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Tim BontempsESPN
After Giannis Antetokounmpo hit an investment jumper in the lane to end a 7-0 personal run and give his Milwaukee Bucks what turned out to be an insurmountable advantage in an eventual 109-105 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night, he celebrated sitting on the runway at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia and looking straight at the camera with a smile on his face.
That smile remained as he returned to the confusion and when the few fans allowed him to enter the building they showered Antetokounmpo with boos. But with a win in hand after a dominant performance (32 points, 15 rebounds and 5 assists in 43 minutes), the smile was still on Anteokounmpo’s face after the game when asked why he chose to celebrate. This way.
“Is there something wrong with having fun?” Said Antetokoumnpo. “I think there’s nothing wrong with having fun. I like to have fun. In the first half, I didn’t have a good time. A lot, you know, I talked to myself in the middle and I said, “No matter how bad the game is, you can’t forget what you have to do, which is have fun.”
“Viouslybviament, there are a couple of times I exaggerate, but I don’t want to get anything back. I wasn’t thinking, ‘Oh, I’m going to sit down.’ I was having a good time. I was talking to my teammates. I was talking to them. “I was trying to be right now. But I was just having fun.”
It wasn’t much fun for the Sixers, who kept the Bucks with a 12-on-45 shot in the first half of the overall, including 1-on-17 from 3 points away, and led up to 19 points before blowing. the late. Philadelphia fell out of first place in the east thanks to the Brooklyn Nets ’win over Indiana on Wednesday night.
Sixers center Dwight Howard in particular took exception to the Antetokounmpo celebration.
“I wanted to go to Stone Cold Stunner with him, but he already had a technology,” Howard said, referring to a move popularized by WWE Stone Cold fighter Steve Austin. “It’s basketball. I wanted to have fun, but we’ll see these guys again. Today we allowed them to get back in the game. We did. We can’t control it.
“But he had a great game. He made some tough shots at the end of the game, running MVP, and he had a great game. I’m not able to talk about garbage or say anything negative, but we’ll see them produce again and it will be a different result “.
There was a pretty big presence missing from this game: Sixers superstar Joel Embiid, who was sitting on the sidelines in moccasins and a hooded sweatshirt and is still out with a bruise on his left knee suffered a fall on Friday. past in a win against the Wizards. But the energy and intensity of both sides seemed reminiscent of a playoff game, and it was reminiscent of what could be reserved for June, when those teams would be scheduled to face the Eastern Conference semifinals.
Still, the Bucks nearly threw the game, gaining a seven-point lead in the final minute of regulation, thanks to Sixers keeper Furkan Korkmaz hitting a 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds to go. to tie the score at 93. That’s when Antetokounmpo saved Milwaukee in overtime.
Ultimately, Milwaukee took to the road the kind of hard-fought physical game he’s going to have to win this spring if he wants to break through and reach the NBA Finals for the first time since the 1970s.
“We knew we were playing terribly on the offensive end, losing shots,” Bucks striker Khris Middleton said. “But at the same time, we all stayed together, we stayed positive and we knew there was a lot of play left and we would have a shot as long as we kept playing on defense and kept playing the right way at the other end.
“At some point the game would start to change and we were going to run and luckily it did.”
He did so, in large part, because of the heroics of Antetokounmpo. After Howard, unusually, made a long jump to tie the score at 98 with 3:08 left for overtime, Antetokounmpo scored on three consecutive possessions: a hard drive on his left hand for a throw; a 3-point drop-down pointer; and hesitation, jumping back into the lane – to make it 105-98 with 1:12 remaining, ensuring the Bucks would win.
“When the game starts, you try to get into your pace, but you don’t go down the right path … It’s hard to get into a rhythm,” said Antetokounmpo, who scored 28 of his 32 points in the second half and overtime. “And the way I try to get into a rhythm is to involve everyone. I try to move the ball a little bit, move the legs, move the body a little bit. But coming in in the second half, I wanted to be a little more aggressive, but I knew that he couldn’t get out the door and be aggressive.
“But going down the stretch, I was just trying to be aggressive … My teammates need me to keep playing the right game and they need me to be aggressive, so that’s what I tried to do.”
The jokes continued at Antetokounmpo’s so-called Zoom, as at one point he ordered a cheesecake (making sure he had one with Cheese Whiz) and was asked where the idea of sitting at the track.
“Guys, I haven’t seen it,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to do at the time, and that’s what I did. I didn’t see it. But, like I said, I was just trying to have fun. I was trying to enjoy the moment.”
It turns out that Antetokounmpo was not the only one who had never seen him.
“I was surprised when I saw him do it,” Middleton said laughing. “But I don’t think it was for any sign of disrespect, even though I know some people might take it that way. Knowing him, in the last few weeks, months, whatever he wants, he wants to have fun.
“I had never seen him either, but I’m glad he did it with a smile after a tough look in that game.”