Sports Illustrated Bucks 2021

We make bundling simple.

Home + Auto = easy Bundling your home and car insurance is super easy with GEICO. Not only could it save you money with a special discount, but you’ll also save time by having all your coverages in the same place.

scan the code

to learn more!

geico.com | 1-800-947-AUTO | Local Office Some discounts, coverages, payment plans, and features are not available in all states, in all GEICO companies, or in all situations. Homeowners, renters, and condo coverages are written through non-affiliated insurance companies and are secured through the GEICO Insurance Agency, Inc. GEICO is a registered service mark of Government Employees Insurance Company, Washington, DC 20076; a Berkshire Hathaway Inc. subsidiary. GEICO Gecko® image © 1999– 2021. © 2021 GEICO 21_635572609

B A N N E R D AY The Fiserv faithful cheered on their Bucks.

MILWAUK EE BUCK S 2 0 2 1 N B A C H A M P I O N S | S P E C I A L C O M M E M O R AT I V E I S S U E

2

CHAMPS IN THE BUILDING

BY THE NUMBERS

The franchise reached the top by making all the right moves B Y CHRIS HERRING

The stats tell the story B Y L IL A BROMBERG

6

THE SEASON IN PICTURES

THE HEROES 56 Giannis Antetokounmpo

The Bucks’ well-built roster had many valuable contributors

The immigrant’s bond with his adopted city made all the difference B Y S T E V E RUSHIN

26

64 Mike Budenholzer

THE PLAYOFFS 28 Opening Round Milwaukee quickly dispatched last year’s nemesis from Miami B Y BEN PICK M A N

32 Eastern Conference Semifinals The battle with the Nets couldn’t have been much closer B Y MICH A EL SH A PIRO

GREG NEL SON

52

54

The coach showed how to optimize his uniquely talented star B Y CHRIS B A L L A RD

70 Khris Middleton The All-Star changed his game for the good of the team B Y ROB M A HONE Y

74

36 Eastern Conference Finals

THE HISTORY 76 1971 Championship

The team finished off Atlanta with its MVP on the sidelines B Y EL I Z A BE T H S W IN T ON

Milwaukee’s first title squad was a no-nonsense group B Y PE T ER C A RR Y

40 NBA Finals

82 The Greats

Down 0–2, the Bucks rallied one more time to take out the Suns B Y SI S TA F F

From the Big O to the Big Dog, some Bucks have been larger than life

SPORT S ILLUSTR ATED PRESENT S IS PUBLISHED BY MAVEN MEDIA BR ANDS, LLC. ALL RIGHT S RESERVED. REPRODUC TION IN WHOLE OR IN PART WITHOUT PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED. SPORT S ILLUSTR ATED IS A REGISTERED TR ADEMARK OF ABG-SI LLC. © 2021 ABG-SI LLC. PRINTED IN THE U.S. A .

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

1

CHAMPS IN THE BUILDING THE FR ANCHISE RE ACHED THE PINNACLE OF THE NBA BY MAK ING ALL THE RIGHT MOVES BY

CHRIS HERRING

A

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS An estimated 65,000 fans—more than three times as many as were inside— crowded into the Deer District for Game 6.

2

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

KENA KRUTSINGER/NBAE/GE T T Y IMAGES

BOUT FIVE months ago, it would have been tough to imagine the end result that played out at Fiserv Forum, with confetti and euphoria raining from the rafters, and Giannis Antetokounmpo hoisting trophies.

Back in the middle of February, the Bucks had a streak in which they surrendered 110 points or more in six straight games, and it seemed like anyone could score on their once-dominant defense. Even worse, Milwaukee had dropped five games in a row, the club’s longest losing streak in four calendar years. The team’s record was a pedestrian 16–13, after back-to-back years in which the Bucks had the NBA’s most regular-season wins. Milwaukee certainly didn’t look like it was on its way to ending the club’s 50-year title drought.

But no one panicked. If anything, the franchise saw its tweaks and turns, which were rewarded with an NBA championship, as playing the long game. The

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

3

CHAMPS IN THE BUILDING

Bucks, after offseason roster shake-ups, knew they’d cede early regular-season ground to other teams while trying a handful of big ideas. And if those ideas helped them get over their stubborn postseason stumbling block, it’d be more than worth it.

“We knew it wasn’t always going to be pretty. And we knew we were going to have to win with different styles of games,” swingman Khris Middleton said. “That’s the type of team you want: to be able to throw different guys and different lineups out there. Because you can’t win playing the same way [all the time] at this level.”

The regular season was essentially an escape-room exercise of sorts for Milwaukee, which had experienced its share of playoff heartbreak the past two years.

So coach Mike Budenholzer willingly put the club in situations to see how things would work, and how the team would adjust. “We’ve been close. And you just keep trying, and keep pushing, trying to get better,” Budenholzer said after the Finals win, his hair and clothes still wet from the champagne shower in the Bucks’ locker room just minutes earlier.

the Bucks went from being ranked 28th in the NBA in offensive-rebound rate last year to being No. 13 this season. And in the Finals they went on to collect 79 offensive rebounds to the Suns’ 42.

E

VEN DATING back to free agency in 2020, the franchise was under scrutiny. Sure, the four-team trade that landed the Bucks Jrue Holiday was an undeniable roster upgrade. But would he really be worth the three firstround picks they surrendered? And even if he was, and the calculus behind such a move was done in hopes of securing Antetokounmpo’s supermax commitment, was it still a home-run move after the Bucks botched a sign-and-trade with the Kings for Bogdan Bogdanović by negotiating with the sharpshooter before the offseason free-agency moratorium had been lifted, resulting in a league tampering investigation? Losing out on Bogdanović, who arguably would have made the Bucks favorites to come out of the East, left analysts feeling just O.K. with Milwaukee’s offseason.

“ W E ’ V E BE E N CLO S E ,” BU DE N HOL Z E R S A I D , H IS H A I R A N D C L O T H E S S T I L L W E T W I T H C H A M P A G N E . “A N D Y O U J U S T K E E P T RY I NG , A N D K E E P PU S H I NG , T RY I NG T O GET BET T E R .”

The first major change was the overhaul of the Bucks’ offense, one meant to make life easier for Antetokounmpo by forcing teams to pay for using multiple defenders to wall him off from the paint.

Specifically, the Bucks plugged players into what is known as the “dunker” spot—roaming to find an open space along the baseline, more or less—to theoretically leave defenses with a dilemma of whether to protect their back line or step up and prevent Giannis from taking his long Eurosteps to the basket.

The key tenet of the offense (to space things for Antetokounmpo with three or four perimeter shooters) remained the same. But the way they’d go about doing it would differ. Additionally, Budenholzer emphasized early on that he wanted the team to change the way it went about offensive rebounding. Before, with the perimeter-based attack, the offensive glass was a relative afterthought. But not anymore.

“It showed coach Bud’s willingness to adapt and change,” said center Brook Lopez. In the regular season

4

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

Expectations stayed low through a less-than-stellar regular season, with Antetokounmpo taking some time to adjust to the new system and new point guard. And then came the playoffs, where the Bucks trailed the Nets 2–0 in the East semis and dropped the opener to Bogdanović and the Hawks in the conference finals.

But at a certain point, deficits don’t phase a team accustomed to adjusting. It’s almost as if Milwaukee was in its comfort zone whenever it needed to roll out a new game plan.

Of course it helped that the Bucks had Giannis. What this postseason clearly reinforced is that there isn’t anyone like him. There hasn’t ever been, and there may not ever be again. At 26, the five-time All-Star holds two MVPs, a Defensive Player of the Year award, a Most Improved Player award, an All-Star Game MVP, a Finals MVP award and a championship trophy. And he’s done that while having an area of his game, shooting, he can still get much better at.

Because of that gap in his game, the Bucks have

GREG NEL SON

FREAK SHOW Antetokounmpo’s Finals performance reinforced the extent to which he has separated himself from the crowd.

regularly leaned on Middleton, Antetokounmpo’s teammate of eight years, to close out tight matchups down the stretch. It generates critiques in the media at times, to have the superstar who’s entering his prime deferring to the person who’s perceived as the sidekick. But who gives a damn who plays what role when you’re an NBA champion?

Antetokounmpo used to care, but he doesn’t anymore. “We were fighting for minutes,” he said of his first couple of years with Middleton. “He was yelling to me when I was 18, to pass the ball and everything.

We were fighting on the court when we were kids, and now we’re on this stage, doing it together.”

The Bucks are now champions, but some enormous

challenges lie ahead. Bobby Portis, who had the postseason of a lifetime, and could probably run for the mayor of Milwaukee right now and win in a landslide, can opt out of his deal this summer and become a free agent. If he does, other teams will be able to offer him far more money. The Bucks will, as defending champions, open next season with a target on their backs.

Some will malign their title, saying they benefited from the injuries to two of Brooklyn’s Big Three during the second round, and to Atlanta’s Trae Young in the conference finals.

Even as the Bucks become the hunted, they likely won’t be favored to repeat next year. But whatever people say, nothing will change the fact that they are, for the first time in a half century, the kings of the NBA. And Antetokounmpo, Budenholzer and the entire organization deserve every bit of credit for making all the tweaks and tightening all the screws and finally winning the whole thing. Championships, particularly with frontmen like Giannis, don’t happen by mistake.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

5

FE AR THE DEER

KHASH MONE Y Leading the Bucks in minutes played (33.4 per game), Khris Middleton averaged 20.4 points and a career-high 5.4 assists.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

GA RY DINEEN NBA E/GETTY IM AGE S

SE ASON IN RE VIE W

L AT E B L O O M E R The final pick of the 2020 draft, shooting guard Sam Merrill played in 30 games and had a season-high 15 points against the Celtics.

G A R Y D I N E E N / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( M E R R I L L ) ; N AT H A N R AY S E E B E C K / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S ( A N T E T O K O U N M P O )

8

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

BROTHER AC T Thanasis Antetokounmpo usually played in brief, high-energy spurts but did have 23 points and 10 rebounds against the Knicks, when his younger sibling was sidelined.

GIF TED GREEK Fresh off back-to-back MVP awards, Giannis Antetokounmpo raised his effective field goal percentage to a career-best 60.0%, and was named to the All-NBA and All-Defensive first teams for the third straight season.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

A DA M PA NTOZZI NBA E/GETTY IM AGES

OLD HAND In his 13th season Brook Lopez played with peak efficiency, shooting a career-best 63.2% within the arc while ranking ninth in the NBA in blocks per game (1.5).

Z A C H B E E K E R / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( L O P E Z ) ; S TA C Y R E V E R E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( T U C K E R )

SE ASON IN RE VIE W

POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT Acquired in March from the Rockets, forward P.J. Tucker bolstered the Bucks with tough inside play and corner threes.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

13

EPIC DONTE Donte DiVincenzo developed into a full-time starter in his third season, averaging 10.4 points (while hitting corner threes at 42.6%) and contributing 5.8 boards and 3.1 assists per game.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

CHRIS NICOLL USA TODAY SPORTS

SE ASON IN RE VIE W

T R I P L E T H R E AT Signed from the Spurs for his three-point skills, Bryn Forbes shot a scorching 45.2% from deep, fourth-best in the NBA.

J A M I E S C H WA B E R O W ( F O R B E S ) ; J E F F H AY N E S / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( D I A K I T E )

16

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

NE X T MAN UP After averaging 18.5 points and 10.4 rebounds in the G League, power forward Mamadi Diakite joined the Bucks’ roster in March and saw action in 14 games.

S E C O N D - S H I F T S TA R Sixth-year wing Pat Connaughton averaged 6.8 points and 4.8 rebounds while leading Milwaukee’s rotation players with a +2.6 on/off rating.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

ROCKY W IDNER NBA E/GETTY IM AGES

POINT OF CONTENTION Milwaukee’s biggest offseason acquisition, Jrue Holiday paced the Bucks with 6.1 assists and 1.6 steals per game— fifth-best in the NBA— and made the All-NBA Defensive First Team for the second time in his career.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

JEFF H ANISCH USA TODAY SPORTS

T H E E Y E S H AV E I T Signed for two years and $7.4 million, Bobby Portis was a bargain, hitting 47.1% of his three-pointers, third-best in the NBA.

G L E N N J A M E S / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( P O R T I S ) ; K A M I L K R Z A C Z Y N S K I / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S ( N W O R A )

SE ASON IN RE VIE W

MAKING THE MOST OF IT A 2020 second-round pick, Jordan Nwora excelled in limited action, averaging 26.3 points in the three games he logged 30-plus minutes.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

23

TRIED AND TRUE Signed on April 1, Jeff Teague, who had played for coach Mike Budenholzer with the Hawks, provided the Bucks with steady minutes at backup point guard.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

A DA M H AGY NBA E/GETTY IM AGES

The Pl M I L W A U K E E ’ S M A R C H T O T H E F I N A L S I N V O LV E D D I S P AT C H I N G A N

O L D N E M E S I S , S TA R I N G D O W N A S H A R P S H O O T I N G S U P E R S TA R A N D T H E N R A L LY I N G W H E N I T S M V P W A S F O R C E D T O T H E S I D E L I N E S

SL AM I AM Giannis Antetokounmpo attacked during a Game 5 loss to the Nets, in a series that wouldn’t be settled until overtime of Game 7.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

NATH A N IEL S. BU TLER N BA E/GET T Y IM AGE S

OP E NING R O UND BUCKS DEFE AT HE AT 4–0

A SWEET SWEEP THE BUCK S BEGAN THEIR CHAMPIONSHIP Q U E S T B Y B L O W I N G P A S T T H E T E A M T H AT HAD K NOCK ED THEM OUT L AST SE ASON BY

BEN PICKMAN

T

28

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

ISSAC BALDIZON/NBAE/GE T T Y IMAGES

HE BUCKS entered this year’s playoffs with postseason shortcomings fresh in their memory. In both 2019 and ’20, Giannis Antetokounmpo won the MVP award and Milwaukee finished the regular season with the NBA’s best record, but each year the team’s run ended in the Eastern Conference semifinals. In ’19 the eventual champion Raptors took the Bucks out; last year in the Orlando bubble, the Heat eliminated them in five games. So an opening-round rematch with Miami this spring served as the perfect opportunity for Milwaukee to begin rewriting its postseason history.

