Inside the Milwaukee Bucks’ epic collapse, and a question that will linger

MILWAUKEE — In the last five seasons, no team has won more regular-season games than the Milwaukee Bucks.

Since Mike Budenholzer took over as head coach at the start of the 2018-19 season, they have compiled a 271-120 record in the regular season. In three of those five seasons, they had the league’s best regular-season record. In the 2020-21 season, despite finishing third in the Eastern Conference, they won their first NBA championship in 50 seasons.

The Bucks were led to that championship in large part by the determination of two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, who missed the final two games of the 2021 Eastern Conference finals because of a gruesome left knee injury. But Antetokounmpo returned in the NBA Finals and took home Finals MVP honors with a 50-point performance in Game 6 to close out the Suns.

Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton, the other two members of the Bucks’ big three, also delivered clutch performances during the championship run, while center Brook Lopez, held things down in the paint. Pat Connaughton and Bobby Portis contributed positively off the bench throughout the run. All six players, as well as Thanasis Antetokounmpo, returned for the 2021-22 season and tried to lead the Bucks to back-to-back NBA titles.

The defense of that 2021 title ended in the second round last season as Milwaukee fell to Boston in seven games. The Bucks and observers around the league were left to wonder what would have happened in that series if Middleton did not exit the playoffs in the first round with a left knee injury. This season, those seven players returned to pursue their second title in three seasons and prove what they thought they could have done in 2022.

With a 58-24 record, the Bucks climbed to the top spot in the NBA and were the odds-on title favorite heading into the postseason. But the Miami Heat had other ideas and the No. 8-seeded team completed its upset of the No. 1-seeded Bucks on Wednesday night with a 128-126 overtime victory in Game 5 at Fiserv Forum.

Two years after winning Milwaukee’s second NBA championship, the Bucks are just the sixth No. 1 to lose a playoff series to a No. 8 in NBA history.

In Game 4, Jimmy Butler scored 56 points, including 21 in the fourth quarter, as the Bucks blew a 14-point lead in the final period. They squandered a 16-point fourth-quarter lead in their Game 5 loss.

All season long, the team only focused on one thing, winning a second championship in three seasons, and ended up 15 playoff wins short of that goal, which led to a question posed by The Athletic:

“Do you view this season as a failure?”

The question caused a visceral reaction from Antetokounmpo during Wednesday’s postgame press conference. He took a deep breath, put his hands through his hair and then rubbed them together in front of his face before responding.

“It’s not a failure,” he said. “It’s steps towards success. There’s always steps to it. Michael Jordan played 15 years. He won six championships. The other nine years, he was a failure? (No.) So why do you ask me that question? It’s the wrong question.

“There’s no failure in sports. There’s good days, bad days. Some days you’re able to be successful. Some days you’re not. Some days it’s your turn. Some days it’s not your turn. And that’s what sports is about. You don’t always win. Some other people are going to win. And this year, somebody else is going to win. Simple as that.

“We’re going to come back next year, try to be better, try to build good habits, try to play better. Not have a 10-day stretch of playing bad basketball. And hopefully, we can win a championship. So, for 50 years, from 1971 until we won in 2021, that we didn’t win a championship, it was 50 years of failure? No, it was not. There were steps to it. And we were able to win one. Hopefully, we can win another one.”

If Antetokounmpo has his way and ends up playing 20 seasons, as he has told The Athletic he plans to do, this marks the midpoint of his journey in the NBA. But if this was a step, as Antetokounmpo contends, it was certainly a step back.

As Antetokounmpo’s postgame press conference neared its 10th minute on Wednesday, he zoned in on a specific spot in the locker room, the upper left-hand corner of the marker board where the team tallied how many wins were left until it once again became NBA champions.

In his younger days in the NBA, Antetokounmpo reveled in writing the number himself and initiating the countdown for his teammates, but in 2021, Antetokounmpo chose to make it a team activity. As the Bucks made their way through the playoffs, he reveled in getting to watch Lopez write “8” in Brooklyn after the Bucks dispatched Lopez’s former team, the Nets, and Holiday write “1” following his clutch steal and alley-oop in Game 5 of the NBA Finals in Phoenix. But this season, that number was no longer a source of joy.

“I feel like everybody was shook in the locker room,” Antetokounmpo said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of winners in there, a lot of players that have played on great teams, high-level players. And for me, I think this has to be the worst postseason ever.

“Like, you know, we have a number in there, like every other team has a number that says 16, 15, 14, and we were stuck at 15. I don’t think we’ve ever, as long as I’ve been in the playoffs, maybe we lost in the first round, but not stuck at 15, which is kind of hard to deal with.”

Defending Jimmy Butler

In five games against the Bucks, Butler averaged 37.6 points, 6.0 rebounds and 4.8 assists in 37.2 minutes per game, while shooting 59.7 percent from the field and 44.4 percent from behind the 3-point line. Overwhelmingly, Budenholzer stuck with Holiday as Butler’s primary matchup, and while the Bucks threw in some switches and different primary defenders, Butler saw far more of Holiday than any other defender and it just didn’t go well.

“Obviously, Jimmy just going out there and willing his team, carrying his team, doing whatever it takes, but that’s what I’m here for,” Holiday said. “I’m here for the challenge. Even if I get my ass busted, I’m here to play basketball and go as hard as I can. So, if that means the matchup is Jimmy, then Jimmy.”

