How Jimmy Butler and the Heat pushed the Bucks to the verge of elimination

MIAMI — With a 10-point lead and a little more than six minutes remaining in Game 4, Giannis Antetokounmpo worked a pick-and-roll in the middle of the floor with Brook Lopez. As Antetokounmpo came off the screen, both Bam Adebayo and Caleb Martin came out to guard him, leaving Lopez a lane to roll to the hoop.

Antetokounmpo lobbed a pass toward the rim, and Lopez plucked the ball out of the air, finishing at the rack over the top of multiple help defenders. It was Antetokounmpo’s third assist to Lopez in roughly three minutes in that exact same situation.

And with that assist, Antetokounmpo’s 11th of the night, the Bucks had a 12-point lead. A quiet Kaseya Center crowd was forced to wonder how the two biggest players on the floor were gracefully slicing through the heart of the Heat defense in an artistic two-man game.

But as Antetokounmpo turned to run back on defense, he pulled up lame and signaled to the Bucks bench for a timeout. After realizing they couldn’t call a timeout, Antetokounmpo signaled for a substitution before gingerly jogging back on defense.

When Khris Middleton picked up a foul 12 seconds later, Antetokounmpo waved off the substitution Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer had sent to the scorer’s table.

And while it appeared the Bucks averted a crisis, their problems had just begun.

During the next three minutes, the Bucks went scoreless as the Heat rattled off a 13-0 run to take a one-point lead. But it didn’t stop there. The Heat outscored the Bucks 30-13 in the final six minutes of the game and pulled out a 119-114 Game 4 win to take a 3-1 series lead. Game 5 is Wednesday in Milwaukee.

After missing Games 2 and 3 with a lower back contusion, Antetokounmpo was spectacular, putting up 26 points, 10 rebounds and 13 assists in 38 minutes, but it couldn’t offset Jimmy Butler’s stellar performance. Butler scored 56 points on just 28 shots, carrying the Heat to an improbable comeback victory.

“He obviously played great,” Lopez, who had a team-high 36 points and 11 rebounds, said of Butler’s performance. “He’s been great all series long. He’s been aggressive. He’s just been knocking down shots, shooting the 3 extremely well. There hasn’t been a thing that he hasn’t been doing. It’s a tough draw, but we just gotta keep getting better, keep making life tough for him, one game at a time.”

The Bucks have not had an answer for Butler the entire series, but he went to a different level on Monday.

While the Bucks laid off Butler and dared him to be a jump shooter in the first three games of the series, the Bucks gave Jrue Holiday, one of the league’s best defenders, the freedom to play Butler far more aggressively in Game 4. Holiday picked Butler up full court and went over the top of screens, while also mixing in going under some screens. The Bucks’ point guard was more handsy and physical against Butler than he had been in previous games. None of it affected Butler.

The Bucks did more switching against Butler as well, and that didn’t matter either. In the first quarter, Butler went 9 of 10 from the field and scored 22 points to keep pace with the Bucks. Butler hit those nine shots on six different defenders: three on Antetokounmpo, two on Holiday and then one each on Middleton, Bobby Portis, Joe Ingles and Lopez.

Even with the massive first-quarter effort from Butler, the Bucks settled into a groove during the second and third quarters and took control of the game. Despite Butler’s 35 points through three quarters, the Bucks were still in good shape heading into the fourth with a 89-78 lead.

But then the Bucks repeatedly squandered opportunities to close out the game and tie the series at two wins apiece.

In Game 4, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra sat Butler for only seven of the 48 minutes, but four of those seven minutes came at the start of the fourth quarter. With Butler off the floor, the Bucks failed to increase their lead, and they only led 98-87 when Butler returned with 8:11 left.

From there, the Bucks’ errors became more obvious and dramatically more damaging.

On the Bucks’ offensive possession immediately following Antetokounmpo’s injury scare, they went away from the Antetokounmpo-Lopez middle pick-and-roll and instead opted for a side pick-and-roll with Middleton and Lopez with Middleton flowing to his right. Middleton, who repeatedly hit clutch shots during the Bucks’ 2021 championship run, tried a stepback but missed the relatively open look off the front of the rim. Lopez tried to save the offensive rebound to a teammate but instead started a fast break for the Heat. Butler made them pay with a pull-up jumper to cut the Bucks’ lead to eight.

After the Butler jumper, the Bucks went to Middleton in the pick-and-roll again, and he picked out a skip pass to Pat Connaughton for an open corner 3, but he missed the shot, and Butler got out in transition to secure a matchup with Middleton. Then, he took Middleton off the bounce and hit a floating lay-in, plus the foul, to cut the Bucks’ lead to five.