Game 1 at Fiserv Forum did not get off to an encouraging start. While the Bucks maintained a lead for most of the game, they never opened up much of a margin.

The Heat, as they had last year, succeeded in making life difficult for Antetokounmpo, who ended up with 26 points on 10-for-27 shooting. Giannis & Co. were also spotty from the free throw line: He went 6-for-13 and the team 20-for-33. Those misses were especially significant in the fourth quarter. At the end of regulation

GOOD AND PLENTIFUL Lopez scored 13 points in Game 3 at Miami, one of six Bucks racking up double figures in the 113–84 win.

OPENING ROUND

D AV I D D O W/ N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( A N T E T O K O U N M P O ) ; G A R Y D I N E E N / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( M I D D L E T O N ) ; I S S A C B A L D I Z O N / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( T E A G U E )

T U R N I N G D O W N T H E H E AT Antetokounmpo had 17 points and 17 boards in Game 3 (opposite); Middleton rose up over Robinson in Game 1 (top); and Jeff Teague provided bench help in Game 3 (right).

Jimmy Butler drove past Antetokounmpo for a buzzerbeating layup, tying it at 99.

The game stayed tight throughout overtime. Then, with 0.5 seconds remaining, Khris Middleton hit a stepback midrange jumper over guard Duncan Robinson, breaking a 107–107 tie to seal the victory. “I have confidence in myself,” Middleton said. “You miss a lot of shots. You make a lot of shots. You just have to trust all the work you put in during the season and practice.”

But if the series opener suggested that not much had changed from last season, Game 2 told another story.

Milwaukee came out sizzling and was up 46–20 after 12 minutes—a lead that tied the playoff record for the largest end-of-first-quarter differential. The Bucks led by 27 at halftime and extended their advantage into the 30s throughout the second half until closing it out 132–98 behind 31 points from Antetokounmpo. The landslide win boosted Milwaukee’s confidence while leaving the Heat turning toward gallows humor. “I think the bright spot is I don’t think you can play any worse,” Butler said afterward.

Butler had a point. But Miami didn’t play that much better as the series continued. In Game 3 the Bucks were up by 12 after the first quarter, and the lead kept growing from there, ballooning to 32 in the second half before setting up a final margin of 113–84. Milwaukee was dominant on both ends, holding the Heat to 37.6% shooting while outrebounding them 55–42. This battle with last season’s nemesis was starting to feel like a warmup for the more difficult challenges ahead as the Heat led for just 17 seconds in Games 2 and 3.

Though the Bucks trailed through the first half of Game 4, they opened the second half with a 24–6 run and cruised to a comfortable 120–103 win to close out the series. Brook Lopez led Milwaukee with 25 points while Bryn Forbes had 22, and the defense held Butler to 12 points on 4-of-15 shooting.

The sweep made it clear how much had changed in a year.

“There’s a saying: ‘Don’t play with your food,’ ” Antetokounmpo said after Game 4. “We didn’t want to play with our food. We went out there and competed as hard as possible. We kept our composure; we kept moving the ball, and we were able to get a win.”

Milwaukee also earned a chance to continue to tell a new story on the road to the title.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

31

E A S T E R N C ONF E R E NC E S E MIF IN A L S BUCKS DEFE AT NE T S 4–3

TITANIC CLASH M I LWA U K E E A N D B R O O K LY N S TA G E D A N E L E C T R I C B AT T L E T H AT T I LT E D W H E N O N E O F I T S S TA R S C A M E U P A L I T T L E T O O B I G BY

MICHAEL SHAPIRO

P 32

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

MVP EFFORTS In Game 7, Giannis went for 40 points while Durant had 48 in the Bucks’ 115–111 overtime win.

W E N D E L L C R U Z / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S

ERHAPS THE Bucks’ season wouldn’t have ended with the Larry O’Brien Trophy had Kevin Durant worn anything smaller than a size-18 sneaker in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. A back-and-forth, injuryriddled series became a game of inches when a toe on the arc cost KD the one point that would have made all the difference.

While both teams in the series could be said to have a Big Three, they were really a study in contrasts.

Brooklyn was a big-market team with a throwntogether trio of superstars in Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden and an indifferent approach to defense.

Milwaukee was a small-market team with a homegrown star, a patiently assembled roster and a gritty approach to the game.

The series began with the Bucks’ hitting only six of 30 three-pointers in a 115–107 Game 1 loss. Then came an even more worrisome Game 2 defeat, 125–86, when Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday combined for just 48 points and a minus-79

E ASTERN CONFERENCE SEMIFINALS

34

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

W E N D E L L C R U Z / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S ( H O L I D AY ) ; S T E V E N R YA N / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( P O R T I S ) ; N A T H A N I E L S . B U T L E R / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( C E L E B R A T I O N )

CUT TING DOWN THE NE TS Holiday drove past Brown in Game 7 (top); Bobby Portis attacked in Game 2 (top); Antetokounmpo and Pat Connaughton celebrated after the end of Game 7 (opposite).

in 98 minutes. Durant, meanwhile, led Brooklyn with 32 points on only 18 shots. As the series moved to Milwaukee, it felt inevitable that the Nets would advance.

But in 2020–21 the Bucks succeeded because of their toughness, with new additions Bobby Portis and P.J. Tucker helping to set the tone. In Game 3 the 6' 5", 245-pound Tucker hounded Durant all night, bodying him in the post and hand-checking him on the perimeter.

Despite going scoreless, Tucker finished with a teambest plus-10 in an 86–83 victory.

In taking Game 4, 107–96, to even the series, Tucker and the Bucks’ defense held Durant to 9-of-25 shooting.

And when Irving, the All-Star point guard, suffered an ankle injury midway through the second quarter that would sideline him for rest of the conference semis, Milwaukee’s prospects brightened.

Back at the Barclays Center, Harden returned from his hamstring injury to fill in for Irving. But the story was Durant, who delivered a virtuoso performance with 49 points, prompting perhaps the most modest superstar quote in history from Antetokounmpo after a 114–108 loss: “He’s the best player in the world right now.”

A big night from Middleton—he scored 38 points on 11-of-16 shooting—helped the Bucks to a 104–89 win at Fiserv Forum. That set up Game 7 in Brooklyn.

It was a battle between Antetokounmpo and Durant.

The Nets’ lone fully healthy star hoisted 36 shots on the way to 50 points. But Milwaukee’s two-time MVP was up for the battle, finishing with 40 points and 13 rebounds.

With the Bucks up 109–107, the outcome hinged on KD’s toes. He plays in a sneaker that is larger than what he would don in a casual setting, going from a size 17 to a size 18 for more room and cushion. Durant caught an inbounds pass near the right sideline and drove toward the top of the arc with Tucker on him. As Holiday raced in to help, Durant turned back toward the sideline and launched a fadeaway. With 1.0 seconds left, the ball dropped through the net.

But was it a two or a three? Did Durant’s improbable shot tie the game or win it? A replay review showed that Durant’s shoe narrowly clipped the line, and soon the game went into overtime. Durant had emptied the tank over the first 48 minutes; with Irving out and Harden limited, another five minutes was too much to ask.

In OT the Nets could muster only an early layup from swingman Bruce Brown. The Bucks’ offense wasn’t much better, but a Giannis hook over Durant, a tough Middleton jumper and two late free throws from Brook Lopez were enough for the 115–111 win.

Thanks to Durant’s oversized shoe, Milwaukee was finally able to take the next step.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

35

E A S T E R N C ONF E R E NC E F IN A L S BUCKS DEFE AT HAWKS 4–2

WE GOT THIS AF TER GIANNIS WENT DOWN IN GAME 4, M I LWA U K E E ’ S S U P P O R T I N G C A S T S T E P P E D U P A N D T O O K D O W N AT L A N TA BY

ELIZABETH SWINTON

I

36

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

SCOT T CUNNINGHAM/NBAE/GE T T Y IMAGES

T SURE FELT as if the injury bug were playing a game of tag during this postseason, k nock ing out one NBA starter after another. The Bucks’ turn came in Game 4 of their series against the Hawks, when Giannis Antetokounmpo leaped to defend a lob to center Clint Capela. Giannis’s left knee bent backward as he landed, and he grimaced while lying on his side for more than a minute. “When it happened,” Antetokounmpo later said, “I thought I would be out for a year.” Left unspoken was the damage that would then be done to Milwaukee’s playoff fortunes.

Giannis was pleasantly surprised when he was diagnosed with a mere hyperextension after the game, and an exam the next day confirmed that he had suffered no major structural damage. While the injury would keep him on the bench for the rest of the series, it at least left open the possibility of a postseason return.

Still, the Bucks—who went on to lose Game 4, 110–88, to leave the series tied—would need to close out an overachieving Atlanta team without the help of the two-time MVP.

S TA R T U R N WIth Giannis out, Middleton paced the Bucks with 32 points as they disposed of the Hawks in Game 6, 118–107.

G R E G N E L S O N ( L O P E Z ) ; G A R Y D I N E E N / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( H O L I D AY ) ; J A S O N G E T Z / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S ( C E L E B R AT I O N )

E ASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS

At least the injury bug was hitting both teams evenly.

Hawks point guard Trae Young had suffered a bone bruise in his right foot during Game 3 when he stepped on a referee’s shoe, putting his availability in doubt. To that point the 22-year-old had been the breakout star of the NBA’s postseason, and Young had continued his hot play against Milwaukee, dropping his signature deep threes and performing his showboating shimmies on the way to 48 points in a 116–113 Game 1 victory.

“I don’t know what more people need to see from him in the playoffs to let them know that he’s a big-time player,” Atlanta forward John Collins said. “He loves the bright lights.”

The Bucks shook off the Game 1 loss—a skill they needed to develop in the postseason—with a 125–91 win. They led wire-to-wire, holding Young to 15 points and 1-of-8 shooting from deep. Antetokounmpo had 25 points and nine rebounds, leading four Bucks in double figures.

It was in Game 3 that Young suffered his foot injury, and a hot Khris Middleton took advantage of the moment, scoring 20 of his 38 points in the fourth quarter of a 113–102 come-from-behind win. Then Giannis went down in Game 4, while Young’s replacement in the starting lineup, veteran supersub Lou Williams, delivered 21 points to help even the series.

At that point, with both teams’ stars out but Young looking likely to return before the series’ end, the Bucks suddenly looked like the underdog. “Our group will gather,” coach Mike Budenholzer said after Game 4.

“The character of it will come through,” Budenholzer’s optimism was well founded. In Game 5, Milwaukee’s supporting players supercharged their games. Brook Lopez led the Bucks, scoring a playoffcareer-high 33 points on 14-of-18 shooting, while Bobby Portis, subbing for Antetokounmpo, chipped in 22 points in the 123–112 win.

The team onslaught continued in Game 6. Young was cleared to return with the Hawks facing elimination, but he managed just 14 points on 4-of-17 shooting.

Meanwhile, Middleton again showed his ability to take over a game, scoring 32 points. Jrue Holiday added 27, and six Bucks reached double figures to close out the series 118–107.

Winning the last two games without Giannis demonstrated that Milwaukee was about more than the MVP. “Each one of these guys, they work every single day,” Middleton said. “Everybody stays ready. Everybody stays locked in. We all play for each other. And that’s all you can ask for.”

The triumph brought the Bucks to a place they had not been in 47 years: the NBA Finals.

H AW K H U N T E R S Lopez delivered 33 points in Game 5 (opposite) while Holiday contributed 25 (above); after Game 6 the Bucks celebrated their first conference title since 1974.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

39

A S TA R A S C E N D E D , T E A M M AT E S D E L I V E R E D , C O A C H E S A D J U S T E D A ND MILWA UK E E R A L L IE D F R O M A N 0 –2 S E R IE S D E F I C I T T O C A P T UR E ITS FIRST NBA TITLE IN 50 YE ARS Photographs by Greg Nelson

TA L L O R D E R In Game 6, Antetokounmpo helped stymie Ayton, who had been a force for Phoenix early in the series.

THE FINALS

S

GAME 1

TOP IF you’ve heard this one before: The Bucks lost a playoff series opener, and their coaching staff faced criticism for its defensive schemes.

In what’s become practically a recurring segment during Milwaukee’s last few postseason runs, the question was once again being asked: Is Mike Budenholzer defending pick-and-rolls properly? In Game 1 of the NBA Finals, a 118–105 loss to the Suns, coach Bud tried several strategies. He started big with Brook Lopez at center and switched everything.

In the second half, he had Lopez dropping under screens.

And in the fourth quarter, he went back to switching, except this time with Giannis Antetokounmpo at center.

No matter what Milwaukee tried against Phoenix it didn’t work, and one player in particular was responsible for dismantling the coverages: point guard Chris Paul,

And yet even with all of CP’s heroics, the Bucks drew within seven points in the fourth quarter in Phoenix, giving themselves a faint chance to steal home court.

Milwaukee outscored the Suns with Giannis on the floor, though he could play only 35 minutes in his first game back since hyperextending his left knee on a gruesome play during the conference finals.

It’s too easy to overreact to Game 1 of any series. The Bucks lost the opener to Atlanta and were also down 0–2 to the Nets. While injuries certainly played a role in those matchups, Milwaukee showed the ability to bounce back throughout this postseason. And as frustrating as Budenholzer’s stubbornness can be at times—how long was he going to let the Suns dictate their terms on offense?—the Bucks had the best defensive rating of any team in the playoffs.