After Game 5, with Holiday sitting on the stairs connected to the postgame dais in Fiserv Forum, Antetokounmpo told reporters he wanted to cover Butler, just like he did in the Bucks’ 2021 sweep of the Heat, but never got his wish.

“Out of respect, you gotta let the coach make that adjustment,” Antetokounmpo said. “We have our best defender on him. There are conversations with Jrue. Whenever he gets tired, I can take him, but he’s so competitive. He plays so hard. He wants to take the challenge. But at the end of the day, I wish I could guard him more, for sure.”

Offensive struggles

While Butler was spectacular for the Heat offensively, the Bucks struggled mightily to score in back-to-back fourth quarters.

The Bucks’ halfcourt offense has not been a strength under Budenholzer in the postseason, but the team often figured out how to score just enough during its championship run. Wednesday’s fourth quarter, though, was particularly ugly with the Bucks hitting just three of their 19 shots. Antetokounmpo struggled from the free-throw line the entire night, making just 10 of his 23 free-throw attempts, but he also really struggled from the field in the fourth quarter, making just one of his nine shots to close out regulation.

Antetokounmpo started the fourth quarter with a 3-pointer and another long two-point jumper but then opted to get closer to the rim. And while Bam Adebayo managed to keep him away from the basket, Antetokounmpo still got to shots that he practices and shots he hit in big moments during the championship run in 2021.

First, he tried his baseline fadeaway jumper:

Then, he tried a short hook shot:

But neither fell through the net.

“Ball did not go in,” Antetokounmpo said. “Simple as that. Got to my spot. I wasn’t able to make shots. That’s pretty much it. If I had made the shots, it would be a different case.”

On top of Antetokounmpo’s struggles, Middleton, who put up 33 points on 10-of-24 shooting and kept the Bucks afloat in the first quarter, went 0-of-4 from the field in the final quarter.

If either of them makes one or two more shots, the Bucks likely pull out the win and head down to Miami for a Game 6, even with the poor decision-making made late in the game.

Questionable late-game decisions

Even with their offense struggling in the fourth quarter, the Bucks still scored enough to put themselves in a position to win. But three late decisions from Budenholzer hurt their chances.

With 2.1 seconds remaining in regulation and a two-point lead, he put Antetokounmpo, Lopez, Holiday, Matthews and Middleton on the floor to defend the Heat’s final sideline out-of-bounds play. When the Heat put five perimeter players on the floor, Budenholzer took Lopez off and added Connaughton.

He ended up being targeted at the rim on a lob to Butler. He went up and made a strong play on the ball, but Butler pushed him out of the way and finished the game-tying shot.

“They had five small guys, so down two, you can go for the win with 3 or they obviously got the play at the rim, but they had five guards or wings,” Budenholzer said. “So we matched that.”

Following Butler’s finish, the Bucks had a chance to inbound the ball with .5 seconds in regulation in a tied game. They had a timeout remaining, but no one on the bench seemed to be aware of that fact.

“Yeah, we needed to call timeout (there),” Budenholzer admitted.

The Bucks might not have scored on a sideline out-of-bounds play, but they would have at least had a chance to break the tie. Instead, they inbounded the ball from the other end of the floor and failed to get a shot up.

It looked bleak for the Bucks in overtime as they went down by seven with 1:43 remaining, but they clawed back into the game. Down by two with 29.5 seconds left, they decided to play defense, rather than extending the game by fouling, and got the stop they needed.

From there, they played without Budenholzer calling a timeout to advance the ball or set up a play, which is Budenholzer’s usual preference late in games. And while the Bucks have found success with that strategy over the years, Middleton didn’t seem ready to take the open shot he created for himself off the bounce and then Grayson Allen was unaware of how much time was left, which resulted in the Bucks not even getting a shot off.

Whether it was a lack of awareness by Budenholzer of his timeout situation at the end of regulation or a willful decision not to take one, the Bucks twice failed to get a shot off as the horn sounded, an unacceptable occurrence for any coach.

Before the postseason, Antetokounmpo talked about how he needed to prepare himself to be ready to play 28 more games, enough to cover four seven-game series. With last night’s loss, the Bucks ended up playing only five postseason games and Antetokounmpo could only participate in three of them because of a lower back contusion that kept him out of the second and third games in the series that no one could have expected.

After winning a championship in 2021, the Bucks have had their postseason plans and championship chances ruined by freak injuries to one of their key players and poor execution in playoff games. Last year, it happened in the second round. This year, the Bucks were eliminated after winning a single game.

When asked whether he viewed this season as a failure, Budenholzer did not reject the idea in the same way as Antetokounmpo did.

“This team has incredibly high expectations,” Budenholzer said. “Jon Horst has put together an amazing roster. The ownership has done what they’re supposed to do. We made a push, we were the No. 1 seed, but all that matters is the playoffs.

“And so, I think we’re just disappointed. I would not use that word (failure). We’re disappointed, we’re frustrated. It hurts. But I said it all year, we love this team, we love these guys, I believe in ’em, we believe in ’em, we didn’t get it done tonight. So, to me, disappointed, hurt, frustrated, I think is more characteristic of how we feel about tonight.”

No matter what you want to call it, the Bucks’ season is over and they didn’t even make it until May. It’s going to be a long five months for the entire organization to mull over exactly how this happened two seasons in a row.

(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)