Bucks beat Heat, 116-108
Parker leads effort with 24 points
There’s no mistaking it, Giannis Antetokounmpo is feeling much better.
After missing Sunday’s game and being limited to nine minutes Tuesday because of illness, Antetokounmpo was back to his gravity-defying tricks Friday night in helping the Milwaukee Bucks score a 116-108 victory over the Miami Heat at the BMO Harris Bradley Center.
Antetokounmpo finished with 19 points on 8-for-12 shooting, eight rebounds and six assists, including a 6-0 spurt in the fourth quarter that consisted of a dunk, a Euro step for a layup and a step-through finger roll to essentially put the game away.
As important as his late-game performance was in turning away a Heat comeback that closed a 17-point margin through three quarters down to eight early in the fourth, few people are going to remember those exploits for long. Instead, it’s Antetokounmpo’s first-quarter feats — one in particular — that will make all the highlight reels and draw the most conversation.
Just over four minutes into the first quarter, Tony Snell made a steal and kicked out a pass to Antetokounmpo, who already had a breakaway layup and dunk in the game. The Greek Freak dribbled once before halfcourt, once after, and then took off for the hoop, jumping from just inside the free-throw line. In midair, he extended his arms, pulled them back in to avoid the Heat’s Rodney McGruder, then inexplicably had time to extend them again for a dunk.
That finish immediately went viral, leaving people with variations of the same two responses — how was that not called a travel and how was that humanly possible?
“I never saw anything like it in my life,” center Greg Monroe said. “He’s a freak. They call him the Greek Freak for a reason. That was the freaky part of it. He does a lot of things I’ve never seen. That was a great play.”
The slam was part of a 42-point first quarter, the Bucks’ highest-scoring output in any quarter this season. They closed the period by scoring on 10 straight possessions before Antetokounmpo missed a jumper at the buzzer to leave the score at 42-30.
“The first quarter was, I thought, a great carryover from our last game,” Bucks coach Jason Kidd said. “The ball (was moving), the ball wasn’t sticking, guys were very willing passers and we got a lot of wide-open shots that we made.”
Monroe, who did not play due to a coaching decision the first time these teams met in a 9673 Bucks loss, provided a noticeable spark off the bench in the highscoring first quarter. The 6-foot-11 center went 5 for 5 from the field for 12 points in 5 1⁄2 minutes during that frame and went on to finish with 16 points and a team-high 11 rebounds.
With a 12-point lead and facing a depleted Heat roster down to 10 players for the final game of what finished as a 1-5 road trip, the Bucks never faced a real threat for the rest of the game. Miami (1130) got 19 points apiece from Hassan Whiteside and Goran Dragic but never led and trailed by as many as 22 points in the third quarter.
Jabari Parker carried the scoring load for the Bucks (20-18), leading six players in double figures with 24 points. Antetokounmpo and Parker combined for 16
points in the fourth quarter — nine for Antetokounmpo and seven for Parker — to help stave off the Heat, which cut the margin as low as seven points.
“Jabari made some great shots offensively getting to the basket and not settling,” Kidd said. “Giannis, too. Playing through those two guys late was good for us tonight.”
Snell chipped in 14 points, Malcolm Brogdon added 13 with five assists and Michael Beasley made all five of his shots off the bench to finish with 11 points and seven rebounds. Matthew Dellavedova fell just short of giving the Bucks seven in double digits with nine points on 1-of-5 shooting to go with eight assists.