On the next possession, the Bucks went to Holiday, who tried to bully veteran point guard Kyle Lowry. Instead, Lowry stripped Holiday twice and started a fast break, which resulted in Caleb Martin hitting two free throws to cut the Bucks’ lead to three.

After Antetokounmpo missed a lay-in, the Bucks were able to force a miss on a jumper from Butler, but they gave up an offensive rebound, and Martin hit a contested jumper on Antetokounmpo to cut the Bucks’ lead to just one with 3:29 remaining. With a timeout to use before the three-minute mark, Antetokounmpo brought the ball up the floor and prepared to call a timeout.

With Budenholzer pointing at the sideline official nearest him and the sideline official on the opposite side of the floor already two steps onto the court, it looked as though the Bucks would be granted their timeout. Instead, Lowry jumped up to poke the ball away from Antetokounmpo and forced a turnover that allowed Butler to race to the other end for a two-handed slam to give the Heat their first lead of the game with 3:17 remaining.

Kaseya Center, which had been silent when the Bucks had their 12-point lead moments earlier, exploded.

While that could have felt like the end of the world to some teams, this Bucks team has been through a number of tough games over the years. They’re battle-tested, and they responded after getting the ball up the floor and calling a timeout following Butler’s dunk.

On their first possession after the timeout, Antetokounmpo finished through Adebayo at the rim and hit his free throw for a three-point play to regain the lead, but Martin hit another 3 to put the Heat up one. After struggling all night long offensively, Holiday did what he so often did during the 2021 title run and hit a clutch shot — this time an outrageous stepback 3 — when he seemed to have nothing going.

Lowry threw the ball out of bounds on the next Heat possession, and the stage was set for a clutch shot from Middleton. The Bucks ran a pick-and-roll for him, and the Heat did a poor job defending it. Lowry got caught on Lopez’s screen and Butler was late to contest, which gave Middleton an open look at a pull-up 3 from the top of the key to put the Bucks up five with 1:53 remaining, but it was just slightly long and bounced up over the basket.

Butler came down to the other end and got fouled on a pull-up jumper to tie the score, but the Bucks responded again. This time, they went back to the middle pick-and-roll with Antetokounmpo and Lopez. Antetokounmpo found Lopez rolling down the lane, and the Bucks regained a two-point lead. But Butler had the answer once again.

The defense was not good enough against Butler as Holiday tried to run underneath the screen and get back to contest Butler, but he was too late.

“Jrue’s got that freedom and he hit a shot against the under,” Budenholzer said. “It’s a credit to Butler. He did a good job. Jrue’s busting his butt Our guys are busting their butts. Heck of a night by him, by them.”

Antetokounmpo tried to get to the rim on the other end, but Antetokounmpo didn’t put his finger roll on Adebayo quite high enough on the glass. The Heat steadied themselves after the rebound, but Holiday decided to pressure Butler full-court. Holiday got caught on a screen by Lowry and never caught back up to Butler, who raced up the floor, waited for Holiday to get close to him and then stepped back for a left-wing jumper to give the Heat a 112-109 lead with 58.2 seconds left.

Following a review to confirm Butler’s jumper was only a 2-point field goal, Antetokounmpo pushed the ball up the floor, saw Martin lose track of Holiday to stop Antetokounmpo in the middle of the floor and kicked it to Holiday on the right wing. Rather than shoot the open 3, Holiday tried to drive and quickly lost control of his dribble, which the Heat corralled and gave to Butler to draw a foul on Middleton in transition. Butler hit two free throws to give the Heat a five-point lead with 47.6 seconds left.

The Bucks still had time for a comeback, but Holiday’s turnover felt like the final straw. And while the turnover was shocking on such a big stage, it felt similar to Holiday’s turnover with the game on the line in San Francisco against the Warriors where Holiday pushed the ball too hard in transition and dribbled it out of bounds.

While the Bucks came up with plenty of answers in the final six minutes, their sloppy play and lack of clinical finishing was too much to overcome. Now they head back to Milwaukee on the brink of elimination, their season one loss away from being over — a championship run finished in the first round before it even truly began. They need to win three straight games, a daunting task against a Heat team they simply haven’t been able to figure out. But the Bucks’ comeback story can only begin if they win Game 5.

“We just gotta go home and win a game,” Budenholzer said. “We talked about it in the locker room. We gotta go to Milwaukee and win a game. Life is not complicated. That’s what we gotta go do.”

JadeSync

How Jimmy Butler and the Heat pushed the Bucks to the verge of elimination

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