A wild final minute and walk-off free throws. Takeaways from the Heat’s Game 2 win over the Bucks
Five takeaways from the fifth-seeded Miami Heat’s 116-114 win over the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday in the second round of the playoffs at Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Lake Buena Vista. Miami holds a 2-0 lead in the best-of-7 series:
The Heat was in control for most of the game, but it took a wild ending and walk-off free throws to get the win.
After the first quarter, the Heat trailed for just 29 seconds. But the game still almost went into overtime.
Miami looked to be in complete control after a Bam Adebayo mid-range jumper gave the Heat a six-point lead with 54.5 seconds to play. What followed was two missed free throws from Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, and the Heat’s six-point advantage remained intact until an Antetokounmpo dunk that cut Miami’s lead to four with 15 seconds to play.
Even then, the Heat looked to be in control as long as it avoided turnovers and made its free throws.
But the Bucks did not foul immediately, instead trapping Jimmy Butler in front of the Heat’s bench. As Butler fell out of bounds, he threw a pass toward Miami’s basket that was stolen by Milwaukee center Brook Lopez and put in for a layup to trim the Heat’s lead to just two points with 8.5 seconds to play.
“It’s a terrible IQ play,” Butler said of the late-game turnover. “You should never throw the ball toward the other team’s basket. I had a lapse in judgment.”
Butler was intentionally fouled on the next possession, and he made one of two free throws to put Miami ahead by three points with 7.7 seconds to play.
The wildest part was still to come.
With a chance to tie the game, the Bucks put the ball in All-Star Khris Middleton’s hands for a three-pointer that would have tied the game. Middleton missed the shot, but the officials ruled that he was fouled on the three-point attempt by Heat guard Goran Dragic with 4.3 seconds to play.
Dragic argued that his hands were straight up in the air and that Middleton’s forward momentum on the shot was the reason for the contact.
Middleton all three free throws to tie the game.
“On Dragic’s play, he doesn’t allow him the space,” crew chief Marc Davis said to a pool reporter following the game of Dragic’s foul. “After he begins his upwards shooting motion he doesn’t allow Middleton the space to land and the contact by Dragic’s torso to Middleton’s knees is illegal, upsetting his balance, thus being deemed an illegal act and shooting foul.”
With less than five seconds remaining and an opportunity to avoid overtime, the Heat drew up a play that resulted in a Butler mid-range jumper as the game clock expired. But the officials ruled there was a foul on that jump shot, too, with Antetokounmpo’s left hand making contact with Butler’s body on the shot.
With no time remaining, Butler only needed to make one free throw to clinch the victory.
“Butler begins his upwards shooting motion and releases the shot prior to the expiration of the period,” Davis said to a pool reporter. “This makes this a legal field goal attempt. He must be allowed the space to land and Giannis contacts him with his left hand on his torso and I felt like it affected his balance and did not allow him the space to land in a normal basketball position. As a result I judged this to be a shooting foul.”
Davis said because “the contact occurred with zeros on the clock,” Butler shot the free throws with no players on the lane lines and no time on the clock. He made both walk-off free throws and was immediately met with hugs from his teammates.
“I guess so,” Butler, an avid soccer fan, said when asked if the final two free throws felt like a penalty kick with no players around him. “Don’t get me hyped up, making me think that I’m a footballer. But as long as we win, I wish I could kick in there and say that’s how I win it. But we’ll take a dub however we can get it.”
According to ESPN, the Heat’s Game 2 win was only the third playoff game in NBA history that ended with free throws with no time remaining. The other two postseason games came in 1974 and 1979.
With all of the fouls and timeouts, the final minute of the game took about 18 real-time minutes to complete.
“You’re all over the place emotionally,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of the ending to Game 2. “You have a six, seven-point lead going down the stretch. But you know that you have to execute and you have to be able to get a couple buckets because you just know how fast they’re going to get up the court. They do present some challenges there. We didn’t handle it perfectly, as you can tell. But at least those teachable moments tomorrow will be after a win instead of a loss.”
The Heat did not need big scoring performances from its All-Star duo in Game 2. Miami just needed its shooters to make shots.
After Butler scored a playoff career-high 40 points in Game 1, he finished Wednesday’s win with 13 points on 3-of-8 shooting and six assists. Adebayo ended the night with 15 points on 4-of-8 shooting, nine rebounds and three assists.
Instead, it was the others that stepped up and made shots.
Seven Heat players finished with double-digit points — Dragic (23 points), Tyler Herro (17), Jae Crowder (16), Adebayo (15), Butler (13), Duncan Robinson (13) and Kelly Olynyk (11).
“I think I told you after last game, anybody can do that for us,” Butler said. “Anybody can score points. Tonight, Goran, Tyler, Jae, Bam. [Derrick Jones Jr.] came in and hit some big buckets. We got a team full of guys that aren’t scared to take and make shots. I love this group. I don’t need to be a 40-point per night scorer. That’s not my role here. My role is to impact winning, and I think I did that on both sides of the ball today.”
Dragic continued the best postseason run of his NBA career with 23 points on 8-of-18 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 shooting on threes, five rebounds and four assists in 34 minutes on Wednesday.