Clearly on some nights, there’s just no easy answer for a great player.

—Rohan Nadkarni

GAME 2 THE SUNS protected their home court advantage with a 118–108 Game 2 victory against a Bucks team that repeatedly felt so close to stealing it. But this was a game the Phoenix offense won, as much as the Milwaukee offense lost.

This game established that Booker is definitely a superstar. Phoenix’s top scorer finished with 31 points, including seven threes. But just as outstanding was

A N T E T O KO U N M P O ’ S 2 0 - P O I N T T H I R D Q U A R T E R I N G A M E 2 WA S HISTOR IC. NO PLAY ER IN THE FINA LS HA D TOPPED THAT MA R K IN A SINGLE QUA RTER SINCE M ICH A E L JOR DA N IN 19 93 .

who lit up the Bucks for a game-high 32 points, including 16 in the third quarter. With Milwaukee trying every which way to slow down Paul and the Suns’ pick-and-roll attack, Devin Booker described Paul’s success succinctly after the game: “He’s one of those guys that [when] you take one thing away, he does the other.”

The Bucks didn’t have a heretical, what-were-youthinking? plan in Game 1. It’s impossible to take away everything from a team as talented and deep as the Suns. And Paul, one of the league’s all-time best for a reason, was simply Hall of Fame–level great in his first taste of the Finals.

42

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

Milwaukee’s big gun. Despite some ugly free throws and questionable long-range shots, Antetokounmpo very much looked like a two-time NBA MVP in the second half of Game 2. His 20-point third quarter was historic. No player in the Finals has topped that mark in a single quarter since Michael Jordan in 1993.

Giannis’s power was ungodly. He took 12 shots in the paint and 11 of them went in, flying for transition dunks and trucking his way to the front of the rim in half-court situations. His dexterity was also on display: Standing at the nail on two occasions, he carefully placed a pair of difficult one-legged fadeaways on the

BOBBY! BOBBY! BOBBY! Portis delivered needed jolts of energy throughout the Finals while averaging 7.7 points and 4.0 rebounds against Phoenix.

O P E R AT I N G R O O M Connaughton made 15 of 34 three-point attempts for the series while Middleton (opposite), working inside and out, peaked with a 40-point performance in Game 4.

rim before they plopped through the net. A few post-up turnarounds along the baseline were works of art.

Antetokounmpo appeared on the verge of an empty tank, but he just kept coming. The Suns had no choice but to foul him and pray he’d miss the freebies.

Phoenix coach Monty Williams eventually had to move Deandre Ayton off Giannis and hope Jae Crowder could hold his own. No dice. The Bucks started bringing Khris Middleton up to set flat ball screens near the top of the key, dragging Suns guard Mikal Bridges into the action with more unpleasant results.

Antetokounmpo finished with 42 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and three blocks. He was +3 in 40 minutes,

44

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

two days after he logged 35, many of them as a center who was switching screens, protecting the rim and sprinting out to shooters. There were moments when he couldn’t help but limp on his still-achy knee, making the performance even more remarkable.

A positive for Milwaukee was that its defense looked better than in had been in the opener. In Game 2, the Bucks reverted back to what they’re great at—executing drop coverage on ball screens. They were attentive and quick to the ball, pressuring Paul 94 feet, turning him as he dribbled up the floor. In the end, Milwaukee lost because its hero didn’t get enough help: Jrue Holiday and Middleton scored a combined 28 points on 37 shots. “It’s going to be tough,” Middleton said after the game. “They took care of their home court. We have to find a way to do the same. . . . We have been in this hole before. It’s not going to be easy, but we’ve got to find a way to do it.”

When asked how, Middleton had a simple answer: “Knocking down some shots would make life a lot better for us.”

—Michael Pina

THE FINALS

GAME 3 MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. After a frustrating first eight quarters, the Bucks turned in one of their most complete performances of the year in a 120–100 victory that effectively saved their season. The blowout win marked another standout effort from Antetokounmpo, who led all scorers once again with 41 points, adding 13 rebounds and six assists. But just as significantly, the season-saving performance featured a return to form for the Bucks’ second- and third-top scorers: Middleton and Holiday. Back home at Fiserv Forum, the pair went a combined 8-of-17 from behind the arc after going a paltry 7-for-25 in Phoenix.

Four of Giannis’s assists came in the first quarter, when the Bucks seemed intent on getting everyone involved in the offense. “I feel like it’s not the first action; it’s the second action, it’s the third action, right,” he said. “So, we have to keep moving the ball. We’ve got to keep moving those guys, and at the end of the day, everybody touches the ball, everybody feels good.

That’s the only way we can be effective offensively.”

Still, Milwaukee trailed 36–30 early in the second when Budenholzer called timeout. Among his messages was, in the words of Antetokounmpo, “create space for Jrue to operate.” Holiday responded with four assists in the final 9:05 of the half as the Bucks outscored the Suns 30–9 to take a 15-point lead to the locker room.

Phoenix cut it to four in the third, but Milwaukee closed the quarter on a 16–0 run to put things out of reach.

Giannis scored seven points during that run on a night when he set the tone for the Bucks with a palpable urgency, attacking the paint via post-ups, duck-ins and headlong drives from the perimeter at every opportunity.

All 14 of his made baskets (he had 23 attempts) came within five feet. And four of Holiday’s five three-pointers came during the decisive third quarter. He was superb on defense as well, hounding Paul and Booker throughout the contest. Booker, who had been so effective in Game 2, made just three of 14 shots and one of seven threes, often forced into difficult looks as Holiday fought over and around screens.

TH E GA M E 3 BLOWOU T M A R K ED A NOTH ER STA N DOU T EFFORT F O R A N T E T O KO U N M P O . J U S T A S S IG N I F IC A N T LY, I T F E A T U R E D A R E T U R N T O F O R M F O R M I D D L E T O N A N D F O R H O L I D AY.

“He’s a great player,” Antetokounmpo said of Holiday.

“We need him to keep playing like this. We trust him.

He’s our leader. He’s our point guard. He’s one of our scorers. He’s one of our defenders. He’s a great basketball player, and he’s going to keep figuring out ways to be successful.”

—Michael Shapiro

GAME 4 TWO GIANTS converged in midair, arms outstretched, one ball between them, one game on the line, and quite possibly a championship hanging in the balance as they hung in space for one split second that seemed like an eternity.

Deandre Ayton soared skyward to grab the pass that would become the dunk that would tie Game 4 of the NBA Finals with just over a minute to play—until Antetokounmpo delivered the swat that denied the dunk and propelled the Bucks to a thrilling 109–103 victory, tying the series at two games apiece.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

45

THE FINALS

D-LIGHTFUL Antetokounmpo recovered on the pick-and-roll to block Ayton late in Game 4 (opposite), while Tucker (right) helped cool the sizzling Booker.

It was perhaps the greatest play of Antetokounmpo’s young career. It was surely among the greatest blocks in Finals history, drawing instant comparisons to LeBron James’s chase-down block on the Warriors’ Andre Iguodala in Game 7 in 2016.

It was a reminder that even now, in the peak of the NBA’s three-point era, nothing matches the impact of a bouncy 7-footer in the vicinity of the basket. With the Suns trailing 101–99, Booker lobbed the ball where only Ayton could grab it. Except Antetokounmpo, the former Defensive Player of the Year, read it perfectly and rejected Ayton at the rim. “Spectacular block, spectacular play,” said Budenholzer. “That’s an NBA Finals special moment right there.”

Bucks guard Pat Connaughton, admitting he might be biased, called it “the best block of all time,” specifically ranking it ahead of James’s block. While James’s was more impactful—helping the Cavaliers clinch the championship—Antetokounmpo’s wins on degree of difficulty, Connaughton said. “As far as a block where

C ON NAUGH T ON, A DM I T TI NG T H AT H E M IGH T BE BI A SE D , C A L L E D I T “ T H E B E S T B L O C K O F A L L T I M E ,” S P E C I F I C A L LY R A N K ING IT A HE A D OF JA M E S ’ S CH A SE -DOW N IN 2016 .

[Antetokounmpo] was covering the pick-and-roll, he had to judge where the pass was, where Ayton was catching it and trying to dunk it, above the box, it’s about as impressive as you can get,” he said. (That debate will be left to basketball historians, who already have plenty to discuss about Antetokounmpo.)

On offense, Giannis found himself outshone for once by a teammate. After back-to-back 40-point games, Antetokounmpo “settled” for 26 points in Game 4 (but added 14 rebounds, eight assists, three steals and two blocks). Middleton, however, was spectacular, delivering 40 points—including 10 of the Bucks’ last 12 over the final 2:07. When asked when he realized it was going to be a “Khris Middleton kind of night,” Connaughton said, “It’s always a Khris Middleton kind

of night. I mean, at the end of the day, he makes the right plays. Tonight it called for him to be more aggressive with a jump shot, but he’s always going to be aggressive.”

To score those 40 points, Middleton took 33 shots.

Antetokounmpo had just 19 attempts but led the team in assists, including a pair of huge second-half threes

by Connaughton, who had 11 points. Holiday struggled again from the floor but, as Antetokounmpo said following Game 3, he found a way to be successful. On the possession after Antetokounmpo’s block, Holiday stole the ball from Paul, pushed it up and the court and dished to Middleton, who laid it in to push the lead to four. It was the kind of scrappy play that defined the game. Said Budenholzer, “This is kind of a mental toughness win for us.”

—Howard Beck

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

47

THE FINALS

GAME 5 FOR A WHILE it looked as if the Suns were on their way to a storybook win. After blowing a 16-point lead in the first half, Phoenix stormed back from a 14-point deficit in the fourth to cut Milwaukee’s lead to one with 56.6 seconds remaining. Pop star Adele, making a rare public appearance, was excitedly waving her orange towel during the rally. The tequila bottle under LeBron James’s courtside seat was shaking from the thunderous crush of Suns fans.

After a Holiday miss, Booker—in the midst of his second straight 40-point effort—corralled the rebound with a hair under 30 seconds to go and took the ball up the floor himself. One of the game’s premier shot-makers, Booker surgically worked his way into the paint against P.J. Tucker, quickly reaching the midrange area where he’d largely dominated the Bucks.

Then came one of the greatest steals in NBA Finals history— from a familiar thief. As Booker stopped and pivoted in the paint, he turned his back to the hoop and was immediately met by a helping Holiday, who ripped the ball out of his hands so forcefully that Booker hit the floor.

“Big time. Big-time steal,” Antetokounmpo said.

48

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

“First I thought he was going to shoot it, and I was going to be behind him and try to contest or maybe try to bother him,” Holiday explained. “Once he pumpfaked, I felt like I should stay down and he literally turned into me.”

After the steal, Holiday quickly pushed the ball ahead in transition, just as he had in the dying seconds three nights earlier. With less than 20 seconds to go, all he had to do was dribble down the clock and wait for the Suns to foul him. Except Holiday saw Giannis streaking down the right lane, pleading for him to throw an alley-oop.

Holiday obliged, and Antetokounmpo soared up for a massive dunk that awed everyone in the building—from the celebrities courtside to the fans holding $100 bills.

“He didn’t want to throw me the ball at first, but I was like, ‘Throw it, throw it, throw it,’ ” Giannis said.

“And then he threw it. He trusted me. After the game I was like, ‘Thank you for trusting me.’ ” While the late rip-and-score was a highlight for the ages, Milwaukee arguably won Game 5 in the second quarter. That’s when, with Antetokounmpo on the bench, the Bucks embarked on a massive run before eventually taking the lead by halftime.

In nearly six minutes without Giannis, Milwaukee cut the lead from 16 to two with a combination of stout defense and incredible shot-making. From the start of

ROB AND LOB Holiday stole the ball from Booker (opposite) and fed Antetokounmpo for a thunderous alley-oop to seal Game 5.

J O H N W. M C D O N O U G H ( 5 )

the second to the 6:14 mark, the Bucks went on a 26–12 run. Holiday, coming off a 4-for-20 shooting performance in Game 4, shot 6-for-7 from the field in the second quarter alone. He hit four shots during the run, including two layups, a three and a long stepback two.

Also joining in on the fun were Lopez, Connaughton and Bobby Portis, who punctuated the run by rebounding his own miss for an and-one putback score.

Meanwhile, the Suns’ offense, once supremely balanced, turned into more of a one-man show. Booker became the first player in Finals history to score at least 40 points in back-to-back games in the championship round and lose both.

The demeanor from Booker and Paul after the game

stood in stark contrast from where they were the last time they spoke in Phoenix, when their team held a 2–0 lead and appeared to be in full control of the Finals.

Instead, the series headed back to Milwaukee, with the Bucks closing in on a storybook ending. —R.N.

GAME 6 IN JUNE OF 2013, a spindly Greek forward with a five-syllable last name was researching real estate in Atlanta. Giannis Antetokounmpo believed the Hawks, who had a pair of picks in the back half of the first round of the NBA draft, were going to be the team to take a chance on him. Then, hours before the draft, his phone rang. It was then Bucks GM John Hammond, calling to let him know that Milwaukee was interested. Giannis, with little understanding of the U.S. landscape, did what anyone would: He Googled “Milwaukee.”

Eight years later, Giannis put Milwaukee at the center of the basketball map. The Bucks knocked off the Suns 105–98 to end a 50-year drought and win the franchise’s second NBA championship. At 26, and just a few weeks removed from what appeared to be a catastrophic knee injury, Antetokounmpo submitted one of the greatest Finals performances in NBA history, capping it off with a 50-point, 14-rebound effort in Game 6.

