MILWAUKEE — Damian Lillard had 16 points, the ball, and the offense to himself at the end of the first quarter.
As Lillard dribbled into the frontcourt with 13 seconds remaining, Rivers followed a similar path on the sideline. The Bucks head coach put his hands in the air to grab his players’ attention and then signaled for them to clear the area and let Lillard work in isolation. Bobby Portis ran up to set a screen, but the veteran point guard waved him away as he crossed half court.
This was a moment for Rivers and the rest of the Bucks to put their trust in Lillard and let him rise to the occasion. The Bucks head coach and point guard have built that trust over the last few months, both on and off the floor, but nothing can solidify those feelings quite like when it is done during a big moment on the floor.
With fans rising to their feet, Lillard isolated against Indiana Pacers backup point guard T.J. McConnell. Lillard, the eight-time All-Star guard dribbled from left to right in front of his body and then in between his legs from right to left. After an inside-out dribble with his left hand, Lillard went in between his legs from left to right and then back in between his legs from right to left, jabbed his right foot toward McConnell and gathered with a step back to his left.
From 29 feet away, Lillard rose for a 3 and buried it as the buzzer sounded.
With the Fiserv Forum crowd going crazy in his first career playoff game as a member of the Milwaukee Bucks, Lillard walked back toward his teammates on the bench having scored 19 of the Bucks’ 30 points in the first quarter. As he made his way up the left sideline and looked out at the ravenous throng of Bucks fans surrounding him, Lillard delivered a simple message.
“This is what ya’ll brought me here for,” Lillard said confidently, as he slapped the Milwaukee across the front of his jersey.
“This is what ya’ll brought me here for.” pic.twitter.com/JgjmxzbJeP
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) April 22, 2024
With Giannis Antetokounmpo sidelined for Game 1 with a left soleus (calf) strain, Lillard stepped up and took over the first playoff game of his Bucks career, leading them to a 109-94 victory. Lillard kept going after those 19 first-quarter points, adding 16 more in the second to get to 35, the most scored by a Bucks player in the single half of a playoff game.
“It was fun,” Lillard told The Athletic after the game. “I think I’ve done it maybe one other time, that was in ’19.”
It was actually the third 30-point first half of Lillard’s playoff career. The future Hall of Fame point guard did it most recently in a Game 2 loss to the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the 2021 NBA Playoffs, but as Lillard correctly remembered, he did it most memorably in the Portland Trail Blazers’ Game 5 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the 2019 NBA Playoffs. That was the same night Lillard hit a buzzer-beating stepback 3 over Paul George and waved goodbye to Thunder.
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Now, five years later, with a different name on the front of his jersey for the first time in his 12-year NBA career, Lillard made Bucks franchise history. In his Milwaukee playoff debut, Lillard did something neither Kareem Abdul-Jabbar nor Giannis Antetokounmpo nor any of the players in the Bucks’ 56-year franchise history had done.
“I was just in attack mode,” Lillard told The Athletic. “I wasn’t thinking like, ‘Oh, I’m scoring a bunch of points tonight.’ It was just like, win the game. Do what you gotta do. Be assertive. Be in attack mode. And that was it. I’m sure Giannis, Kareem, they both capable of it too, it’s just not easy to do and it doesn’t happen all the time.”
With the Pacers double teaming Lillard as soon as he got the ball in the second half, Lillard ended the game with 35 points, six rebounds and three assists, but Lillard’s dominant first half set the tone and gave the Bucks all they needed to pull out a victory without Antetokounmpo on the floor.
“He carried us. He was unbelievable,” Rivers said. “I thought he just played under control. Very aggressive, which is the way we wanted him.
“The other thing, the biggest difference, I thought, was that he started the game going downhill and then the game came out. Like he started the game attacking the basket. That’s what we talked about. Get to the basket, get to the paint, and then the floor will open up and I thought that’s where the 3s led after the attack, so it was really good.”
Lillard missed his first shot of the night, a catch-and-shoot mid-range jumper on the left baseline, but then got himself going by getting to the rim and getting to the free-throw line.
One possession after that missed jumper, Lillard got downhill and floated a sweet lefty finish high off the glass over the top of Pascal Siakam. Two possessions later, he drew a foul on the left sidelines as he attacked Siakam in the pick-and-roll. On the sideline inbounds play after that foul, the Bucks ran a corner pin-down dribble handoff for Lillard. He stopped short and pulled up for a 3, which drew a foul on Andrew Nembhard, who was trailing too closely behind Lillard.
“You know that old rule: never foul a gunslinger,” Rivers said. “It gets him going. He missed his first shot. He had a wide-open shot, missed it, gets fouled, gets three free throws. And I think he was going anyway, but that didn’t hurt, for sure.”
From there, Lillard had it rolling.
With Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis setting screens for Lillard near half court and the Pacers refusing to trap to start the game, Lillard had plenty of space to operate and kept the Pacers guessing by mixing drives with pull-up jumpers.
As the Pacers struggled to find an offensive rhythm in the first quarter, Lillard took advantage by attacking off of their missed shots and looking for opportunities against a transition defense unable to set up to stop him.
And when the Pacers were overaggressive and took away his 3-point opportunities, Lillard just blew by defenders and got all the way to the rim.
Lillard ended the first quarter with a bang by knocking down that buzzer-beating stepback 3 and immediately went to the bench to get his only rest of the first half. Rivers gave Lillard a five-minute respite to start the second quarter. In that time, the Bucks increased their lead from nine points to 20.
When Lillard returned with 7:08 in the second quarter and the Bucks leading 44-24, it was clear the Pacers were not going to allow him to beat them the same way he did in the first quarter. They started trapping Lillard and forcing the ball out of his hands, but the new coverage and their heightened attention to Lillard just led to mistakes, like leaving the best player on the floor all alone for a catch-and-shoot 3.
And by the end of the first half, Lillard was in such a good place offensively that even when it looked like his rhythm had been disrupted, he just created a new rhythm and knocked down another shot.
Myles Turner is a great defensive player. The 7-footer did well to rotate early to Lillard and keep him from a catch-and-shoot opportunity. But there wasn’t a single thing he could do about the 6-foot-2 guard sizing him up and just shooting over the top of him.
It was just that kind of night for Lillard.
“It was great. I’ve seen that on television a lot,” said Khris Middleton, who had 23 points, 10 rebounds. “We saw it the first game of the season. I’ve been on the opposite side of that a couple times. To be on the same side of it, it was great. He set the tone for us. He came out, threw the first punch and really got us off to a great start with a great lead that lasted the whole game.”
Lillard didn’t score in the second half of Sunday’s game, but it didn’t matter. He had done enough in the first half to give the Bucks the lead they needed to handle business in Game 1 of the series without Antetokounmpo. The Pacers spent the entire second half sending double teams at him, which made life on his teammates easy enough for the Bucks to come away with a 14-point victory.
Before Sunday’s game, Rivers told reporters that he didn’t have a special message for Lillard. He believed that his veteran point guard had been at this long enough and played in plenty of playoff games to know exactly what his team needed in that moment and he delivered. But that trust is built on the bond Rivers and Lillard have built together in the last three months together in Milwaukee.
For Lillard, that has been a special connection.
As the Bucks prepared for the Pacers this week, Rivers peppered Lillard with questions about when the Bucks point guard was going to take him out to dinner so that they could talk about boxing, a shared passion for both.
“He was like, ‘We need to talk about some boxing.’ And I was like, ‘Let’s go,” Lillard told The Athletic. “He was like, ‘Where? When? What time?’”
So, after a few calls around his new city, Lillard booked a table for himself and Rivers at a popular steakhouse in downtown Milwaukee on Wednesday night.
“I told him and we did it,” Lillard said. “But it wasn’t like no, ‘Oh, we talking‘ thing, we just chopped it up. It was just dinner with Doc, not dinner with the coach and the point guard. We just talk a lot of s— about boxing.”
In his postgame interview, Rivers joked that he clearly is the more knowledgeable boxing mind since he had favored Ryan Garcia over Devin Haney in the WBC super lightweight championship bout in their dinner conversation (which was the stunning outcome on Saturday night). But while Lillard downplayed the significance of their dinner, he did not downplay the significance of his relationship with Rivers.
“We’ve connected,” Lillard said. “I’ve always respected how he goes about being a coach. He says what’s unpopular. He’s not afraid to address s— and I’m a fan of that. I like addressing the elephant in the room, the uncomfortable situations. My family, that’s how it’s always been. That’s how you move past stuff and grow. So I like that that has always been his style.
“He challenges the best players, in front of everybody. I think that’s how you get the most out of the team. But I think most importantly, and he’s said it before, the coaches can get points and rebounds; they only get something out of winning, so I know that, by the way he behaves and how he speaks, that’s what he ultimately wants. And that’s what I’m here for, an opportunity to win too.”
Just like how Lillard was brought to Milwaukee for the biggest moments before the season, Rivers was brought to Milwaukee in the middle of the season to make sure the Bucks lived up to their potential as a championship contender. It was only one game, and the Bucks have a long way to go before they can even think about hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy, but with the support of his head coach, on Sunday, Lillard threw the first punch.
“His confidence is literally unshakable,” Rivers said after the game. “He’s got that prizefighter-like mentality. It was almost like he was training for the fight. And then when the bell rings, he seems to be ready. That’s his mentality and that’s how he plays.”
(Photo of Damian Lillard: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