Dragic has scored 20 or more points in each of Miami’s first six playoff games. It’s Dragic’s longest string of consecutive 20-point performances in a Heat uniform and the second-longest of his NBA career, with the only one topping it coming when he did it for seven consecutive games in 2014.
While paint points and free throws were the path to success for the Heat in Game 1, the three-pointer powered it’s Game 2 performance.
The Heat shot 17 of 45 on threes (37.8 percent) on Wednesday. Each one was important, especially in the second half when Milwaukee’s elite interior defense stepped up and limited Miami to eight paint points over the final two quarters.
The Heat made just five two-point shots in the second half, relying on eight made threes during that time to keep the offense running.
Outside shooting was expected to be important for Miami entering the series. The Bucks’ defense gave up the most three-point attempts in the league (39.3 per game) in the regular season as it focused on deterring teams from the paint, while the Heat finished the regular season with the NBA’s second-best team three-point percentage (37.9)
Free throws were also important for a Heat offense that could not score much around the rim in Game 2. Miami shot 16 of 21 from the foul line in the second half and 25 of 32 for the game.
As for defending Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, it wasn’t perfect for the Heat. But Miami turned it up a notch defensively in the fourth quarter to hold on for the win.
Antetokounmpo came out with a more aggressive approach after scoring 18 points on 12 shots in Game 1. The reigning MVP finished Game 2 with a game-high 29 points on 10-of-18 shooting, to go with 14 rebounds and three assists, but finished with a negative plus/minus for the second consecutive game.
Antetokounmpo was a minus-14 in Game 1 and minus-7 in Game 2. It’s the first time he has finished with a negative plus/minus in consecutive games since last year’s Eastern Conference Finals, when the Bucks lost to the Toronto Raptors.
“I wouldn’t say we do,” Spoelstra said when asked if the Heat has Antetokounmpo figured out. “This is what great players do. They’re going to present challenges. As competitors, would you want it to be easy? This is not going to be easy. So you have to find different ways to impact the game. He’s not going to stop. He’s incredibly gifted and aggressive, and he knows how to put you in compromising positions. You got to find a way to overcome it, and you got to do it for 48 minutes and you got to keep on doing it until the series is over.”
Milwaukee scored 114 points on 43.5 percent shooting and made 7 of 25 (28 percent) threes on Wednesday. The Heat scored 22 points off the Bucks’ 14 turnovers, with the help of 12 steals.
Starting guard Eric Bledsoe, who missed Game 1 because of a strained right hamstring, contributed 16 points and seven rebounds in 31 minutes, and added a different dimension to Milwaukee’s offense with his driving ability. Middleton contributed 23 points on 6-of-15 shooting.
But the Heat’s defense stepped up late, limited the Bucks to 7 of 23 (30.4 percent) shooting in the fourth quarter.
Game 2 did not go without a hitch for the Heat. Veteran forward Andre Iguodala limped off the court in the third quarter and did not return.
Milwaukee’s Kyle Korver fouled Iguodala on a three-pointer, and Iguodala landed on Korver’s foot and turned his right ankle. Officials called a Flagrant 1 on Korver for not giving Iguodala space to land on the shot, and Iguodala remained in the game to shoot the three free throws.
After the free throws, Iguodala immediately hobbled off the court and went back to the locker room with the Heat’s training staff. He did not return after exiting the game with 1:36 remaining in the third quarter and was diagnosed with a sprained right ankle.
Forward Derrick Jones Jr., who did not play in Game 1 and was out of Miami’s rotation to begin this second-round series, was subbed in for the 36-year-old Iguodala. Jones entered and gave the Heat solid defensive minutes, finishing with two points and three blocks in seven minutes.
“Derrick was a part of our last series,” Spoelstra said. “This is playoff basketball, so sometimes it just depends on the matchup. He kept himself ready. He has really been working this last week and he didn’t overreact to it just like K-Nunn didn’t overreact to the last series. We need everybody. It just depends on when and where, and the opponent.”
There was not an immediate update on Iguodala’s injury following the game, but he did watch the fourth quarter from the team’s bench.
“We’ll know more about Andre tomorrow,” Spoelstra said. “He was telling me that he could go back in. But the speed of the game, I just want to make sure that he’s OK. Those kind of things, you never know until tomorrow.”
If history is any indication, the fifth-seeded Heat is on track to eliminate the top-seeded Bucks and advance to the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time since the final season of the Big 3 era in 2014.
After winning the first two games of its series against Milwaukee, Miami is in a very good spot. The Heat owns a perfect 15-0 all-time record in playoff series that it has taken a 2-0 lead in.
While Milwaukee finished the regular season with the NBA’s top record at 56-17, it just seems like the Heat is a bad matchup for the Bucks. Miami has now won four of its five games against Milwaukee this season, including two wins in three games against the Bucks during the regular season.
The last time a No. 5 seed advanced to the conference finals was in the 2013 playoffs, when the fifth-seeded Memphis Grizzlies were swept by the second-seeded San Antonio Spurs in the Western Conference Finals.
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 12:16 AM.
