National Basketball Association

Without Giannis, Bucks show versatility, resilience in Game 5 vs. Hawks

Updated Jul. 2, 2021 8:44 a.m. ET

By Yaron Weitzman
FOX Sports NBA Writer

So this was the scene immediately after the Milwaukee Bucks' victory Thursday night over the Atlanta Hawks, and I want you to pay close attention to every detail.

The player chosen by TNT for the walk-off interview was ... Brook Lopez? Yes, Brook Lopez, NBA Twitter’s favorite whipping boy, was the star of the night. He was excellent, scoring 33 points — a playoff career-high — and also swatting four shots, and deserving of the honor.

Except, well, he had competition. And as Lopez was answering TNT’s questions, Bucks fans began chanting the name of that competition. And that name was ... Bobby Portis? Yes, Bobby Portis, who had made his first-ever postseason start and responded by going off for (*double checks notes*) 22 points in (*triple checks notes*) 36 minutes to go along with eight rebounds, three assists and three steals.

I think it’s fair to say that there is not a person in the world who, at any point this season, foresaw any of this. But so it has gone this postseason, with stars dropping like flies and games on the schedule every other day. The Hawks took the court Thursday night without Trae Young, who was still recovering from the bone bruise on his foot that knocked him out of Game 3. The Bucks battled without Giannis Antetokounmpo, who was nursing a hyperextended left knee suffered late in Game 4, making him the 10th member of this year’s All-Star teams to miss a game this postseason, a list that doesn’t even include Young.

So, no, Thursday night’s game didn’t exactly have a Pivotal Conference Finals Game vibe. It felt more like the kind of thing you stumble onto while flipping channels on a random Thursday night in January, only to find out that both teams are on the second leg of back-to-backs and resting their stars. In other words: there’s not much to be taken from the Bucks’ 123-112 victory — giving them a 3-2 series lead — that can be used to project how the rest of the series plays out.

But at this point, with every remaining team resembling a MASH unit, none of that matters. All that does is doing whatever you can to survive and, it’s here where the Bucks are proving particularly adept.

Think about their past few weeks. They dropped the first two games of their second-round matchup with Brooklyn, including an embarrassing 39-point loss to a Nets team missing both Kyrie Irving and James Harden. They looked dead. Obituaries were drafted. Coaching seats were hot. But then they bounced back, withstood multiple back-breaking performances and shots from Kevin Durant and managed to eke out a Game 7 win to advance.

Things once again looked promising. Then they dropped Game 1 to the Hawks. In front of a home crowd. They bounced back with a couple of victories but were then blown out in Game 4. Giannis went down. Some teams might have rolled over. The Bucks instead responded by opening up the game Thursday with one of their best stretches of the postseason.

"We didn’t want to take any chances," Jrue Holiday, who finished with 25 points and 13 assists, said after the game. "We wanted to come out strong and hit first."

They did, jumping out to a 20-point lead in the first quarter, one which they never relinquished. It started with Holiday’s aggressive attacks, which led to easy looks for him and cleared a path for dump-offs to Lopez.

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The Bucks also used Lopez as a screener for Khris Middleton, an action for which the Hawks had no answer. Middleton finished with 26 points and eight assists — to go along with 13 rebounds — and toyed with the Hawks’ defense in the second half.

One possession he’d pull up for a jumper. The next he’d hit a rolling Lopez. The next he’d use Lopez rumbling to the rim as a decoy to generate space for a shooter on the wing.

"Brook had such a dominant game rolling and getting by the basket," Middleton said. "He got so many guys coming to him after that, just finding out where the help is coming from."

The game was won in the paint, where the Bucks outscored the Hawks 66-36. They converted 23 of their 27 looks at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass, while holding the Hawks, who had no counter for the Bucks' decision to switch on all screens, to 9-of-16 from that same area. It was a savvy tweak by Bucks head coach Mike Budenholzer, a man not known for his in-series adjustments. But his bet was that without Young the Hawks had no player who could punish the Bucks one-on-one, and he was proven right. Atlanta hung around, thanks to 28 points from Bogdan Bogdanovic, but also tossed away too many possessions with Kevin Huerter (3-for-12, eight points) step-backs or awkward Danilo Gallinari (5-for-11, 19 points) heaves.

This is the Bucks’ recipe for ending their 50-year championship drought, the thing they have that the other teams still standing don’t. Their situation is a rare one for today’s NBA. Their core — Giannis, Middleton, Lopez and Budenholzer — has been allowed to experience failure together, and from those experiences, a level of resilience can be born, one that can allow a group to succeed even if it means crawling through the mud.

"We've been through a lot of stuff," Lopez said. "We've learned a lot of stuff both in wins and losses, and we've had that experience as a group."

And yet, things are different. Holiday is new. So is Portis. Budenholzer is coaching like a different man. Put it all together and you get a unique combination of continuity mixed with a fresh approach.

Will that be enough to carry them forward? Who knows. In these playoffs, it’s silly to even pretend to predict any outcomes.

What the Bucks have shown, though, is that no matter what happens, no matter who plays, they can’t be counted out. Maybe that’s not enough. But also, maybe that ends up being all that matters.

Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports and the author of "Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports." Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman.