Built for This: The Milwaukee Bucks' Historic Run to the 2021 NBA Title

By The Athletic

History has been made in unforgettable fashion as the Milwaukee Bucks triumphed over the Phoenix Suns in the 2021 NBA Finals, bringing the first title to the Cream City in 50 years. Coming off playoff disappointments in 2019 and 2020 and with the addition of point guard Jrue Holiday in the offseason, the stakes were high for the Bucks entering the 2020-2021 campaign. While homegrown superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo put the entire state of Wisconsin at ease by signing a long-term extension with the Bucks, the pressure was on to end the long championship drought. Built For This: The Milwaukee Bucks’ Historic Run to the 2021 NBA Title chronicles this amazing journey through in-depth analysis and expert insight from The Athletic. With coverage from both national and local writers, as well as dynamic photography, this commemorative edition traces every step as the Bucks looked to capture the Larry O’Brien Trophy for the second time in team history. Built For This also features detailed postseason coverage, from the sweet sweep of the Miami Heat to the slugfest against Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets, to the Giannis injury scare in the Atlanta Hawks series all the way through the amazing comeback win against the Suns on the biggest stage of all. Also including in-depth profiles on Antetokounmpo, Holiday, Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez and more, this keepsake will be essential for any Bucks fan for years to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triumph Books
• Release date: Jul 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781641257787

The Athletic

The Athletic has built the world’s largest sports newsroom by focusing on deep reporting, expert analysis, and unmatched journalism to drive its storytelling. It recently became a part of The New York Times Company.

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Contents

Introduction By Rob Peterson

NBA Finals vs. Phoenix

Back from the Brink

From ‘Oh, S—t!’ to ‘Shock’

Valley-Oop, the Sequel

Finally!

Road to the Title

Giannis Antetokounmpo

Breaking Through the Wall

Jrue Holiday

Khris Middleton

The AntetokounBros

Brook Lopez

Bobby Portis

P.J. Tucker

Eastern Conference Quarterfinals vs. Miami

‘That’s What He Does’

Acing the Test

Eastern Conference Semifinals vs. Brooklyn

How They Jrue It Up

Get at Me Dog

Taking the Challenge

Khash Money

The Marathon Continues

Eastern Conference Finals vs. Atlanta

Apply Pressure

‘I Trust This Guy to Death’

Rise Together

Questions? Answered.

Introduction By Rob Peterson

If you have picked up this publication to read about the Milwaukee Bucks, you need to know that this introduction has been building for a long time.

Bucks fans were hoping something like it would have been written in 2019, when the Bucks went 10-1 in their first 11 playoff games, complete with a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals. But … well, the less said about the ending the better.

Bucks fans were also hoping this intro would have been written in 2020, when the Bucks had the NBA’s best record before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. When the season resumed in the NBA bubble, playoff success — for a variety of reasons — again eluded Milwaukee.

But, finally — finally! — in 2021, the pieces came together for the Milwaukee Bucks, as they are the NBA champions, a mere 50 years after the last one.

This championship, however, hasn’t been half a century in the making. It’s more like 50 years in the waiting.

They were built for this ...

Yet, if one feels compelled to mark a date as to where the Bucks’ road to the second title in franchise history began, start on June 27, 2013. That’s when the franchise found its championship cornerstone when then-NBA commissioner David Stern announced, with the 15th pick in the two-thousand and thirteen NBA Draft, the Milwaukee Bucks select… pausing to make sure he had the correct pronunciation, Giannis Adet-o-kunbo, from Athens, Greece. The then-18-year-old was long (6-foot-9), and just as long on potential. He was thin (196 pounds), and just as thin on experience. Only hardcore draft geeks knew Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Now, eight years into his career, everyone knows who The Greek Freak, 2021 Finals MVP, is.

They were built for this ...

You could also point to July 31, 2013, when the other franchise cornerstone, Khris Middleton, was included as a throw-in to the Brandon Jennings-Brandon Knight deal. There have been detractors who have criticized him for not being an adequate complement to Antetokounmpo, but over the course of these past three postseasons, the 6-8 wing has not only been Khash, he’s also been clutch. Middleton averaged 23.6 points per game and hit more shots to tie or give his team the lead in these playoffs than anyone in NBA history.