In what was a wild, twisting, unpredictable game, the Bucks jumped out to a 29–16 first-quarter lead, and Phoenix, looking beleaguered after three straight defeats, appeared ready to fold. But the Suns rallied in the second, with Paul springing to life. The teams traded runs in the third quarter, which ended in a 77–77 tie. In the fourth, it was too much Giannis, who was locked in at the line as he had been all game, connecting on 17 of 19 attempts. His was the seventh 50-point game

49

QUITE THE SPAN After Game 6, the long-armed Finals MVP Antetokounmpo exulted over the end of the Bucks’ half-century title drought.

50

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

D AV I D S H E R M A N / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S

in Finals history, and the second in a clincher. And it elevated Antetokounmpo into the rarified company of Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon, the only players to win an MVP, a Defensive Player of Year award and a Finals MVP in the same season.

“You did the [Finals MVP] justice,” Bill Russell, the Celtics great whose name is etched on the award, tweeted after the game. “What a great way to close it out.”

Without a doubt, this game—this series—was about Giannis. But it was also about so many others. It was about Mike Budenholzer, the embattled Bucks coach

whose seat was on fire after Milwaukee fell behind 3–2 to Brooklyn in the conference semifinals.

It was about Khris Middleton, the 2012 second-round pick and former G-Leaguer who is now a two-time All-Star. With a minute to play and Phoenix within four, Middleton hit a jumper that pushed the lead to six and seconds later hit a pair of free throws that put the game away.

It was about Bobby Portis. His last team, the Knicks, didn’t make the NBA bubble, and Portis admitted he was adrift. A text message to Giannis led to a two-year, $7.4 million deal with the Bucks. With chants of “Bobby, Bobby, Bobby” echoing through Fiserv Forum, Portis delivered 16 points to help finish off the Suns.

It was about Jrue Holiday, P.J. Tucker and all the moves Jon Horst made to put this team together. “He’s the best GM in the NBA,” Budenholzer said of Horst.

Horst didn’t draft Antetokounmpo—that credit goes

THE FINALS

are a rite of passage. Jordan was broomed out of the first round three straight times early in his career.

LeBron James spent nearly a decade failing before his alliance with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh helped him break through.

A Giannis championship may have been inevitable, but that he won it in Milwaukee was remarkable. At the postgame press conference, wearing a shirt emblazoned with the face of Jim Paschke, the recently retired Bucks TV broadcaster, Giannis acknowledged it. “I could’ve gone to a superteam,” Antetokounmpo said. “I did it the hard way. I f---ing did it.” Few expected Antetokounmpo to re-sign with Milwaukee last fall. Fewer believed he would make the kind of commitment—a five-year, $228 million commitment—that he did. He consistently declared the importance of winning a championship with the team that drafted him. And seven months after signing that contract, he has.

“I couldn’t leave,” Antetokounmpo said. “There was a job I needed to finish.”

As the celebration started and the confetti fell, Giannis beelined for the stands. He hugged his mother, Veronica. “My mom, she was selling stuff in the street [in Greece],” said Antetokounmpo, “and now I’m sitting here at the top of the top.” He embraced his girlfriend, Mariah, and held his son, Liam, the latest entrant into a basketball family. Indeed, the biggest roar from Giannis came during a postgame interview, when he was asked about three members of the Antetokounmpo family— Kostas, who played for the Lakers last season, and Thanasis, a Bucks teammate—all being NBA champions.

A G I A N N I S C H A M P I O N S H I P M A Y H AV E B E E N I N E V I TA B L E , B U T T H A T H E W O N I T I N M I LWAU K E E I S R E M A R K A B L E . “ I C O U L D ’ V E G O N E T O A S U P E R T E A M ,” H E S A I D . “ I D I D I T T H E H A R D WA Y.”

to Hammond, who should not be forgotten—but it was Horst who built the team around him. He signed Portis, flipped Eric Bledsoe and future draft picks for Holiday, went out and got Tucker before the trade deadline. Stars, deservedly, get credit for championships, but they don’t win without the right support.

And that’s what Antetokounmpo has. For years, Giannis-bashing has been sport for NBA pundits. His playoff failures opened the door for him to be branded as a mere regular-season player. But playoff failures

As Giannis walked down the back hallway, two trophies in his hands and champagne-protecting goggles on his head, he connected with Thanasis, who was kept away from the team due to COVID-19–related health and safety protocols, on Instagram Live. He told his brother he was coming to his hotel. Thanasis, somewhat frantically, insisted he stay away. As the connection ended, Giannis smiled widely. “I’m a f---ing champion,” Giannis said. “Nobody can take that away from me.”

—Chris Mannix

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

51

BY THE NUMBERS F R O M T E A M M A R K S T O O U T S TA N D I N G I N D I V I D U A L E F F O R T S , T H E S E S TAT S TELL THE S T ORY OF A CHAMPIONSHIP SE ASON BY

LILA BROMBERG

5 0

Players who have had back-to-back 40-point games in the Finals, including Giannis in Games 2 and 3.

120.1

2

18

1958

Teams, including the Bucks, to overcome an 0–2 deficit and win the NBA Finals.

Players for both the Bucks and Suns who had won an NBA title entering the Finals, the first time neither Finals team had a previous champion since 1977.

Points per game for the Bucks in the regular season, the most for any team since the 1984–85 Nuggets.

Double doubles turned in by Giannis Antetokounmpo during the postseason, which led all players.

1

Teams to win an NBA title despite dropping Game 1 of each of their final three playoff series, after the Bucks did it this year.

7

162

Regular-season wins for the Bucks over the last three years, the most of any team.

Players in NBA history to average at least 25 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in three separate seasons—Giannis and Bucks legend Oscar Robertson.

Last time a player (Bob Pettit) scored 50 points in the deciding game of the NBA Finals before Giannis did it in 2021.

32

Multiple-steal games for Jrue Holiday, which was second best in the league in the regular season.

Highest draft position of any Milwaukee player this season (Brook Lopez, by the Nets in 2008).

5

Players on the Bucks’ roster who averaged at least 5.0 rebounds during the regular season: Antetokounmpo, Lopez, Bobby Portis, Khris Middleton and Donte DiVincenzo.

2–1

Milwaukee’s record in Finals appearances, after beating the Washington Bullets in 1971 and the Suns in 2021, and falling to the Celtics in seven games in 1974.

52

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

S T E V E N R YA N / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( L O P E Z ) ; G A R Y D I N E E N / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( H O L I D AY )

10

GOOD GR ABS Holiday (right) was part of the Bucks’ league-leading offense while piling up multiple-steal games; Lopez (opposite) was the team’s most highly drafted player.

The H TOP PAIR Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton enjoyed a 109–105 overtime win in Philadelphia on March 17.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

JESSE D. GA RR A BR ANT NBA E/GETTY IM AGES

Adapted f rom Sports Illustrated April 2020

THE LAND OF THE BUCK S’ FIRST NBA MVP LEF T T OWN AF TER D E C L A R I N G H E D I D N ’ T F E E L AT H O M E I N M I LWA U K E E , MAK ING GIANNIS ANTE T OKOUNMPO’S BOND WITH THE C I T Y A M AT T E R O F C I V I C I M P O R TA N C E BY

STEVE RUSHIN Illustration by Mateusz Kolek

GIANNIS AND MILWAUKEE

WHEN THE victorious Knights of Dominican High— green letter jackets, white sleeves—board the orange school bus idling outside Shoreland Lutheran on a 27° school night in Kenosha, Wis., it could well be any year in the last half century, if not for the Beats’ pinching Alex Antetokounmpo’s temples like a laurel wreath, or the Amazon warehouse that slides by the bus windows on

That obscurity cut two ways. “I didn’t know much about the NBA,” says Alex, “but my brother told me he got drafted and we’re moving to the United States. I didn’t know Milwaukee, but I knew I didn’t want to go.”

On arrival, the boy was astonished by the size of American supermarkets—Wisconsin’s vast Pick ’n Saves and Woodman’s and Festival Foods—and the multifarious fast-food options. After exiting the highway, the bus follows a Boulevard of Broken Seams, aka Silver Spring Drive, a gantlet of Jimmy John’s, Taco Bell and Dunkin’ Donuts leading directly to Dominican.

“Chick-fil-A, Culver’s, Blaze Pizza . . .” says Alex, ticking off his favorite franchises, a hymn to the drive-through, dollar-menu, fast-food fever dream of American suburbia.

When he arrives home—to the red-brick five-bedroom in River Hills that he shares with Giannis; their mother, Veronica; and Giannis’s partner, Mariah Riddlesprigger— Alex doesn’t watch the Bucks-Pelicans game on TNT. Rather, Alex streams a Wisconsin Herd game, “to see my other brother,” 27-year-old Thanasis Antetokounmpo, a 6' 7" forward who has been on the Milwaukee bench and is getting minutes tonight in the NBA’s developmental G League, which features another brother, 22-year-

FOR TH E BROT H ER S —B OR N IN GR EECE TO N IGER I A N PA R EN TS — T H E FA M I LY HOM E H A S B E C OM E T H I S U N L I K E LY L O C A L E OF F R I D A Y F I S H F R I E S A N D “D R I N K W I S C O N S I N B L Y ” T - S H I R T S .

58

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

old Kostas Antetokounmpo—Dominican High, class of 2016—who plays for the South Bay Lakers, on a two-way contract with the actual Lakers. (Kostas would go on to win an NBA championshp with L.A. last October.)

Is it any wonder that Alex (who, upon finishing high school, signed a three-year deal to play in Spain) speaks of basketball as the family business?

“I used to be starstruck,” he says of his brushes with LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard and the other superstars he encounters with Giannis, who is himself the best player on Earth and a two-time NBA MVP. “But I’m hopeful to be in this industry, so I can’t be starstruck anymore. When I see them now, I’ve got to learn.”

“Family business?” says Thanasis, in another gym, on another gunmetal-gray winter day in Wisconsin. “I’ve honestly never heard that about us and basketball.” He smiles and considers the phrase. “No, I’d say sports is the family business.” In Nigeria, their mother, Veronica, was

GREG NEL SON

I-41. (For the record, it’s the winter of 2020.) The building goes on forever, like the repeating cityscape in a cheap cartoon—a massive monument to material desires, the consumer goods so central to American life that this facility and others like it are called fulfillment centers.

Antetokounmpo finds serenity in basketball, including the play after halftime, when he caught and dunked a lob from a half-court inbounds. “Alex lights up when he hears the word lob,” says Dominican coach Jim Gosz, though the 6' 7" senior also appreciates the hourlong bus ride with his buddies back to the suburb of Whitefish Bay up the coast from Milwaukee. “It’s fun to travel with the guys,” he says, and Alex has traveled farther than most, having arrived here from Athens in 2013, at age 11, when the Bucks selected his 18-year-old brother Giannis— then two inches shorter, 35 pounds lighter and 100% more obscure than he is now—with the 15th pick in the NBA draft.

S TAY I N G P O W E R The two-time MVP staved off worries about leaving Milwaukee when he signed a five-year contract extension in December 2020.

GIANNIS AND MILWAUKEE

60

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

Milwaukee is not known for self-promotion, either.

Two days after the NBA suspended its 2019–20 season because of COVID-19, Giannis and his family pledged $100,000 to the workers at Fiserv Forum. And when out and about, the Antetokounmpos make no effort to keep their fellow citizens at arm’s length. “No, no,” says Thanasis, wearing a pained expression. “Why? It’s nice to have people support you.” They’re approachable, selfless with selfies, and when they cannot be—“like at

the movies,” says Thanasis, when people want a picture in the dark—they tell their admirers they’ll catch them next time.

“I think the people are [respectful] because they know we’re just one big family,” says Thanasis. “We’re open and not like this”—he holds his arms out as if keeping a mob at bay—“so they don’t feel like, Oh, my God. I’m not gonna see them again. You’ll see us again. We’re a big family, Milwaukee.”

I

N MILWAUKEE, you see Giannis everywhere.

He’s on that enormous banner stretched across the Fiserv Forum parking garage downtown, extending his wingspan—7' 3" in real life—as if trying to wrap his arms around the city. But he’s also in the smaller banner, just across from the arena, that

GARY DINEEN/NBAE/GE T T Y IMAGES

a high jumper, and father, Charles, played soccer. He died of a heart attack in 2017, in Milwaukee, at age 53. In tribute, Alex wore a custom pair of Nike Freak 1s—Giannis’s signature shoe, and the best-selling signature launch in the shoe giant’s giant history. They were emblazoned with a bit of wisdom passed down by Charles: always want more but never be greedy.

These days, the phrase provides a little solace in Milwaukee. Though Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ star outfielder, signed a nine-year extension to stick around, in early 2020 there was concern about Giannis becoming a free agent after the next season and conceivably leaving town for sunnier climes, if not greener pastures. (As it turned out, Antetokounmpo signed a supermax contract extension with the Bucks in December 2020 for five years and $228 million.) And for the farflung Antetokounmpo brothers—born in Greece to Nigerian parents—the family home has become this unlikely locale of Friday fish fries and drink wisconsinbly T-shirts. “For sure, for sure,” says Thanasis, standing beneath the Greek and Nigerian and American flags suspended from the rafters in the Bucks’ glittering new practice facility.

“Home is where your family is. And my mom and my brothers are here.”

Thanasis was drafted by the Knicks in 2014 and played briefly for them, as well as in Europe and the G League before signing a two-year contract worth $3.2 million with the Bucks in July 2019. On arriving in the U.S., he too was amused by the size and scope of the supermarkets. “Like a shopping mall, you can get anything,” he says, and it’s unclear whether he’s talking about Pick ’n Save or America itself.

Like Charles, he guards against greed and selfaggrandizement. “That mostly has to do with the way we grew up, has to do with our culture,” he says. “Being from an African home and a Greek home, it’s different, in a good way. Obviously, everybody likes nice stuff; everybody wants to look good or whatever. The thing is”—he lowers his voice, as if sharing a confidence—“you don’t really need to get caught up in this.”

The Antetokounmpos have not succumbed to the undertow of celebrity that trails Giannis. And despite its occasional efforts at reinvention, including the sign at the airport welcoming visitors to “America’s Third Coast,”

makes no mention of him but doesn’t have to. Hanging on the side of the Turner Hall athletic club, it says, simply, immigrants welcome here.

Giannis covers one exterior wall of the Corner Market convenience store in Milwaukee’s Tippecanoe neighborhood, just north of the airport. Milwaukee artist Fred Kaems received a commission to beautify a brick wall facing a residential street. And in doing so he wanted to exemplify Milwaukee, celebrate multiculturalism and

C O U R T E S Y O F B E T H A L G I E R S - M A N L E Y/ D O M I N I C A N H I G H S C H O O L

HOME Y TOUCHES Fans displayed Greek flags (left) at a home game and the Antetokounmpos (from left, Giannis, Kostas, Alex and Thanasis, with mother, Veronica) posed at Alex’s high school.

offer hope in a city historically polarized by race. “What is Milwaukee?” asks Kaems. “Who is important? Giannis isn’t from this city, but he’s continued to grow here, and that’s a great metaphor for the city. He’s growing as we do.” Like the pigeon-befouled statue of Arthur Fonzarelli that stands, thumbs raised, beside the Milwaukee River downtown, Giannis is already a civic emblem. The Greek Freak and the Bronze Fonz represent mythic figures often seen in the gymnasiums of southeastern Wisconsin.

Giannis has coached the Dominican High fall league team.

In the winter, as the Bucks’ schedule allows, he sits in a corner of the Dominican bleachers, hood pulled up like basketball blinders. Last season, after a Knights game 45 minutes away in Racine, Giannis stood outside the gym in January, signing and posing for 30 waiting kids.

“I was that kid,” he often says.

At 6' 11" and 242 pounds, he is as long and lean as a Giacometti sculpture, which isn’t to say that he’s fully grown, because Giannis keeps getting better, improving significantly from his first MVP season in 2018–19. Ask Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer, who worked for the Spurs’ Gregg Popovich for 17 seasons and thus knows the art of interview brevity, whether he has run out of ways to describe the Freak. Budenholzer is already forming the one-word answer “Yes.” If you persist and ask him to elucidate the player’s continued growth, he says with a smile: “You had to throw in, ‘Could you describe . . . ’ ” It is a happy problem, he knows, and Budenholzer gives it a shot: “It starts with his desire to improve and put in the work to get better, not just every year but every day. There’s a few things we look for as far as who we want to be”—work rate, attitude, a panoply of skills— “and he checks all the boxes. He has an incredible drive but also a humility to him, and an expectation that he can get better.” After a pause, Budenholzer adds: “Yeah, we’ll keep him.”

Budenholzer was speaking in Fiserv Forum before a February 2020 game against the Sixers, who had beaten the Bucks on Christmas Day. On this night, though, Giannis will go off for 36 points, 20 rebounds and six assists in a 112–101 win. It is Antetokounmpo’s fifth straight game with 30, 15 and 5. (The only other player with this streak? Wilt Chamberlain in 1965.). The points come on a series of spin moves and dunks, midrange jumpers, plus one monstrous putback and a single threepointer. It is another night of routine greatness, in a season of workaday brilliance, that has seen Giannis average roughly 30 points in under 32 minutes per game.

In the Bucks’ locker room afterward, Giannis and Thanasis sit at the Freak’s locker, speaking softly in Greek. After 15 minutes, Giannis rises to address the waiting media, which numbers a couple dozen reporters.

Then he rejoins Thanasis, this time at his brother’s locker, and the two speak softly again, now in English.

The first word that best describes the tableau as they exit together is tender. The Sixers are headed back to Philadelphia, but this is brotherly love. “He’s my teammate on the court, but he’s also my brother out there,” says Thanasis, who made his first start of the season on Greek Night against the Nuggets in January and scored on an assist from Giannis. “And he’s my brother off the court, but he’s also my teammate, because we talk basketball all the time.”

“Just from being around them,” says Gosz, “I think Thanasis is the ringleader.”

“I hope I’m a good role model,” Thanasis says. “I try to be the best example to my brothers. I never want them to see me do something that I wouldn’t want them

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

61

GIANNIS AND MILWAUKEE

to do. That comes from my mom and dad. It’s the way we grew up. Try to set a good example and take care of yourself physically.”

Giannis is a soccer fan who supported Arsenal as a kid, in thrall to their French striker, Thierry Henry. After the Bucks beat the Hornets in Paris in January 2020, in front of PSG stars Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the latter was asked what he knew about the Freak, to which Mbappé replied: “People told me he’s a good person.”

But Giannis is also in possession of that indefinable quality that Mbappé might call je ne sais quoi.

“Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, all these guys, they have something special,” says Thanasis. “When I say ‘something special,’ it’s not just their soccer. You know how you meet people and you have a conversation with them and you don’t really think about what they do; you just think they have something special? That’s Giannis. I don’t say this because he’s my brother. He has . . . something.”

Charisma? Magic? “Yes,” Thanasis says. “And it’s nice to meet people like this.”

S

EGREGATION IS a stated fact in every story about Milwaukee,” says Kaems, the artist, who grew up in Sherman Park, which made national news in 2016 for three nights of riots following the fatal shooting of a Black man, Sylville Smith, by a Black police officer (who was later found not guilty of first-degree reckless homicide). In January ’18, Bucks

something to give in terms of giving back. And you can set an example for the people.”)

Few things unite a city, however briefly and superficially, like a championship. Lakhwinder Singh, 54, owns the Corner Market, with its large mural of Giannis, and his younger son plays basketball. “I went to the last Bucks home game, saw Giannis,” says Singh, who came to Milwaukee from India in 1995. “It’s a small city,” he says. “A nice city.” His customers like the Giannis mural.

While there has been little public anxiety about Giannis’s potential departure in free agency, the city has lost a basketball superstar once before. As with Giannis, Milwaukee and Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) were on a firstname basis, until he left for L.A. in the summer of 1975 after six seasons with the Bucks, including their championship run in ’71. “Milwaukee is not what I’m all about,” Abdul-Jabbar said then. “The things I relate to aren’t in Milwaukee.” The New York Times cited his “disenchantment with a city best known for beer and bratwurst.”

All these years later, Milwaukee is perhaps still best known nationally for those two inexhaustible resources.

POINTS IN THE PAINT Murals of Antetokounmpo around Milwaukee demonstrate the extent to which the Greek import of Nigerian heritage has been embraced by the town.

“ LIK E TH E PIGEON-BEFOU L ED STAT U E OF A RTH U R FONZ A R EL LI T H A T S TA N D S , T H U M B S R A I S E D , B E S I D E T H E M I LWAU K E E R I V E R D OW N T OW N, G I A N N IS IS A L R E A DY A C I V IC E M B L E M .”

guard Sterling Brown was tased, thrown to the ground and handcuffed in the parking lot of a Milwaukee Walgreens at 2 a.m. after parking across two accessible parking spaces. One of the officers on the scene was fired after later posting racist memes on social media.

“Milwaukee is the most segregated, racist place I’ve ever seen in my life,” Bucks president Peter Feigin told a local Rotary Club that year, and the city’s metropolitan area remains, according to the Brookings Institution, the most segregated in the country. (During a panel discussion over NBA All-Star weekend in Chicago in February 2020, Barack Obama told one of the panelists: “I want you to be a little more public, Giannis, because I think you have

62

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

A “Bratzooka” now fires rounds of cylindrical pork at Bucks fans in the Fiserv Forum, and a “Beer Me” button summons suds to the seat of any spectator who has downloaded the arena’s app. The Bucks offices are in what was the former Schlitz brewery campus, redeveloped as Schlitz Park, twinning beer and deer for the foreseeable future.

But Giannis is sweeter on another of Milwaukee’s enduring loves: professional wrestling. The late Reggie Lisowski—known to 20th-century wrestling fans as the Crusher—is commemorated in bronze in his native South Milwaukee; he’s holding a beer keg on his right shoulder, his left arm perfectly positioned for

E R I C K W. R A S C O

photo-op headlocks. On a cold day in February, someone has placed a Packers hat on his head.

“Always, always,” says Thanasis, of the brothers’ enduring ardor for piledrivers and camel clutches, kindled via TV during their Athenian childhood. “There was a lot of people [we admired].” He exhales deeply, loath to choose a favorite. “I could give you a top five: Undertaker, Stone Cold, The Rock, Eddie Guerrero—he was amazing. So many, so many. . . .” He gets a faraway look, lost in wrestling reverie, and forgets to names a fifth. But that night, before the Bucks take the court, in the neon-lit tunnel outside Milwaukee’s locker room, Giannis busts out the Cobra, the signature finishing

move of the WWE’s Santino Marella, and applies it to teammate Robin Lopez. Giannis, Lopez & Co. do this pantomime of professional wrestling before games.

On this day, in the Bucks’ locker room, Giannis pronounces himself conditionally content. He and Thanasis have an endearing habit of repeating words and phrases.

Adjectives issue from their mouths like paired animals departing Noah’s ark. “Crazy, crazy,” Giannis will say of some spectacle. Or “Amazing, amazing.” Tonight, he says: “I’m happy. I’m happy that we’re winning.”

He is also happy to be winning in the hashtagged sense of the word, winning at life, in every conceivable way. In Athens the Antetokounmpos famously sold DVDs

to make ends meet before coming to America, a phrase that is hinted at on the Nike T-shirt Giannis wears after shootaround this morning: Every letter in the word freak is rendered in the tartan pattern of McDowell’s, the fast-food franchise from the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy Coming to America.

Giannis came to America with his family in 2013, during the final season the Bucks were owned by Herb Kohl, who attended Washington High in Sherman Park.

Kohl’s father, Maxwell, was a Polish immigrant who opened a grocery store that would become a chain of supermarkets, those dizzying American wonders.

A chain of Kohl’s department stores followed. Kohl’s mother, Mary, also immigrated to America, from Russia. Herb Kohl served Wisconsin as a U.S. senator from 1989 to 2013, when he helped bring the Antetokounmpos to America. Alex was enrolled in Saint Monica’s, the Catholic middle school down the street from Dominican, where the boy had some initial difficulty navigating two intimidating new cultures: America and middle school: “It was much harder than high school,” says Alex. “In middle school, it was harder to fit in. A kid that age is not going to understand our family’s situation.”

That family’s story, even now, can be hard to fathom. Giannis calls it an “amazing dream” and an “unbelievable journey.” They’re not alone. “As the product of immigrants myself, I believe in the American dream: the notion of hard work, sacrifice, risk-taking and love,” says Kohl. “That is also the story of Giannis’s family.”

And that family has grown. Giannis and Riddlesprigger had a son, Liam, on Feb. 10, 2020, and announced in May that their second child was on the way. Alex, Thanasis and Kostas are now uncles in a growing Nigerian-GreekAmerican family: the Antetokounmpos of Lagos and Athens and Greater Milwaukee.

“My happiness level is here,” Thanasis was saying on a cold winter morning, raising his right hand several inches above his head, to roughly the height of his world-famous brother. “Our family’s happiness level is here.” He held his hand there for a moment and looked up, to roughly the height of his world-famous brother.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

63

ONE FOR ALL The defining challenge for Budenholzer was optimizing the rare talents of Antetokounmpo in a way that elevated the entire team.

Adapted f rom Sports Illustrated April 8 , 2019

DEER LEADER

M I K E B U D E N H O L Z E R A R R I V E D I N M I LWA U K E E W I T H A P L A N T O R E S H A P E T H E O F F E N S E A R O U N D A T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L S TA R , W I T H T H E I D E A T H AT I T W O U L D E V E N T U A L LY B R I N G H O M E A C H A M P I O N S H I P BY

CHRIS BALLARD

J O N AT H A N B A C H M A N / G E T T Y I M A G E S

I

MAGINE BEING offered the chance to try out a car that won’t be available for another five years—a car that can do wild, Jetsons-level stuff. Or say it’s an iPhone.

Not the newest one but, like, five iPhones from now. What do you do?

In May 2018, Mike Budenholzer got a call from his agent: The Bucks were looking for a new coach. Did he want to interview?

At the time, they were coming off a first-round loss to the Celtics. Milwaukee’s roster included promising players like Khris Middleton and Malcolm Brogdon.

But that’s not why Budenholzer—and any other sentient coach on the planet—considered the job so intriguing.

Only so many transformative athletes come along in any sport. In the NBA they emerge maybe twice a decade, players whose unique talents rip holes in the fabric of the game. Think of Wilt ratcheting the game above 10 feet, of Magic contorting defenses into unnatural alignments, of Dirk blazing a path to the arc for 7-footers and of Steph elongating the boundaries of the half-court offense.

And now here was a chance to mold—or at the very least unleash—the next one, a 24-year-old from Athens who stands 6' 11", with arms that spread wider than he is tall, who can play all five positions and conjures comparisons as disparate as Scottie Pippen and Shaquille O’Neal. Better yet, this unicorn was just entering his prime, his talents not yet fully exploited.

Not being an idiot, Budenholzer said yes. “I mean, it’s Giannis,” he says.

O

NE OF their origin stories is familiar by now.

How Charles and Veronica Antetokounmpo came from Nigeria, in 1991, to Greece, where they raised four of their five sons, hawking wares on the street and constantly fearing deportation.

How Giannis kept growing, signed with a semi-pro team at 16 and went 15th to the Bucks in the 2013 draft. How he agreed to stay only after he was assured that his family would be able to join him in Milwaukee.

