What does Patrick Beverley bring to the table for the Milwaukee Bucks?
What does new guard Patrick Beverley bring to the table? Bucks reporter Jim Owczarski offers his thoughts on the Point Forward Podcast.
The Miami Heat, without three key players, prevented the Milwaukee Bucks from winning their third straight game with a 123-97 victory Tuesday night at Fiserv Forum.
Despite not having star Jimmy Butler, starting guard Terry Rozier and key reserve Josh Richardson the Heat (29-25) saw five players reach double figures and scored 35 points off Bucks turnovers to win for the fifth time in their last seven games.
The Bucks (35-20) have not won three in a row since Jan. 20-24.
Milwaukee heads to Memphis on Thursday for its last game before the all-star break.
Bucks head coach Doc Rivers pulled his starters down 29 points with 7 minutes, 40 seconds to go in the game. Giannis Antetokounmpo finished with 23 points on 11-of-18 shooting. He also had 11 rebounds, eight assists and two blocks. Damian Lillard, Malik Beasley and Bobby Portis had 16 points each. Jae Crowder, starting in place of an injured Khris Middleton, had two points on 1-of-1 shooting in 18 minutes. Brook Lopez had seven points, three rebounds and a block.
BOX SCORE: Heat 123, Bucks 97
Greenfield native Tyler Herro had 19 points and five assists for the Heat while Nikola Jović led the team with 24. Duncan Robinson had 23 and Bam Adebayo added 16 while Kevin Love came off the bench to hit 5 three-pointers and score 19 points. Jaimie Jacquez Jr. also had a dozen off the bench.
Heat get moving, leads to hot shooting
Miami put pressure on Milwaukee’s halfcourt defense throughout the first half by constantly running around the perimeter and forcing them to not only chase but fight over screens. And, even if a Bucks defender stayed close the Heat skipped the ball around to find an open shooter, and the result was a 60% shooting mark from behind the three-point line (12 for 20) before a heave by Herro at the buzzer.
Robinson was 5 for 6, Jović was a season-best 4 for 5 and Herro went 3 for 5 from distance to help stake the Heat a 69-52 lead at the break.
“They move without the ball, they share the ball, that’s how they play,” Rivers said. “We didn’t handle that very well. We’ll fix that.”
Adebayo then took advantage of that spacing by going 6 for 10 for 14 points – 12 of which came in the paint.
“They just kept going and they wasn’t missing,” Bucks guard Malik Beasley said. “Coach (Erik Spoelstra) did a great job. They knew we were top-locking and sending everything down and he drew up backdoor plays. He’s elite at that. At the end we had to bring more effort. Sometimes we might have to get deeper in our bench to bring energy.”
Miami maintained that activity on the defensive side of the ball, too, which allowed it to take advantage of eight Milwaukee turnovers to score 12 points. Now, not all of those were “forced” by Miami – like Patrick Beverley delivering a pass to Lopez’s chest when he wasn’t expecting it, or Lillard throwing a pass to Antetokounmpo out of bounds, or Antetokounmpo losing the handle on a speed drive – but the Heat were never stagnant, allowing themselves to be in position to capitalize on the extra chances.
In the first half, Miami shot 56% overall and 57.1% from behind the three-point line.
Though the Heat shooting predictably regressed in the second half, it didn’t cool off enough for the Bucks to truly get back in the game. Though Milwaukee got to within nine points at 79-70 at the 7-minute, 10-second mark of the third quarter, Jović, Love and Robinson promptly knocked down timely triples to extend the Miami advantage to 92-72 four minutes later. Miami outscored the Bucks 19-6 over the final 6:30 of the decisive third quarter to take a 98-76 lead into the fourth quarter. They were 16 for 30 (53%) from behind the three-point line.
“It was a lot of off the ball movement,” Lillard said of the Heat’s offensive success. “They had a lot of actions where they had as smaller guy in the dunker and they were rolling them down the middle ‘cause they were kind of positioning our smaller guy to be the guy to lift up against him and you know, we just keeping coming in because we knew that we were outmatched with the size and they were just spraying the ball around.
“I think it was just the movement. Duncan Robinson, Herro, they were just kind of running around a lot of the ball. See a couple go in, and our offense didn’t really help our defense. We was in a lot of scramble situations where we were behind the play and they shot the ball well.
“Sometimes it’s like that, but I thought it was some things we could’ve done better to maybe disrupt their offense a little bit. But they got going.”
Miami also stayed composed offensively even as Milwaukee began to chip away at the lead, continuing to spread the ball around and work for the best shot. Adebayo and Herro, in particular, didn’t get caught up in trying to do too much individually. Adebayo had a triple-double with 11 assists to go with 12 rebounds and Herro and Robinson had five assists each.
“They were waiting for us,” Beasley said. “They had three days off, two days off, this was our second set of a back-to-back. They came out and played harder than us. That’s no excuse but they did that.”
