhuXlFP

— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) December 11, 2024

Lillard delivered in the clutch as he has so many other times in his storied career, but after the game Antetokounmpo wanted to draw attention to the smaller details on Lillard’s stepback 3 to tie the game with 52.2 seconds remaining. While Lillard’s individual brilliance helped him make that shot, four other players helped create the situation in which Lillard could thrive offensively.

“That’s a team play,” Antetokounmpo said. “That’s 100 percent a team play.”

As he sat on the postgame dais, Antetokounmpo told reporters about everything that led up to Lillard getting the chance to work in isolation against Wendell Carter Jr. on the left wing.

He broke down how he brought the ball up and then Middleton cut to open space once Portis was denied by his defender. Antetokounmpo talked about how Middleton kept the defense’s attention by looking to get into an action with Portis before swinging it back to him and how he was ready to attack on the screen that Lillard set for him to force the Magic to switch.

“Now, Dame has one, two, three seconds to operate, so that’s when Dame is at his best,” Antetokounmpo explained. “He can pump-fake. He can go left. He can make him lean. So, we all worked together to get him in that position that he can operate and make that shot.

“And it feels good when you do stuff like that because you’re like, ‘Damn, this works. Team basketball works.’ We can still get to our stuff by playing together and by moving the ball.”

Even if the Bucks have been carried by the individual brilliance of Antetokounmpo and Lillard to start this season, those moments of synergy and teamwork are what helped fuel the team’s return from the brink. The Bucks are far from the contender they wanted to be at the start of the season, but they are sticking together to try to reach their goals and slowly making progress toward where they want to be at the end of the season.

Following Tuesday’s win, Rivers reminded his team that even if they have made a strong bit of progress since the start of the season, they still have a long way to go to accomplish their goals. Even goals such as winning the 2024 NBA Cup.

“This is what we wanted to do,” Rivers said of the Bucks making it to Las Vegas. “And you set a goal and you try to reach (it), right? Our goal is not just to get to Vegas; we want to win this thing.

“So we got two more games left, but it’s good to get there. You’ve got to get there first and we’ve done that.”

(Photo of Damian Lillard: Jesse D. Garrabrant / NBAE via Getty Images)