Budenholzer grew up in a railroad town of 5,000 in eastern Arizona, the seventh of seven siblings. Mike played quarterback, captained the golf team and set the

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

65

MIKE BUDENHOLZER

school scoring record as a point guard. He dreamed of playing at Arizona, but 6' 1" kids who can’t dunk aren’t hot recruits. Plan B: Pomona College, a Division III liberal arts school on the outskirts of Los Angeles, where older brothers Joe and Jim had gone. The coach was Gregg Popovich. After watching Mike’s grainy VHS highlights, he phoned Joe. “I like him,” Joe recalls Pop—who would shortly depart for a job as an assistant with the Spurs—saying. “But I’m looking at a list of the top 500 players in the country, and he’s not on it. What little sway I have, I can’t afford to use on him. But if he gets in, tell him to come out for the team.”

Mike got in. An obstacle remained: After sending six kids to college, the Budenholzers couldn’t afford another private-school tuition. So the siblings banded together and chipped in.

room, “just so long as I never see you or hear from you.”

Not being an idiot, Mike said yes. When Pop got the Spurs’ GM job in 1994, he called Bud, who headed to Texas, where he spent long hours in a dark room, handsplicing VHS tape and relying on coupons for his diet of Subway sandwiches. He couldn’t have been happier.

Then: the Spurs years. In 1996, Pop, having taken over as coach, made Bud, at 26, the youngest assistant in the league. Marriage, four kids. Duncan, Parker and Ginóbili. Four rings. Bud telling friends no job could be better—best mentor in the league, no pressure.

Theoretically, he was next in line. Then again, who knew whether Pop would ever retire? In the summer of 2011, an opportunity, the kind that comes along once every decade: A new Warriors owner wanted to unlock the talents of 23-year-old Steph Curry and rookie

BUDENHOLZER EN VISIONED WHAT HE CA LLED “POSITIONLESS M O T I O N .” N O B I G S O R W I N G S O R G U A R D S . J U S T F I V E P L A Y E R S , A L L I N T E RCH A NGE A BL E , CR E AT I NG A GLOR IOUS “ R A N D OM N E S S .”

Pomona was where, in the fall of 1992, I first met Bud. He was a senior and the starting point guard; I was a sophomore transfer trying to make varsity. Two decades later one memory stands out: a preseason pickup game at Rains Center, the two of us matched up, no coaches, no stakes beyond nexts. His team scored; we inbounded.

I caught the ball, turned and there was Mike, already in his defensive stance, butt down, arms wide, looking then much as he does now: big eyes, wispy blond hair, not particularly tall or muscular. He was, and I suppose remains, easy to underestimate.

I took two dribbles right; Mike mirrored me perfectly.

I veered left; annoyingly, he was still there. I tried to use speed; Mike cut me off. Finally, I gave up and passed, bewildered. I mean, who picks you up full-court in a meaningless preseason pickup game?

“We all took it seriously, but not like Mike,” says Bill Cover, who was Pomona’s all-time leading scorer until recently.

After a year playing and coaching in Denmark, Bud ended up back in Arizona with no job. He placed a cold call to the coach he never got to play under.

By then Popovich had become an assistant at Golden State. Feeling that he should help a Pomona kid, Pop offered an unpaid gig in the Warriors’ film

66

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

Klay Thompson. Budenholzer got the call. Only he pushed his vision too hard. “I thought he was really smart, but it wasn’t going to fit,” Joe Lacob says. Bud deems that too kind.

He learned from the experience and, in 2013, after 19 years in San Antonio, left for Atlanta. In five seasons Budenholzer led the Hawks to four playoffs, won a franchise-record 60 games and was named 2015 Coach of the Year. By the spring of ’18, however, the Hawks were in rebuild mode. Budenholzer, who had two years left on his contract, was ready to move on.

The breakup was mutual. A week later the Bucks called, and, a day after the breakfast meeting, GM Jon Horst introduced Bud, declaring him the best choice to tap Antetokounmpo’s talents.

Now all Budenholzer had to do was figure out how to do that.

T

HE POTENTIAL of Giannis is also the challenge. Since he has no analogs, no precedent exists. Which means, as Bud says, “There’s nobody to call.” Before, he’d leaned on Pop at times, if never about X’s and O’s, and he was not the type to reach out to other coaches. (He deems it “one of my weaknesses.”) So he watched video and imagined

JUSTIN FORD/GE T T Y IMAGES

SPACE UNJAMMED Budenholzer wanted the Bucks to open up the floor, creating room for Giannis and others to drive and set up either baskets at the rim or three-pointers.

possibilities: while in the car, while waiting for his tea at Starbucks, while avoiding the workout he knew he should be doing.

The challenge was marrying his democratic Hawks system with such a singular player. Bud preferred to initiate his offense through the wing; Giannis attacked best from the top, where he could take advantage of space. Bud wanted to shoot as many threes as possible; Giannis was a terrible three-point shooter. Bud envisioned making Giannis his primary playmaker; the Bucks’ secondary scorers—Middleton, Brogdon and Eric Bledsoe—excelled with the ball in their hands.

His staff couldn’t even agree on what position Giannis played. In Atlanta, Bud’s lead assistant, Darvin Ham, handled the Bucks’ scouting report. “O.K., who’s the point guard?” Bud would ask. To which Ham would reply, “Giannis.” Which annoyed Bud, because the Hawks’ point guard wasn’t going to match up with

a 6' 11" guy. So he’d ask again and Ham would reply, again: Giannis. “We would have these knockdown arguments,” says Budenholzer. “And now I get the job and it’s like, How can we get the ball in his hands?”

First, to play faster and shoot more threes the Bucks needed more reinforcements. So in the summer Horst signed center Brook Lopez and forward Ersan Ilyasova.

Next, Bud watched Giannis play for four days—without direction, constraints or expectations—in team-initiated pickup games at a New York City health club. Then he and his assistants assembled in Lake Geneva, Wis., at the end of August. In between golf and dinners, they brainstormed. “The word that kept coming up,” says assistant Ben Sullivan, “was space.”

Most coaches start out mimicking their mentors. Pop ran a variation on the motion offense, and Bud did the same in Atlanta. Over time, though, he tinkered. Now Budenholzer envisioned what he calls “positionless motion.” No bigs or wings or guards. Just five players, all interchangeable, creating a glorious “randomness.” Don Nelson aspired to this 30 years ago, and George Karl preached playing in space with minimal structure. But while Nellie dreamed of a quintet of 6' 9" do-everything players, Budenholzer wanted to try it with the roster at hand, which meant everyone from

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

67

MIKE BUDENHOLZER

the 6' 1" Bledsoe to the 7-foot Lopez. Five blue boxes appeared on the practice court, arrayed around the threepoint line. “Basically, stand here,” Bud says. Anyone could be in any box; just don’t muck up the paint.

Within so much space, Budenholzer could cast Giannis in multiple roles. Grabbing the board, pushing and attacking. Or taking a dribble handoff in the half court, drawing the D and kicking out to four shooters, not needing to look because they’d be there, in their imaginary boxes. It was the old Stan Van Gundy– Dwight Howard four-out, one-in approach, only Giannis is a hell of a lot more versatile than Dwight.

Milwaukee rolled out its new look on opening night.

Everyone ran around on the perimeter. Everyone jacked from deep, even the since-departed John Henson, who had made one trey in six seasons.

The Bucks won their first seven games, then rolled the Warriors by 23. By early January they had beaten every legit Finals hopeful. By February, Giannis was the MVP front-runner. A long-dormant fan base stirred, selling out the new Fiserv Forum downtown and, for the first time since Ray Allen and Big Dog roamed, dreaming of dynasties.

In the 2018–19 season Giannis developed a myopic focus reminiscent of a young Kobe. Alex Saratsis, his agent, told reporters he wouldn’t be doing any oneon-one interviews, lest they distract from the task at hand. When Ja Rule performed during a Bucks halftime, Giannis launched jumpers amid spotlights and gyrating backup dancers. To watch pregame layups is to see a bunch of players going half speed and then one—Giannis—attacking the basket and sprinting to the end of the rebound line.

A notebook is part of his process. He pulls it out to jot down thoughts and record conversations, as he did at his very first meeting with Budenholzer.

So far, coach and star are aligned. When I tell Giannis about Bud picking me up full-court, he nods. “I am not surprised,” he says. “I think he’s really, really

FEELING IT During Budenholzer’s tenure, Giannis began to display the kind of heightened intensity that has been his coach’s trademark.

M

68

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

competitive. Some days we play a game and you can see him walking into the court like he wants to be out there, get a jersey and play with us. He’d probably do it.”

Giannis recounts an example, from a day earlier, in Chicago. Fearing a letdown against the hapless Bulls, Bud had addressed his players before tip-off. He became increasingly fired up. About effort. About defense. About getting on the f------ floor for 50-50 balls! And then, to demonstrate the point, Budenholzer took one quick step and dived onto the locker room carpet, chasing a basketball only he could see. Says Giannis, “I think he got hurt. Got hurt in his chest.”

GREG NELSON

UCH OF the Bucks’ success isn’t all that surprising. For one, the system is working as Budenholzer intended. Midrange shots—the bane of the analytically minded—are down, particularly for Antetokounmpo; he has already made more buckets within five feet than anyone since such records have been kept. Last season Milwaukee was 25th in three-point attempts; now only the Rockets launch more. Lopez provides the most outlandish example. After spending the majority of his career as a back-to-the-basket lug—as recently as 2013–14, he had never made a three—he has morphed into a lumbering Steph Curry, taking more than six threes a game, including step-backs and 30-footers, earning the nickname Splash Mountain.

But offense was never the problem under Bud’s predecessor, Jason Kidd. It was defense where the Bucks faltered. And yet Horst says that of all the coaches who interviewed for the job, only Budenholzer focused on D. It made sense. In Atlanta the accolades came for his offense; quietly, he also oversaw three top-five defensive seasons in a row. Now he had ideas. “Watching the tape, I think Giannis had taken a step back.” He wanted to challenge his star—to cover more ground, to win Defensive Player of the Year, to guard each position if needed. And so far Giannis has, swatting, swiping and lurking like a giant gargoyle atop the rim. (He was named DPOY in 2019–20.)

Then Giannis looked around at his teammates: “Everybody was fired up. When you see the coach want it as bad as you want it, it feels really good.”

O

J O H N W. M C D O N O U G H

H, S---, he told you about that?”

It’s an hour later, at lunch. Bud is sweaty from sneaking in a workout after practice.

He tells me he can neither confirm nor deny the locker room dive. The red abrasion and flap of skin on his right wrist tell a different story.

Though friendly with the media, Budenholzer has long eschewed the spotlight, as Pop always taught his staff to do. Fair or not, what Bud may be best known for—outside his coaching—are his facial expressions. The cameras started picking them up in San Antonio. His greatest hits include: Disappointed Dad; Dude-Cut-Me-Off-on-

the-Merge; Man-Trying-to-Decipher-Legal-Document; and Just-Watched-a-Bull-Gore-Someone. Observers delight in captioning them on Twitter. An example, from Rob Perez of the Action Network: “I swear every time Mike Budenholzer is on camera he looks like he just watched the stampede scene from The Lion King.”

Bud is aware of all this. “Oh, God, yes, it’s been brought to my attention,” he says. “I can’t control or change it in the heat of the moment.” He pauses. “I’m competitive. I care! My kids think it’s hilarious and annoying. . . . It doesn’t really bother me, but it’s funny that I literally can’t change it.”

Players tend to be amused. Middleton says he appreciates it: “He’s himself; he doesn’t try to be anybody he’s not. If he feels he needs to dive on the floor, he does it.”

Budenholzer compares coaching to parenting (he has four children). “Players are like kids,” he says. “They listen more than you realize, and they may not act on what you want, but they see everything.” He pauses.

“How you treat people, how you interact. Everything.”

T

HE S TAT ED goal for Milwaukee in the 2018–19 season was to play the long game.

Introduce the system, but don’t expect to master it. So far, Budenholzer estimates they’re 60% of the way there. Spacing is great. Defense is solid. But work remains. “From a coaching standpoint, Bud is doing an amazing job,” says a scout who saw the team recently, “But I don’t know if I fear them at the highest level of the playoffs. Giannis’s inability to shoot hurts them.”

Ah, yes, the shooting. It seems unfair to harp on his one flaw, but there it is. And yet, to reach their goal, the Bucks might need Giannis to jack more.

This is what Bud has told him since last summer. I don’t care if you go 0-for-6. I don’t care if we lose because of it. It might not happen this week, this month or this year, but I don’t care. For us to get where we want to go, you’re going to be a better shooter.

Giannis is on board. “He took me in his office and watched clips of my threes and said, ‘O.K., look, you shoot the ball? How bad can it be?’ ” He continues. “I’ve gotten more confident. I’ve gotten better. And he’s like, ‘Keep shooting it.’ He’s yelling all the time to shoot the ball, and I’ve never had that before.

It’s a good feeling.”

What this means is that expectations have been reset. Heading into the 2019 playoffs, Milwaukee talks publicly of getting out of the first round for the first time since ’01. The Bucks’ real goal, of course, is loftier.

For now, though, the Bucks will focus on what they hope is the first of many title pursuits. Win or lose, their coach will stalk the sideline, looking a bit disheveled no matter how pressed his suit may be. He will pause at times, hands on his hips, appearing bewildered.

Disbelieving. Disgusted. Meanwhile, the team’s star will curse himself for missed shots. He’ll stew about his turnovers. He’ll take copious notes.

Together, the pair will press forward. United by undisguised passion, indifferent to how it looks.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

69

COMPLETE PACK AGE Middleton, a two-time All-Star, makes the kind of offensive and defensive contributions best appreciated in their totality.