Turning point
Lillard and Giannis got the Bucks back into the game early in the third quarter, with Lillard hitting a pair of three-pointers and converting three free throws and Antetokounmpo scoring four points and assisting on two other baskets. Suddenly, a 17-point deficit was being whittled down and after Lillard came off an Antetokounmpo screen to convert a floater that made it 79-70 with 7:10 to go in the quarter the Miami lead was down to nine.
But then Antetokounmpo turned the ball over, leading to a Jović three-pointer and consecutive two-man actions between the Bucks stars came up empty. Lillard pulled up behind an Antetokounmpo screen but his three-point attempt hit the font of the rim and an Antetokounmpo layup attempt while rolling off his screen also missed. The Heat, meanwhile, made a basket and the lead was back to double-digits, and the Bucks never got back in the game.
The Bucks have too many turnovers
The Bucks just couldn’t hold onto the ball on Tuesday, giving it away 15 times. But more than that, the Heat took advantage by scoring 29 points when the starters were in the game – which perhaps coincidentally was the margin in the game at 113-84 when fans started filing out of the arena with 7:40 to go in the game.
“Just the speed, pace, they were quicker on everything, on both ends,” Rivers said. “You have these nights. You hate ‘em, but it is what it is. For as bad as it looked defensively I thought our offense was way worse tonight. I thought it started early. We were shooting 51% at halftime and I thought we were playing just awful offense. And I thought that started our defense.
“The ball didn’t move a lot tonight, not the way it’s been moving. I think right now what our team is, we get our personality from the offensive end. And, we don’t want that. We want to get our personality from the defense, from playing hard and doing defensive things. Tonight you could just see it.
“Everyone was trying to force the ball. Give Miami credit. The one thing you can’t do against them is hold the ball and dance with the ball. They’re a great load-up team.”
Rivers pulled his starters at that point, also. Antetokounmpo (five turnovers) and Lillard (three) led the team as the primary ball handlers, but more than the miscues it felt like they came at the most inopportune times – and the Heat always seemed to respond with a bucket on the other end.
“We only had four more turnovers, but they had 35 points,” Rivers said. “So, that’s the difference in the game.”
Five numbers
5 Stoppages for shot clock malfunctions in the first 3 ½ minutes of the game, drawing boos from the crowd.
6 Hours, or thereabouts, that the Heat were delayed in getting to Milwaukee on Monday. The team canceled its scheduled shootaround on Tuesday due to the late (or early) arrival.
7-3 Bucks record in the second game of back-to-backs.
11 Technical fouls on Bobby Portis this season. Portis was assessed two technical fouls against Denver on Monday, one non-unsportsmanlike tech for hanging on the rim and one unsportsmanlike tech after engaging with an official – but only the second one counts toward his season total. It’s an important distinction, as a player receives an automatic one-game suspension following their 16th technical foul.
5,468 Career missed field goals for Antetokounmpo when he missed his first shot against Miami, moving him past Glenn Robinson for No. 1 in Bucks history. It is one of 16 career totals Antetokounmpo is first in. The only franchise totals he does not hold the top spot in are two-point field goal attempts (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), three-point field goals made and attempted (Khris Middleton), offensive rebounds (Marques Johnson) and steals (Quinn Buckner).
Heat sign Alondes Williams to two-way contract
Milwaukee native Alondes Williams caught a last-minute flight and arrived in his hometown prior to Tuesday’s game to help out a team that had its roster decimated with injury. He then played in his second NBA game – and first in his hometown – when he checked in during the fourth quarter of the Heat’s victory.
“Man, it’s always a dream come true,” Williams told the Journal Sentinel. “You always dream about this, you know? Playing in your city at the highest level – it’s a blessing.”
Williams, who will be part of the Rising Stars showcase Friday night at the all-star game, secured a two-way contract due to his play at Sioux Falls in the G League.
“He’s earned it,” Spoelstra said before the game. “It’s great to be able to reward somebody that’s come up through the system and contributed a lot to winning in Sioux Falls.
“We need some extra guys right now so we’re definitely grateful that he’s able to join us.”
But it wasn’t without some work.
“I was in Sioux Falls when everything happened,” Williams said with a smile. “I actually woke up from a nap and they were just like yeah, you gotta get on a plane to Milwaukee. It was kind of happy for me being back home and playing again. It was great. It was a great turnaround.”
He said the quick turnaround only allowed him to give a few people the heads up he was going to be home, but he did have a handful of supporters at Fiserv Forum.
In 18 games with Sioux Falls Williams shot 53.5% from the floor overall and averaged 21.8 points per game. The 24-year-old Riverside High School alumnus went undrafted out of Wake Forest and initially signed a two-way deal with Brooklyn in 2022 and played just over five minutes in one game.
Heat star Jimmy Butler ruled out for personal reasons
Marquette alumnus and Heat star Jimmy Butler experienced a death in his family and on Sunday the team and his agent Bernie Lee released the following statement: “Jimmy Butler has been granted a leave of absence as he deals with the death of a family member. Jimmy and his family ask for privacy at this point in time as they navigate this loss. Updates will be given when appropriate.”