They were built for this ...

Then, brick by brick, there have been key additions along the way. On Nov. 23, 2020, the Bucks acquired Jrue Holiday in a franchise-altering trade. Some questioned whether the multiple first-round draft picks and swaps were worth it. Throughout the postseason, the defensive stalwart hounded opponents for 94 feet, especially Suns guards Chris Paul and Devin Booker in the Finals, for six games. Was it worth it? Picks for a championship? I would say so.

Three years ago, there were moves for Brook Lopez, Pat Connaughton, and the selection of Donte DiVincenzo in the draft. This season, they brought in Bryn Forbes and Milwaukee folk hero Bobby Portis. There was a mid-year trade for lead dog defender and locker room leader P.J. Tucker. All were crucial to the championship run, a journey that was not only about winning, but also exorcising the demons of playoffs past.

In the first round, they swept the Miami Heat, the team that unceremoniously burst the Bucks’ bubble in 2020. Middleton hit the Game 1 winner in an overtime thriller and the Bucks never looked back. In the conference semis, they faced their toughest test in the Brooklyn Nets. Down two games, then 3-2, the Bucks proved their championship mettle by winning Game 6 at home and Game 7, in overtime on the road, one of the greatest wins in franchise history. After dispatching a game Atlanta Hawks squad in six games, the Bucks did the same against the Suns.

They were built for this ...

Unlike Bucks teams that have fallen short in the past, this team showed the resilience and the determination that defines what it means to be a champion. There were the 0-2 deficits to the Nets and the Suns, Kevin Durant’s nuclear-powered Game 5, the skin-of-their-teeth win in Game 7 and the Game 1 loss to Atlanta. In Game 4 against the Hawks, Antetokounmpo’s knee bent as no human knee should. Most everyone, including Antetokounmpo, thought he was done for the year. He missed two games before returning in time for Game 1 of the NBA Finals, where he averaged 35.2 points, 13.2 rebounds and 5 assists and delivered one huge series-changing block in an MVP performance.

So, as you hold this publication in your hand, you’re thrilled — and possibly are still processing — that your Bucks are world champions. Will Bucks fans need to wait ’til 2071 before reading another introduction about an NBA title?

If this postseason run is any indication, no it won’t take another 50 years, because this team, they were built for this.

NBA Finals vs. Phoenix

4-2 Over the Phoenix Suns

Game 1: Suns 118, Bucks 105

Game 2: Suns 118, Bucks 108

Game 3: Bucks 120, Suns 100

Game 4: Bucks 109, Suns 103

Game 5: Bucks 123, Suns 119

Game 6: Bucks 105, Suns 98

Back from the Brink

Supposedly Lost to Injury, Giannis Antetokounmpo Has Found Dominance and Given Bucks a Chance in NBA Finals

By David Aldridge | July 12, 2021

We take things for granted in our instapundit, there-will-be-another-13-year-old-TikTok-star-next-week world these days.

In the matter of what Giannis Antetokounmpo is doing so far in these Finals, that would be a mistake.

It hasn’t been two weeks since most of the NBA, including Antetokounmpo, feared he might have blown out his ACL in the Eastern Conference finals against the Hawks and be out a year. Maybe longer.

He was back in a week, with what was diagnosed as a hyperextended knee. And he’s still not 100 percent physically. But whatever the number, he’s put Andre the Giant-like paws on this series. The Bucks are still down 2-1 after their 120-100 Game 3 rout of Phoenix on Sunday, with Giannis going for 41 points, 13 rebounds and six assists in 38 minutes. But they have a chance because the two-time MVP’s first three Finals games — ever — are on a par with what the best who ever played in championship series have achieved.

Apples-to-apples comparisons with the all-timers are impossible. As noted, Antetokounmpo’s body of Finals work pales in comparison to that of LeBron James (55 career Finals games), Michael Jordan (35) and others. But Giannis is off to a great start, averaging 34.3 points, 14 rebounds and 4.7 assists in the first three games against the Suns. He’s only the second player in Finals history, after Shaquille O’Neal, to post consecutive games with 40 or more points and 10 or more rebounds.

