Antetokounmpo dominant again in series clincher
MILWAUKEE — Giannis Antetokounmpo ended one of the greatest NBA Finals performances ever with 50 points and a championship Milwaukee waited 50 years to win again.
Antetokounmpo added 14 rebounds and five blocked shots as the Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns 10598 on Tuesday night to win the series 42. It was the third game this series with at least 40 points and 10 rebounds for Antetokounmpo, a dominant debut finals performance that takes its place among some of the game’s greatest.
He shot 16 for 25 from the field and made an unbelievable 17of19 free throws — a spectacular showing for any shooter, let alone one who was hitting just 55.6% in the postseason and was ridiculed for it at times.
“I want to thank Milwaukee for believing in me,” Antetokounmpo said during the postgame cere
mony on the Fiserv Forum floor. “I want to thank my teammates, man. They played hard every fricking game. I trusted this team. I wanted to do it here in this city. I wanted to do it with these guys. I’m happy.”
The fans’ voices had been booming inside and outside for hours by then, having waited 50 years to celebrate a winner after Lew Alcindor — before becoming Kareem AbdulJabbar — and Oscar Robertson led the Bucks to the championship in 1971.
In a season played played largely without fans, the Bucks had 65,000 of them packed into the Deer District outside, a wild party that figured to last deep into the Midwestern night. The party wasn’t bad inside, either: Confetti rained down as fans chanted “Bucks in 6!” — a hopeful boast by former player that turned out to be prophetic.
The Bucks became the fifth team to win the NBA Finals after trailing 20 and the first to do it by winning the next four games since Miami over Dallas in 2006.
Chris Paul scored 26 points to end his first NBA Finals appearance in his
16th season. Devin Booker added 19 points but shot 8 for 22 and missed all seven 3pointers after scoring 40 points in each of the last two games.
The teams that came into the NBA together as expansion clubs in 1968 delivered a fine finals, with the last three games all in the balance late.
The Bucks won them largely because of Antetokounmpo, a twotime MVP in the regular season who raised his game even higher in the finals and was voted the NBA Finals MVP.