LAS VEGAS — This would have been a measuring stick game for both teams if it had just been a random Tuesday during the regular season. Milwaukee comes in having won 10-of-12, but much of that came against a soft schedule; how will the Bucks fair against one of the NBA’s best? For the Thunder, the last time they saw the Bucks (in March) was a wake-up call.
“We played them late in the year last year on the road and they really took it to us, and it was a great game for us,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said of the night where Giannis Antetokounmpo had 30 points and 19 boards. “Because we had been having a great season to that point, and we ran up against a team that was really ready to take it to us, and they did. Physically mauled us. Played with more edge that night. It was good — it was like water in the face for us.”
Have the Thunder learned their lesson from that game? Will Shai Gilgeous-Alexander continue to make his MVP case, this time on a bigger stage?
Now throw in the motivation of winning the NBA Cup — and the half-million each that goes to players on the victorious team — and you get one of the best games of the regular season.
The NBA Cup Championship Game between the Milwaukee Bucks and Oklahoma City Thunder takes place in Las Vegas on Tuesday night (8:30 ET on ABC).
Here are three things to watch for that will decide the NBA Cup.
Pace
Whichever team controls the pace, whichever team gets to play on its terms, will win this game.
The teams play very different defensive styles. The Thunder are an aggressive ball-pressure defensive team that leads the league in steals, averaging 12.2 per game. They also lead the league in deflections (they can be more aggressive with Isaiah Hartenstein as a backstop to clean things up in the paint). The strategy is simple: Be aggressive, be physical, force turnovers, and then get out and run.
The Thunder are fourth in the league in percentage of possessions that start in transition, the Bucks are 24th.
Milwaukee plays a deep drop defense, with Brook Lopez and Giannis Antetokounmpo protecting the rim — and that works.
Milwaukee wants to slow this game down and play it more in the half-court, although they would be happy to get Antetokounmpo out in transition and racing toward the rim a few times.
If this game becomes a track meet, Oklahoma City will run away with it.
Can Thunder slow Antetokounmpo?
Oklahoma City is the best defense in the NBA, and they do not roll out a weak defender in their core rotation. They have nobody they need to hide, when forced to rotate they have been on a string, and with Isaiah Hartenstein as a backstop — and/or Chet Holmgren once he gets healthy again — the perimeter players can be aggressive going for steals and jumping passing lanes.
However, slowing Giannis Antetokounmpo is an entirely different game. He is big, he is physical, and this season he stopped trying to shoot 3-pointers and is focused on getting downhill and into the paint — he has scored 20+ points with better than 50% shooting for 23 straight games.
Antetokounmpo is one player the Thunder struggle to match up with — he put up 30 and 19 on them last March (the last time these two teams played). There is no natural defensive match for Antetokounmpo on the Thunder roster (or maybe any roster).
“Whenever you’re guarding really good players, it’s not about just one person guarding somebody. It’s about a team effort…” the Thunder’s Jalen Williams said. “Obviously, he’s an extremely good player and kind of like a one-of-one. So we’ll have a good game plan in place, the coaches always do a good job of putting us in the right place. But it’s going to come down to how well as a team do we execute keeping guys like that at bay. “
“The whole team is going to try to stop the other team’s best player,” said Lu Dort, who will certainly get some time defending the Greek Freak. “You know, Giannis is a bigger player, we just got to do it together and we’ll be ready.”
Nobody is stopping Antetokounmpo, and Milwaukee has looked far better in recent weeks using and playing off of the Antetokounmpo/Damian Lillard two-man game. However, if the Thunder can make Antetokounmpo work for his points while not having to leave other Bucks open — particularly Lillard, who can take over a game himself — they will win this game.
Which half-court offense breaks through
This game is going to be a defensive battle: The Thunder have the best defense in the NBA, while the Bucks have a top-10 defense over their last 15 games.
Whichever team can solve the puzzle of how to score on the other team in the half-court will have a massive advantage in this game.
That works for Thunder fans, they just watched their team do this to the Rockets in the semifinals, scoring 70 in the second half.
When the Bucks’ offense gets stressed, they can fall back on an Antetokounmpo/Lillard pick-and-roll that is nearly impossible to defend.
This is where Shai Gilgeous-Alexander earns his money: his unconventional style gets him into the paint, and while the Bucks have Lopez and Antetokounmpo back to protect the rim the five-out system of the Thunder — where every player is a threat from 3 — can make Milwaukee pay.
If the Thunder can score some fast-break points and then start to break the Bucks down in the half-court, this game will not be as close as the league hopes.