Adapted f rom SI.com Februar y 15 , 2019

ALTERED GREAT

O N T H E H E E L S O F A B R E A K O U T S E A S O N , K H R I S M I D D L E T O N WA S ASK ED TO CHANGE HIS GAME FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE TE AM. W H I L E H I S A D J U S T M E N T WA S N ’ T A N E A S Y O N E , I T P A I D O F F B I G T I M E BY

ROB MAHONEY Photograph by Erick W. Rasco

T

HE BUCKS’ 2018–19 season bega n in a sma l l Spa nish restaurant on Milwaukee’s south side, vacant but for a single table. There new coach Mi ke Buden holzer sha red his vision, over breakfast, for what the team could be. His audience: Giannis Antetokounmpo, the franchise’s preeminent superstar, and Khris Middleton, his longtenured counterpart. It was an introduction both of people and philosophy. They spoke to the state of the team and how it could grow. And Budenholzer explained his vision for the fully actualized Bucks.

Balance. Spacing. Flexibility. Of course, the subtext to balance is sacrifice. That morning, as the three sat under a chandelier made to resemble antlers intertwined, Budenholzer made his backdoor pitch to Middleton on the virtues of doing less.

The competitor in Middleton bristled.

“Me, for serious, I’m like: What the f---?” Middleton says, catching himself in the retelling. He censors the

thought. “What the hell?” The timing seemed especially cruel. Middleton was a second-round pick who had been traded after his first pro season. The NBA survival rate for players with that profile is close to zero. Middleton had defied those odds and carved out a career for himself in Milwaukee. He was coming off a breakout season (20.1 points, 5.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists) and headed into a contract year. There was something unavoidably fraught in asking Middleton to accept a lesser role.

“I just came off averaging whatever numbers,” he says. “Led the team to the playoffs. We lost, but I proved I was one of the best players. So why are you telling me I need to do less ’cause it’s gonna do more for the team?”

The answer to that question had more to do with the construction of the Bucks’ roster than with Middleton.

Both player and coach agreed that Milwaukee’s roster was deeper than it had shown, and its potential needed to be tapped. Antetokounmpo and Middleton, Budenholzer noted, had played together a certain way for five years, through three playoff appearances, and never made it out of the first round. “Once he said that,” Middleton says, “it clicked.”

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

71

KHRIS MIDDLETON

Something would have to change. And the longer they talked, the more it became clear to Middleton that something would have to be him.

N

BA PLAYERS are creatures of habit. No one in the NBA chews gum. They chew Juicy Fruit. Or Big Red. Or Dentyne Ice, spearmint only, without exception.

To make any tangible change on the court runs against years of established routine. “The hard part,” Middleton says, “is just forgetting your old ways.” Middleton had made more than 800 midrange jumpers since he came into the league, giving him mastery of a shot that he was now being told wasn’t a priority in Budenholzer’s system.

So the Bucks moved Middleton within the offense—not just in physical space, but across functions. Many of the actions he had used to generate scoring opportunities in previous seasons were scrapped. There was no longer room to set up shop in the post

It would take Middleton weeks to climb out of his slump, and that December would go down as one the worst shooting months (38.5% from the field, 29.9% from three) of his career. But what happened in New York was merely a piece of an ongoing dialogue. No one with the Bucks wanted to lose what Middleton does well.

Middleton, in exploring Budenholzer’s offense, found some traction through dribble hand-offs and pick-androlls. The Bucks wanted and needed Middleton to be a playmaker. It was all just a matter of flow.

I

RON Y ISN’ T quite the right word to describe the fact that Middleton was named an All-Star for the first time in 2018–19, a season when his otherwise grounded game was rocked off its axis.

To some extent, Middleton’s selection was a nod to the Bucks’ being the most winning team in basketball. For contenders of that caliber, earning multiple All-Star berths is par for the course.

Milwaukee, however, is not

H I S A S S I S T S A L MO S T S OL E LY C R E AT E T H R E E - P O I N T E R S O R SHOTS AT T H E R IM . IT ’S HIS R A NGE ON DEFENSE TH AT A LLOWS M I LWAU K E E T O T O G G L E I T S L I N E U P S F R O M N I G H T T O N I G H T.

72

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

built like a typical juggernaut. Antetokounmpo is an unimpeachable superstar. Middleton is the team’s second-best player and, by his own admission, doesn’t really view himself as a star at all. If he had, he might never have made the concessions Budenholzer asked of him in the first place.

On a team built around Giannis, Middleton is both the best second option available and a facilitator for all that follow. His assists create almost solely three-pointers and shots at the rim, as has been the case for years. It’s Middleton’s range on defense that allows Milwaukee to toggle its lineups from night to night and switch its coverage on command.

Middleton’s best work has always been subtle, and best appreciated in its totality. It’s not the one shot he hit but the variety of shots. It’s not the stop in crunch time,

W E N D E L L C R U Z / U S A T O D AY S P O R T S

or survey options methodically. Middleton would play off screens, make his catch on the move and create shots at an entirely different cadence. “It’s been harder for me to find a rhythm,” Middleton admits.

The low point came in early December 2018, on a trip to play the lowly Knicks in Madison Square Garden.

Middleton struggled and then settled, falling back on the cold comfort of contested pull-up jumpers. He lost focus, failed to make his reads and loafed through defensive possessions. Budenholzer kept Middleton on the bench for the entirety of the fourth quarter and overtime. Milwaukee lost, 136–134.

The following day, Middleton and Budenholzer met to find some resolution. “I totally understood why I was benched,” Middleton says. “I took complete responsibility for that.”

GARY DINEEN/NBAE/GE T T Y IMAGES

BUCKET LIST Middleton, asked by Budenzholzer to adjust for Antetokounmpo (opposite) and find shots in new ways, has averaged more than 20 points in each of the last two seasons.

but the full night of smart defense. Middleton plays complete basketball with no frills whatsoever.

Understatement is the story of Middleton’s basketball career. An assistant coach from Texas A&M happened upon him by accident, when tagging along with a friend to watch one of Middleton’s AAU teammates. “A month later,” Middleton says, “they offered me a scholarship.” It was on campus that the old school came to bear. “That’s when I learned how to use my skill set,” he says. “Use what I had, and use it to my advantage. Learn how to do a floater. Learn how to do wrap-arounds, reverses, all that type of stuff. Just learning a complete skill set that doesn’t really require that much athletic ability.” It was at 15 years old that Middleton first noticed the gap between himself and his bouncy, quick-twitch peers.

That gap has only widened since.

“My mind wants me to think I’m, like, top dog, right up there with Giannis,” he says. “But my body tells me I’m probably average.”

Middleton still speaks, at times, like a player on the fringes of the league. When he went through the predraft process in 2012, some teams believed he wouldn’t last three years in the NBA, given that he had suffered a knee injury in his last college season. He took every workout he could get in an attempt to prove otherwise, auditioning for more than half the league’s teams.

Twelve of them, Middleton remembers, did full rounds of strength tests and imaging to audit his knee for themselves. Detroit ended up selecting Middleton at No. 39, only to then include him as salary filler in a trade wih Brandon Knight and Viacheslav Kravtsov for Brandon Jennings a year later.

“It’s a business,” Middleton says. “But as a player, it sucks to know you were just thrown into a trade for it to work.” Middleton has described the aftermath of that deal as the darkest point of his career. But from it came his long run with the Bucks, a rise through the ranks of the league and a lasting relationship with Milwaukee itself. Middleton remembers the abandoned buildings, the old downtown and the roads that, when you drove over them, would call out their need for repair. “I’ve just seen the city grow, seen the community grow,” Middleton says.

Middleton has invested in his adopted city where he could. Working with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Milwaukee, in particular, hit home for Middleton. It was a way to give back but also to honor everything his own sister, Brittney, did (and does) for him. “She keeps me on time,” he says. “Keeps me running.”

Charlotte, where Middleton played in his f irst All-Star Game, was the closest the event will ever be to Charleston, S.C., the town where he learned to play basketball and Brittney helped raise him. It’s but a few hundred miles from the high school courts where Middleton played one through five for Porter-Gaud, teasing out the versatility that would define his career. Drive west and you’ll find the Atlanta gyms where Middleton, by chance, stole his way onto a major college’s scouting radar over bigger-name prospects. Middleton found a way then as he does now. “I know if I win,” Middleton says, “most things will take care of themselves.”

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

73

The Hi FREAKISH LENGTH In the 1971 NBA Finals, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar showed a rare capacity to elongate, presaging another future Bucks MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

WA LTER IOOSS JR.

C R E AT E D A R I C H L E G A C Y I N I T S 5 3 S E A S O N S O F P L AY

Adapted f rom Sports Illustrated Ma y 10, 1971

ONE TITLE, NO NONSENSE L E D B Y N B A L E G E N D S A N D A C O A C H A LWAY S S C R I B B L I N G O N H I S L E G A L P A D , T H E B U C K S G O T D O W N T O B U S I N E S S A N D S W E P T B A LT I M O R E T O WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP IN THE FR ANCHISE’S THIRD SE ASON BY

PETER CARRY

A

76

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

Thus did Oscar Robertson, after 11 frustrating seasons in the National Basketball Association, celebrate the world championship won by the Milwaukee Bucks. It was certainly not surprising that the Bucks defeated the Baltimore Bullets in the playoff finals, nor was it too startling, considering the crippled state of the Bullets, that Milwaukee became the second NBA team—Boston, in 1959, was the other—ever to sweep the championship round in four straight games. In fact, it was no shock to observe that the Bucks, whose strength mounted steadily during the season while most of their rivals teetered along with rosters depleted by expansion and injuries, won their title with more ease than any former champion. Milwaukee lost fewer playoff games (two) and outscored its opponents by wider margins than any of its predecessors.

Throughout the series and particularly after the Bucks

S TA R T E R K I T Coach Costello surrounded by (from clockwise) Jon McGlocklin, Dandridge, Alcindor, Greg Smith and Robertson.

AP

T LAST the Milwaukee board of directors held its final series of meetings for this f iscal year, a time-consuming, twoweek schedule clearly out of tempo with the board’s usual brisk efficiency. But that was not the members’ fault; they were working under an agenda composed by somebody else. The last four formal sessions were dominated by Mr. Costello, the head of research and development; Mr. Robertson, the experienced director of operations in the field; and Mr. Alcindor, the group’s young chairman. When the members had finished hammering out decisions, there was no doubt that the three-year-old enterprise had ascended to the top of its field and could remain there for years to come. As the board broke for a brief summer vacation, during which its three leaders will safari in Africa lending technical expertise to six underdeveloped nations, Mr. Robertson reflected the overall mood of restrained satisfaction by describing his role in the firm’s latest triumphs as “an important phase of my professional career.”

1971 CHAMPIONSHIP

easily won the second game, played in Baltimore, where the Bullets had terrorized the New York Knickerbockers, only one question lingered: Would a glimmer of flamboyance or a peep of exuberance escape the Milwaukee machine when it won the title? Certainly no team with Robertson and Lew Alcindor can be called faceless, simply because they are two of the best-known athletes in America. But both are players and personalities of a singular type. Each regards his game as a business, a complex occupation to be attacked with the precision and coolness with which an accountant surveys a ledger.

Both deal in basketball’s essentials only, avoiding waste motion and creating spectacle only by the uncluttered purity of their styles. Despite their divergent personal interests, Robertson and Alcindor are basically alike in that they are unemotional and humorless off the court.

Any team on which Alcindor and Robertson played would surely evolve into an extension of their attitudes, but the Bucks’ transformation was nearly immediate.

Instead, there are people all around the league who derive considerable pleasure from debunking his role in the Bucks’ success. “Anyone could be a winner with the players he’s got” is their motto. They ridicule Costello for the yellow legal pad that is always at his side during games and practices and upon which he constantly improvises new tactics for his team. They deplore his lack of color and ostentation, just the opposite of the criticism leveled against Red Auerbach when Boston was champion.

“Larry, Oscar and I have the same ways about us,” says Alcindor. “We agree that being as efficient as possible cuts down our chances for errors. Larry has a very professional attitude. There’s no nonsense, because he’s a man dedicated wholly to basketball. He simply wants to get the job done, which makes it a lot easier for me.

I know what he demands and I have no worry about working around any idiosyncrasies he might have.”

“If a coach is disorganized he can’t expect his players

“ IT ’ S L I K E TA K I NG A G OL F S HOT T H ROUGH A T R E E ,” ONE BULLET SA ID OF THE BUCKS’ DEFENSE. “IT’S SUPPOSED TO B E 9 0 % A I R , B U T YO U A LWAY S S E E M T O H I T A T W I G .”

78

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

HEINZ KLUE TMEIER

Coach Larry Costello’s perspective matches that of his superstars, and the new champions are at least as much a product of Costello’s insistent ways as they are a reflection of his two best players.

Costello came to Milwaukee when the franchise was formed three years ago, fresh from 12 seasons as a guard in the NBA. As a player he gained a reputation for toughness and thoroughness that has carried over into his coaching. Bucks practices are the hardest, most precisely mapped-out in the league, much more like college workouts than those run by other professional teams. The time to be spent on specific drills is allocated in advance, and Milwaukee does not run through its exercises sloppily and at half speed. Costello and his aggressive assistant Tom Nissalke—the Bucks are one of the few NBA teams with a full-time assistant coach who has only minor scouting responsibilities—looked at motion picture films of each of their playoff opponents eight or 10 times to prepare.

Costello would probably now be uniformly hailed as one of the two or three best coaches in the NBA, which he is, if he had not had the good fortune to get Alcindor.

WA LT E R I O O S S J R .

C H O P P I N G B A LT I M O R E At 32, Robertson (above) was breaking ankles, and the active Bucks (opposite) won the series rebounding battle 218–191.

to go by the rules,” Costello says of his system. “You’re never going to execute unless you execute hard in practice. It’s the only way to get your timing down. And I know it works. Last year we won 56 games without Oscar.

We had a rookie center, a rookie forward, a second-year forward and an expansion player in our starting lineup.”