And he’s gotten to the free-throw line an astounding 47 times in three games. That he made 13 of 17 from the line in Game 3 was a bonus for the Bucks, but he could go 6 of 17 from the line and it would still have a massive impact on a game.

I’m not Michael Jordan, Antetokounmpo almost whispered into the lectern mic after being told that Jordan had scored 40 points in four straight games against the Suns in the ’93 Finals.

No, he’s not. But he’s been pretty damn special.

He’s been the most inspiring player during these playoffs, while (Chris) Paul has been the sentimental player we all root for and want his career to end with a ring, Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas texted Sunday night.

I especially wanted Thomas’ perspective because he put on one of the most courageous and incredible performances while similarly injured on the biggest stage — 25 points in the third quarter of Game 6 of the 1988 Finals against the Lakers after severely spraining his ankle early in the quarter. He finished with 43 points in that game, a narrow Pistons loss.

Giannis Antetokounmpo scored 41 points in Milwaukee’s dominant win over Phoenix in Game 3 of the NBA Finals.

Rare is a two-time league MVP who so often is reminded of what he can’t do. It’s wild. The guy guts opposing defenses, sets up teammates for wide-open shots game after game, year after year, chases down ridiculous blocks and has lifted a city that has been a basketball afterthought for two decades. There were 25,000 people outside Fiserv Forum, the latest crazed watch party to celebrate the Bucks’ ascension to the NBA’s elite. (Is it here that I shouldn’t say the words super-spreader event?) That’s all happening here because of one man.

Not the Bronze Fonz.

Giannis’ leadership on and off the court has been legendary! Thomas said in the text. Remember it was he and the Milwaukee Bucks that stopped the sports world. His failures at the foul line, his lack of shooting touch from the perimeter and on and on. Yet and still he ‘perseveres’ with a determination that’s rarely seen in sports nowadays. His Brooklyn series will be viewed as one of the all-time best when time moves us further away from the present. He has overcome the failures of his physical body and tapped into basketball’s spiritual energy, he doesn’t run anymore — he glides with his strides and dominates with his energy and force. Mental is to physical as 4 is to 1. Size and jumping ability can’t compete with the physics of energy and force!

Antetokounmpo had to trust his teammates to get the Bucks past the Hawks in the last two games of the conference finals while he was out. Once he knew his knee was structurally sound and he could play in the Finals, he has returned with an avenging spirit. He abused Jae Crowder and Mikal Bridges and anyone else Phoenix tried to put on him, fighting for loose balls in the paint for and-1s, starting the ball pinwheeling around when the Suns doubled him.

When the Suns didn’t double, now he’s just really playing one-on-one, Bobby Portis said. Good luck with that. For real, for real.

Said Antetokounmpo: I’m happy that I’m able to be out there, win or lose. It doesn’t matter, the outcome. I feel like everybody worked so hard to be in this moment. Me personally, I’m not trying to make it about me. I was happy that I had a chance to come back, and enjoy, play with my teammates, no matter what the outcome is. Just be out there with them.

I asked Thomas where one goes in a time like that — when you are exhausted, mentally and physically, and you see all that you’ve worked a lifetime for slipping away, because your body — of all things! — got injured at the worst possible time.

After missing the final two games of the Eastern Conference Finals, Giannis Antetokounmpo returned to lead the Bucks against the Suns.

I don’t have the answer to that question, Thomas said. It’s like in the Baptist Church you get the Holy Ghost and Spirits take over. We know it when we see it and feel it. How you get there is still a mystery.

The sheer audacity of Antetokounmpo becoming the Greek Freak is something about which they’ll write books. (Wait a minute … someone already has!) You can’t tell his story enough. It only grows in the retelling. He wasn’t just a young boy from an immigrant family trying to make it in a tough section of Athens less than a decade ago; he was part of a community that was looked down upon, rejected. Not worthy. And yet there was something in that Nigerian kid who was born in Greece that wasn’t just built to survive; it was shape-shifting. Not just greatness on a basketball court, but being willing to stay and be loyal to the team that