Keeping their eyes on the big prize
Bucks focused before showdown with Lakers
LOS ANGELES - Most of the time, members of the Milwaukee Bucks try to keep their heads down as they focus on themselves and what they need to do each day to improve.
Coach Mike Budenholzer famously doesn't watch as much film on opponents as you think, choosing instead to let his opponents handle that while he concentrates on his team. After games big and small, players have refused the notion that they carry more weight. Eric Bledsoe has often said the playoffs are all that matters. Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and others have reiterated the same, cliched lines
about being intent on getting better every day.
Those are all good and necessary mental exercises for a team that's built the best record in the NBA (53-9). But with a 9:30 p.m. Friday meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers at Staples Center, it's a bit harder to stick to the script.
The Lakers, led by LeBron James and Anthony Davis, own the best record in the Western Conference, after all, at 47-13. This game, a spotlight matchup set in Hollywood on ESPN, features the top two players in the league's MVP race in Antetokounmpo and James – both all-star captains the past two years – as well as a realistic look at what the NBA Finals may look like in June.
To ignore or avoid the hype and gravity is to attempt to wake up in the morning without opening your eyes. Still, the Bucks are trying to hold their line and continue to view it as just another regular-season game. That's not exactly easy, though. “I don't want to put too much on it, but it could be," Middleton said when asked about Friday's game being a Finals preview. "But there's so many things to go into it you just can't say it's going to be a Finals preview. We have to go step by step and not skip any. Hopefully we get there, who knows if they'll get there.”
Both teams enter Friday's matchup playing well out of the all-star break, each only losing once since the midseason exhibition. They're both relatively healthy, too. Unlike earlier this season when the Bucks and Lakers met at Fiserv Forum – a game Bledsoe missed due to an avulsion fracture to his right fibula – both teams will have their full starting units intact.
Despite Bledsoe's injury, the Bucks came away with the win in that Dec. 19 matchup, leading most of the night and by as many as 21 points in knocking off the Lakers, 111-104. That game featured Antetokounmpo's careerhigh five three-pointer performance, sending the message that he has improved as a shooter and had what it takes to stand up against the star duo of James and Davis.
Antetokounmpo has shot just 27.5% on three-pointers since that game – he's at 30.9% for the season, up from 25.6% last year – but he's still been the dominant force behind Milwaukee's success. His 29.6 points, 13.8 rebounds, 5.8 assists and huge presence in the Bucks' league-best defense all in just 30.8 minutes per game have him playing some of the impactful, efficient basketball of all time and on track to repeat as the league's MVP.
But he's not focused on the MVP race. Right now, his mind is solely on his team, which meant taking extra measures off the court in order to push extraneous stuff out so he can channel his thoughts on upcoming games, including Friday's against the Lakers.
“Delete my social media, one," Antetokounmpo said. "Just go there and just play good basketball. As I said, the Lakers are going to come play hard, we know that. I watched the game (Tuesday) night. They played extremely hard, they played through Anthony Davis, LeBron was facilitating, guys were shooting the ball, they were running to the corner, they were playing good basketball.
"They lost the first game (against us) so they're going to come out and try to win the second one. At the end of the day, we got to do what we do.”
Friday's clash against the Lakers marks the beginning of a three-game Western Conference road trip with additional stops in Phoenix and Denver – the latter two games part of a tough back-to-back set going from the desert to the mountains. The game against the Nuggets also represents a big challenge, not only because of the back-to-back, but because Denver is also one of the best teams in the West, entering Thursday third behind the two Los Angeles teams.
But, of course, the Bucks aren't thinking about the last two stops on the trip. You know the drill – one game at a time.
“We're just going to focus on the Lakers," Bledsoe said. "We play them first, so we're going to focus on them. Obviously, they're going to try to get payback. We beat them pretty bad. They're going to try to come out strong, so we just got to try to match their intensity.”