LAS VEGAS — The Milwaukee Bucks advanced to the finals of the NBA Cup with a 110-102 win over the Atlanta Hawks on Saturday.
The Bucks will face the Oklahoma City Thunder — who beat the Houston Rockets 111-96 a few hours later— in the championship game.
The semifinals were played back-to-back in Las Vegas, with the Eastern Conference teams squaring off first.
Giannis Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 32 points, 14 rebounds and nine assists, while Damian Lillard added 25 points. Milwaukee avenged its loss from last year’s semis when they were beaten by the Indiana Pacers a game before the final.
“Accept the challenge, that’s all I’ve been talking about,” coach Doc Rivers said about his team’s approach to the Cup. “I think we run from challenges a lot, and we talked about it; Let’s accept it. Let’s put our name out there. We’re going to try to win it, and if we don’t win it, we don’t win it. But there’s nothing wrong with saying you want to win something, and if you win it, great, and if you don’t, at least you went for it.”
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Saturday’s game was a back-and-forth affair between two of the hottest teams in the East. Milwaukee entered having won 10 of its last 13 games, while the Hawks had won seven of their last eight.
The Hawks have also been tough against the teams with the best records in the East. They are undefeated against the Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks (4-0) and 1-1 against the defending champion Boston Celtics.
The teams traded leads in the first three quarters — Atlanta led by two after the first, the Bucks by six at halftime, and then the Hawks were up one before the fourth.
Milwaukee was the better team down the stretch, however. After a De’Andre Hunter free throw cut the Bucks’ lead to 98-96 with four minutes and 32 seconds to go, Milwaukee finished the game on a 12-6 run, especially clamping down defensively.
The play of the night was a block by Antetokounmpo on a lob pass that would have cut his team’s lead to three.
The three-point line also made a big difference for the Bucks. The two teams were even in turnovers and points in the paint, while Atlanta had an edge in free throws. But Milwaukee attempted 21 more threes than the Hawks, and made four more in what ended up only an eight-point win.
“Last time we were ready, but this time we came into it remembering our last experience,” Lillard said after the game. “We came correct. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy playing against a good team, but we prepared, and it just felt familiar. Didn’t feel like a random, new thing.”
The Cup championship berth is a nice turnaround for the Bucks, who started the season 4-9, including a six-game losing streak after winning their first game. Rivers said the recent improvement is what he expected from his veteran-laden group.
“Listen, outside Milwaukee, I think a lot of people was, ‘What’s going on?’” Rivers said. “I don’t think one person inside thought that at all. We just believed that it was going to click, it was going to happen — I would make a point of saying we assumed that — now it is, but we still got a long way to go.”
The Thunder, meanwhile, eventually pulled away from the Rockets in a game that for a while harkened back to the 2000s-era of low-scoring rock fights.
The top two ranked defenses of Oklahoma City and Houston clamped each other up for the first half of the game. The teams combined for only 83 points in the opening 24 minutes.
The Thunder found their footing in the second half, outscoring the Rockets 70-54. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a candidate for MVP, was the game’s leading scorer. He racked up 32 points and added eight rebounds and six assists.
“I thought our force on offense in the second half was much better,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said after the game. “We kind of relied on jump shots in the early part of that game. We got a little better in the second quarter, but when you rely on jump shots, you’re relying on the highest variance shot in the game, and I didn’t think we tested the paint and tested transition enough.”
Houston, on the other hand, had a balanced but ultimately ineffective attack. Six Rockets players scored in double figures, but nobody over 20.
Houston’s shooting was atrocious from everywhere on the floor — the team shot only 36.5% from the field, 23.9% from three and 60% from the free-throw line.
The Thunder were able to overcome their shooting struggles with brilliant individual play from their stars. Jalen Williams scored 20 and center Isaiah Hartenstein took advantage of the attention on perimeter players to add 21 points of his own.
Though Oklahoma City didn’t make the NBA Cup games in Las Vegas last season, this is the second straight year the team has proven to be a formidable threat in the West. The Thunder were the No. 1 seed in the conference last season, and are leading the West again this year.
Tuesday’s matchup between Oklahoma City and Milwaukee will be the first game between the teams this season. And it’s not inconceivable the Cup championship proves to be a Finals preview as well.
“The NBA is competitive,” Daigneault said. “So when you put anything on the line, the guys are going to be amped up for that. I think you’ve seen that from every team throughout the whole Cup, and both teams will bring their fastball on Tuesday.”