The emphasis on mechanical skills gave the Bucks the best offense in the NBA this year and, by the close of the season, perhaps its best defense. Milwaukee was 12th in field goals attempted and 16th in free throws tried, yet it finished first in points scored. The Bucks set a record for shooting accuracy, becoming the first team in NBA history to average more than 50% for a season as the offense designed by Costello and executed by Robertson, Alcindor and their teammates consistently led to shots close to the basket.

Perhaps because they had forgotten who the Bullets were—the two teams had not played in three months, thanks to the complexities of the league schedule—the Bucks made it known before the opening game that they did not much care for the opposition the NBA had lined up for the finals. Except for Oscar, they said that Baltimore was nice, but they would rather have the Knicks— to grab by the scruff of the neck and drag down Wisconsin Avenue.

In a column entitled knicks will be missed in final pl ayoff, The Milwaukee Journal’s Terry Bledsoe wrote: “It is as though Muhammad Ali had stumbled somewhere earlier in his comeback attempt and Joe Frazier had been forced to conduct his fight of the century against Oscar Bonavena.”

The arena marquee outside the arena listed something called the world championship wonago rodeo as its top billing. About six feet below that was the notation bucks basketball apr. 21. Inside, vendors sold programs that showed Alcindor on the cover shooting over Willis Reed and Dave DeBusschere.

Baltimore forward Jack Marin took all this in, slumped in a chair outside the Bullets’ locker room, and said sarcastically, “I’m wearing a New York jersey tonight. I don’t want to disappoint these people. They paid good money to see the best and I’m gonna give it to ’em.”

It looked briefly as if the Bullets would give Bucks fans more than they bargained for. During slightly more than two minutes of the first quarter, Alcindor committed three fouls and had to leave the game. But his 15-minute absence hardly helped Baltimore. When Lew left, his team led by four points; when he returned to start the second half, his teammates had increased the margin to eight. With Alcindor on the bench, Robertson directed the Bucks flawlessly, steadying his younger teammates by scoring Milwaukee’s first six points after Lew’s departure and finishing with 15 for the half.

Whether Oscar was spurred to his performance by visions of playoff glory and money, he wouldn’t admit it after the game. “The championship isn’t necessarily what I’ve been waiting for all these years,” he said—and yawned. “If it comes, it comes.”

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

79

80

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

was eliminated as a significant offensive threat by the strong, head-on defensive play of Robertson, by Alcindor’s presence under the basket and, eventually, by a pulled muscle added to his chronically sore knees.

The frustration of facing Alcindor’s interior, roving defense spilled over into the crowd during the second game, which Baltimore lost, at home, 102–83.

Marvin Cooper, the free-form rock dancer who was the best single performer for Baltimore during the series, stopped tripping lightly after he observed what Alcindor did to his team in the second and third periods, when the Bullets scored only 35 points. Cooper, who began dancing in the aisles during the PhiladelphiaBaltimore playoff round, bopped out of the stands near the Bucks’ bench in the first quarter. With the fingers of both hands wiggling furiously, he sent his hex—the one that had worked so successfully against the 76ers and the Knicks—f lying at the Bucks. Lew, obviously up on his voodoo, shook it off so easily that Cooper’s later dances were more like tantrums. Still, Cooper gave Baltimore its only victory in the series.

He proved to be much better TV timeout entertainment than Steve Swedish’s Polish sausage band, which

WA LT E R IO O S S JR . ( 2 )

Alcindor returned to dominate the second half, scoring 18 points in the third quarter and finishing with 31 in the 33 minutes he played. It was the only time in the series that Lew scored w ith consistent ease over Wes Unseld. Bullets coach Gene Shue took the risk of assigning the 6' 7 ½" Unseld to guard Alcindor unassisted. Only twice in the first game and not much more often subsequently did Wes receive aid from his teammates. Since nobody, perhaps not even his mother, seems to know exactly how tall Lew is, the disparity between the two centers was guessed at anywhere from seven to 10 inches.

When Unseld stood on his toes, he barely seemed able to peer over Alcindor’s shoulder. But Unseld had an advantage of his own, since he outweighs Lew by 13 pounds, all of it muscle.

Wes danced around Alcindor, overplaying him first on one side, then the other, frequently batting away passes into the post and generally laying a load of weight onto Lew’s spine. He forced Alcindor to attempt all the shots in his repertoire, from dunks to that majestic hook fired from an absurd yard above the basket, to jump shots outside Lew’s best range.

Alcindor occasionally responded by backing strongly into Unseld and jostling him slightly, which is equivalent to making the Sphinx flinch, but after the opening game Unseld was able to hold Alcindor to six points under his league-leading regular-season average of 31.7.

Although Alcindor was the Bucks’ high scorer, his most valuable work was on defense. Bullets forward Gus Johnson missed two games because of sore knees and was unable to perform with anything near his usual effectiveness on Baltimore’s offensive boards when he did play, so Alcindor was free to control the defensive rebounding for Milwaukee, and a large part of Baltimore’s favorite shooting territory from his zone under the basket. Baltimore shot better than 40% in only one game, and scored as many as 30 points in just two of the 16 quarters played. Those were also the only quarters where the Bullets outscored the Bucks. After the first game, in which he had 26 points, Earl Monroe

1971 CHAMPIONSHIP

TEAMWORK Finals MVP Alcindor (who would soon change his name), going against the smaller Unseld, averaged 27.0 points for the series while Dandridge (below) added 20.3 points. played during similar breaks in Milwaukee. With the American Broadcasting Company absurdly prolonging the timeouts and halftimes, incidental entertainment became very important for the paying customers.

“They just stopped us from getting the layup,” Marin said of the Milwaukee defense. “They gave me a lane to the basket all night. I took it once, I took it again, and then I said forget about it. It’s like taking a golf shot through a tree; it’s supposed to be 90% air, but you always seem to hit a twig. They figure you can’t beat them with 20-foot jumpers and they’re right. I’ll tell you, it ain’t easy out there.”

“You’ve got to give Lew all the credit,” added Bullets guard Kevin Loughery. “He may only block one shot here or there, but guys have to change their shots because of him. He’s the greatest defensive player I’ve seen since Bill Russell.”

In the third game, which Milwaukee won 107–99, Bob Dandridge scored 29 points and twice Robertson came off the bench in foul trouble to break up Bullets rallies. He scored 30 points in the fourth game, hitting 11 of 15 and, as he did all through the series, he forced his teammates to play harder, not allowing them to relax even when they had long leads.

The Bucks retained their pattern to the end. With 2:54 left to play in the last game and Milwaukee ahead by 17 points, Costello was still diagraming new plays on the yellow pad. In the locker room after the victory, Lew (who would change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the day after the Finals ended) sat quietly in a corner

WITH 2:54 LEFT TO PLAY IN THE LA ST GA ME A ND M I LWAU K E E A H E A D B Y 1 7 P O I N T S , C O S T E L L O WA S S T I L L DI AGR A M M ING N E W PL AYS ON T H E Y EL LOW PA D.

for a time, drinking a Coke and chewing his gum.

He has now won national titles at all three levels at which he has played—high school, college, the pros.

He allowed that winning the NBA championship is “a great honor.” Then he added that he was glad it was over and he would like to get some rest. After a few minutes, he got to his feet, took a cup and drank a little of the victory champagne.

While his teammates squirted bubbly around the room, guard Lucius Allen explained the other Bucks’ lack of exhilaration. “People expect us to win,” he said.

“Everything we see in the paper says we’ll win. It takes some of the excitement away from us. And I guess if you get right to it, we’re not a very emotional bunch.”

There is a widely held notion among pro players that this was the last year in which anyone would have a chance to beat the Bucks for a long time. There was even a portentous note in the decorations in the Milwaukee Arena. The Bucks’ official colors are forest green, white and red. But there was no red in the bunting during the playoffs, and the green was several shades lighter than the official dark tone. In basketball it is called Celtic green.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

81

THE GREATS O R S E T T I N G A H I G H S TA N D A R D O N O F F E N S E A N D D E F E N S E , M I LWA U K E E ’ S R O S T E R S H AV E F E AT U R E D S O M E O F T H E GAME’S MOST MEMOR ABLE FIGURES

GUARD

OSCAR ROBERTSON 1970–71 to ’73–74 Already an NBA legend when the Bucks acquired him from the Cincinnati Royals, the do-it-all Hall of Famer helped lift Milwaukee to the ’71 title and a Finals berth in ’74.

PHOTOGRAPH BY

JA MES DR A K E

THE GRE ATS

GUARD

SIDNEY MONCRIEF 1979–80 to ’88–89 Milwaukee made the playoffs every season the five-time All-Star wore the green. Starting in ’82–83, he averaged more than 20 points for four consecutive seasons and in ’83 was the NBA’s first Defensive Player of the Year.

D I C K R A P H A E L / N B A E / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( M O N C R I E F ) ; WA LT E R I O O S S J R . ( A B D U L- J A B B A R )

84

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

CENTER

KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR 1969–70 to ’74–75 The top pick of the ’69 draft won three MVP awards as a Buck. Despite playing only six seasons in Milwaukee, he remains the franchise’s career scoring leader with 30.4 points per game.

G U A R D / F OR WA R D

JUNIOR BRIDGEMAN 1975–76 to ’83–84, 1986–87 Despite mostly coming off the bench, he had scoring averages in the mid-to-upper teens most seasons. Picked up from the Lakers in the trade for Abdul-Jabbar, Bridgeman is the Bucks’ career leader in games played, with 711.

JON McGLOCKLIN 1968–69 to ’75–76 Acquired in the expansion draft, the sharpshooter was an All-Star on the inaugural Bucks team, pouring in 19.6 points per game, and he averaged 15.8 for the squad that won the title in 1971.

86

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

H E I N Z K L U E T M E I E R ( B R I D G E M A N ) ; N E I L L E I F E R ( M C G L O C K L I N ) ; F O C U S O N S P O R T/ G E T T Y I M A G E S ( J O H N S O N )

GUARD

THE GRE ATS

F OR WA R D / G U A R D

MARQUES JOHNSON 1977–78 to ’83–84 The lead scoring option on Milwaukee teams that consistently reached the playoffs, the five-time All-Star averaged 21.0 points while shooting 53.0% from the floor over his seven seasons.

GUARD

RAY ALLEN 1996–97 to 2002–03 The fifth pick in the ’96 draft made three All-Star teams during his six full seasons as a Buck. One of the great outside shooters, he averaged 19.6 points for Milwaukee and is still the franchise leader in three-pointers with 1,051.

M A NN Y MIL L A N (A L L EN) ; DICK R A PH A EL /NB A E /GE T T Y IM AGES (CUMMINGS)

THE GRE ATS

F OR WA R D

TERRY CUMMINGS 1984–85 to ’88–89, ’95–96 Acquired as part of a ’84 deal that sent Marques Johnson and Junior Bridgeman to the Clippers, Cummings made two All-Star teams for the Bucks and averaged more than 20 points four times.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

89

THE GRE ATS

L I P O F S K Y P H O T O . C O M ( P I E R C E ) ; H E I N Z K L U E T M E I E R ( P R E S S E Y, L A N I E R )

GUARD

RICKY PIERCE 1984–85 to ’89–90, ’97–98 Pierce won the Sixth Man Award twice as a Buck. In ’89–90 the versatile scorer racked up 23.0 points per game despite never starting and averaging only 29.0 minutes of playing time.

G U A R D / F OR WA R D

PAUL PRESSEY 1982–83 to ’89–90 Pressey earned fame as the NBA’s first “point forward,” setting a path for other frontcourt players who acted as their team’s primary distributors. As a Buck he averaged 11.9 points and 5.6 assists.

90

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

CENTER

BOB LANIER 1980–81 to ’83–84 Acquired from the Pistons in February ’80, the All-Star averaged 13.5 points and 5.9 rebounds for Milwaukee while providing toughness in the middle on teams that won the division title every year he was in town.

F OR WA R D THE GRE ATS

GLENN ROBINSON 1994–95 to 2001–02 The top pick in the ’94 draft knew how to find a bucket, averaging 21.1 points over eight Bucks seasons. He was the co-leading scorer, with Ray Allen, on the team that reached the Eastern Conference finals in 2001.

VERNON BIE VER/NBAE/GE T T Y IMAGES (DANDRIDGE ); JOHN BIE VER (ROBINSON)

F OR WA R D

BOB DANDRIDGE 1969–70 to ’76–77, 1981–82

92

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS

KOHJIRO KINNO

The Hall of Famer and three-time All-Star for the Bucks averaged 18.6 points, 7.3 rebounds and 3.2 assists in his nine seasons in Milwaukee. He also was named to the All-Defensive team in ’78–79.

GUARD

MICHAEL REDD 2000–01 to ’10–11 Redd made 1,003 three-pointers as a Buck, third behind Ray Allen and Khris Middleton on the franchise’s all-time list, and he averaged 20.0 points over 11 seasons in Milwaukee, with a career-best 26.7 in ’06–07.

THE GRE ATS

GUARD

BRIAN WINTERS 1975–76 to ’82–83 Another piece of the Abdul-Jabbar trade, the two-time All-Star was a locked-in outside shooter who averaged 16.7 points over eight seasons in Milwaukee.

COACH

DON NELSON 1976–77 to ’86–87

D AV I D E . K L U T H O ( R E D D ) ; WA LT E R I O O S S J R . ( W I N T E R S ) ; H E I N Z K L U E T M E I E R ( N E L S O N )

The inventive Nelson was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1983 and ’85 while presiding over a period of sustained excellence. The Bucks averaged nearly 50 wins under Nellie and reached the playoffs in each of his final eight seasons.

MILWAUK EE BUCKS

95

L AST SHOT NBA Finals Game 4, July 14, 2021

BACK COVER AND THIS PAGE: GREG NEL SON

96

2021 NBA CHAMPIONS