Game balls, Dame Time taunts and the budding Bucks-Pacers beef،
FOR GIANNIS ANTETOKUNMPO, it was supposed to be a moment of triumph. He threw down a thunderous dunk with less than 30 seconds remaining to give his team a 16-point lead, capping the Milwaukee Bucks' Dec. 13 victory over the visiting Indiana Pacers. Antetokounmpo's final dunk gave him a career-high 64 points, the most points a Bucks player has ever scored in a game.
All he wanted was his prize.
As the final seconds ticked down and players and team personnel swarmed the field, a frantic effort began to secure the game ball, on both sides.
Antetokounmpo wanted this to commemorate his record-breaking night. The Pacers wanted to give it to rookie Oscar Tshiebwe, who scored his first career regular-season point that night.
Unsure of where the ball was, Antetokounmpo exchanged heated words with Pacers players and staff before sprinting toward the Indiana locker room in search of the ball.
“People didn't see the way Indiana acted that night,” a Bucks team source told ESPN. “You come into our house and take our stuff. Screaming, 'F-you. F-you.' Yeah, how’s a guy going to react?”
Antetokounmpo questioned after the game whether he had possession of the game ball, but camera footage showed a Bucks staff member recovering the ball almost immediately after the buzzer sounded. The ball Indiana received and gave to Tshiebwe was apparently a substitute.
“It was unnecessary, it was disproportionate,” Pacers center Myles Turner told ESPN last week. “They had the ball the whole time. I think that was obvious. So I'll leave it at that.”
Yet something else had irritated Antetokounmpo before he furiously began making sure Milwaukee had possession of the ball. The two-time MVP was also upset that the Pacers left the court after the buzzer without shaking hands, team sources told ESPN, which Antetokounmpo saw as a sign of disrespect.
“Does everyone shake hands in the NBA after a game?” Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton told ESPN while shaking his head.
“They tried to run up the score at the end,” Turner told ESPN. “Giannis came in, came out, and then we cut the lead to about 10 points in garbage time – they put all their starters back and then they tried to run up the score. There are unwritten rules in basketball -ball. We thought it was disrespectful and some guys reacted accordingly.”
The heated exchange between the two teams and its latent consequences are exactly how rivalries are born. The two teams return to the scene of the brawl in Milwaukee on New Year's Day before traveling to Indiana for a match on Wednesday, which will already mark their fifth meeting of the season.
Bucks-Pacers is one of seven regular-season matchups that will involve a fifth game this season, a byproduct of the in-season tournament and something no team had done since the Heat and Nets during from the 2003-04 season.
The Pacers beat the Bucks in their first two meetings this season, including in Las Vegas in the semifinals of the season tournament. So Milwaukee was determined not to allow Indiana to earn a third straight victory in their final game.
“We kind of intimidated them in that game,” said Bucks forward Bobby Portis, who was ejected in the fourth quarter of that Dec. 13 game. “I think they felt that presence. When a team beats you twice, you don't want to let them beat you three times because now they think they can play with you. We played with a feeling of emergency. We were more physical, we hit them. I don't think they liked that.
FOR THE PACERSthe season tournament represented an opportunity.
After finishing in 11th place in the Eastern Conference last season, Indiana went on an undefeated group run, led by Haliburton, who made the All-Star team last year but is off to an even better start this season. The Pacers' dominance throughout the tournament earned the team the kind of national television spotlight it hadn't experienced in years.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee has been a mainstay at the top of the East for years now, but the roster received a shake-up a week before training camp when the Bucks acquired superstar Damian Lillard. But with two of the league's stars working together, Milwaukee presented a formidable obstacle for Indiana, a small-market team with aspirations of toppling another.
They won a championship, man. A small market team winning a championship obviously has a good formula,” Turner said of his ranking against the Bucks. “They're in the division as well. I don't think we're using the other teams as a measuring stick, I don't think that's the best way to put it. We're running our own race at the moment. And see how we we rank against other teams and I progress from match to match.
Until their championship game loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, the Pacers had used the tournament as a showcase for their top-ranked offense. Haliburton is averaging 24.6 points and leads the NBA with a 12.8 assist average while shooting 50% from the field and 41% from 3.
He had 20 points and 20 assists in back-to-back games Monday, joining John Stockton (1990) and Magic Johnson (1984) as the only players in NBA history to record 20 points and 20 assists, according to looking by ESPN Stats & Information. No player has ever recorded 20 assists in three consecutive games.
“His offensive level is beyond elite,” Indiana coach Rick Carlisle told reporters after Saturday's 140-126 victory over the New York Knicks. “He's worked a lot over the last two summers on reads, on his ability to create pressure at the rim and increase his range, and so teams are in a real bind.”
And while Haliburton capitalizes on the moment, he also fuels the simmering Midwest rivalry.
In their mid-season tournament semifinal game, it was Haliburton who sealed the victory for the Pacers with a statement. With 48.0 seconds left, the Bucks were within five points when Haliburton drilled a 3-pointer past the outstretched hand of Bucks center Brook Lopez, who finished second in the voting for defensive player the year there is a season. As Haliburton turned toward the crowd, he looked down at his wrist in a nod to Lady Time, a move usually reserved for the iconic veteran guard.
Lillard says he holds no hard feelings about the taunt, but acknowledges that the games against the Pacers were even more competitive because both teams played with something on the line in Las Vegas.
“What was at stake in [second] “The one time we played them, that’s what made it happen,” Lillard told ESPN. “And then what happened the third time obviously made it even more so. It adds a little extra.”
PLAYERS ON BOTH Both the Bucks and Pacers recognize the increased intensity of games between the two teams so far this season – and expect more of the same this week.
“There will probably be a little more juice, for sure,” Haliburton told ESPN. “How could there not be?”
But a rivalry? No one is ready to go that far yet.
“We made it to the tournament of the season,” Haliburton said. “It's a real game, but we still have to have some battles. We're 2-1 against them this year, but at the end of the day, they're a higher seed, we're a lower seed. So that's it a real rivalry, we have to participate in a playoff match. It has to be done over time.”
Prior to this season, the Bucks had won 15 of their last 17 meetings with the Pacers, who haven't reached the playoffs since the 2019-20 season, when they were swept by the Miami Heat in the first round. If they had won this series, they would have faced Milwaukee in the East semifinals.
A playoff encounter this season is not out of the question. The Bucks are currently second in the East; the Pacers are seventh. If those seeds hold and the Pacers win their first play-in game, the two teams will meet in the playoffs for the first time since 2000, when the Pacers beat the Bucks in the first round en route to their only NBA. Appearance in the final.
This is a postseason game that Antetokounmpo would surely enjoy. In three games this season, the double MVP averages 51.7 points on 72% shooting. But in assessing these next two matchups, Antetokounmpo remained dismissive.
“It’s just another game, man,” Antetokounmpo told ESPN. “Is it the playoffs? Why would I look forward to that?”
