MILWAUKEE — Damian Lillard knew what to do.
To be fair, though, that’s at least partly because he had been through it so many times before. On the other hand, Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t know how to act.
“It was fun,” Antetokounmpo said with a big smile on his face. “After he hit the shot, everything was like slow-motion.”
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At this point, Antetokounmpo had been speaking for 12 minutes in his post-game media availability.
Over an hour had passed since Lillard hit his first buzzer-beating, game-winner with the Bucks to beat the Sacramento Kings 143-142 in overtime on Sunday night but Antetokounmpo was still smiling, animatedly telling reporters the story of what he did once Lillard hit the 32-foot stepback as though the entire scene had not been recorded for the world to watch over and over again.
“He started doing this,” Antetokounmpo continued with a smile, pointing to his wrist to re-enact Lillard’s signature Dame Time celebration. “I think I grabbed him, but I grabbed him hard, you know? I don’t know if I was like suffocating him, but I grabbed him really hard.”
“I was doing this,” Antetokounmpo said as he pointed to his wrist.
“Then, I was doing this,” Antetokounmpo said as he waved goodbye by opening and closing his hand, just as Lillard had done after hitting a stepback 3 over Paul George to eliminate the Oklahoma City Thunder from the 2019 NBA playoffs.
“I went out of character, but it’s fun, man,” Antetokounmpo explained. “We gotta live life hard. And that’s what we did tonight.
“Everybody was happy for the shot. I don’t think we had to put ourselves in a position to get to that shot, but I’m so happy that this guy made it, and everybody was happy and everybody celebrated, and everybody had a smile on. So we’ve won three in a row. We’re playing good basketball. Hopefully, we can keep it up.”
The Bucks might not have wanted to put themselves in that position, but because Lillard knew what to do, they left the arena with their most memorable win of the season.
With 18.4 seconds remaining in overtime, Malik Monk went to the free-throw line with the Kings up, 141-137, and a chance to give his team a six-point lead. Instead, Monk missed both free throws and that gave the Bucks a chance to sneak back in the game. They did just that.
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Antetokounmpo pushed the ball up the floor with his teammates trying to get in position and in space for the league’s most dangerous transition threat.
As Antetokounmpo reached half court, Lopez was near the top of the key in the middle of the floor. The 7-foot, 284-pound center bolted to the right corner and spun around to square his feet at a full sprint just as Antetokounmpo released a pass at the free throw line. With the ball in the air, Lopez looked down at his feet to make sure they were behind the line, looked up to catch the ball and hit an improbable corner 3 over the outstretched arms of Trey Lyles with 11.5 seconds left.
“I think that was really the biggest shot of the night because without that one, it was a four-point game at that point,” Lillard said. “He cut it to one and he put them in position to where they had to make free throws, and it opened up the opportunity for me. So, it’s like the hockey assist or whatever. It’s that type of situation. I mean, without that, I don’t have an opportunity to make my shot.”
With a 141-140 lead, Kings assistant coach Jordi Fernandez, serving as head coach because Kings head coach Mike Brown got ejected early in the fourth quarter, called a timeout to advance the ball to half court and give the Kings a chance to draw up a play to get the ball in bounds.
The Bucks needed a steal or a foul to keep themselves alive, so after discussing their defensive game plan, Bucks coach Adrian Griffin also drew up a play for his team to run on their next offensive possession. Without a timeout of his own, this would be Griffin’s last chance to get together with his entire team and talk about what they needed to do on offense after fouling the Kings.
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The Kings inbounded the ball to Kevin Huerter, who promptly got trapped by the Bucks and forced Fernandez to call another timeout with 9.3 seconds remaining in OT.
On the next inbounds play, the Bucks forced the Kings to enter the ball to Sacramento center Domantas Sabonis, a 67.3 percent free-throw shooter, and tried to foul him, but didn’t create enough contact to draw a whistle. So, Sabonis tossed a pass to Fox, who wasted a few more valuable seconds, and got sent to the line with 5.2 seconds remaining.
Fox missed his first free throw, but made his second free throw to give the Kings a 142-140 lead. The play Griffin had drawn up assumed there would be a few more seconds on the clock, but Lillard knew what to do.
“I just kind of let the ball bounce a little bit to let everybody get to their spots,” Lillard said. “And I looked up and two guys ran to Giannis.”
That was unexpected.
The initial play called for Lillard to enter the ball to Antetokounmpo and then get it back from Antetokounmpo on the run with a screen from Lopez, if necessary, and a chance to get downhill toward the basket. From there, Lillard would have an opportunity to make a play.
The Kings took away the first option of the play by denying Antetokounmpo the ball, so Lillard just moved on to the next option.
“When they ran to Giannis, Brook was already, like as soon as I looked up, he was already running towards me, and I knew that that was what the play was going to get to eventually anyways,” Lillard said. “So, I advanced it to him and just took off running and Fox was trailing the play, and he got back in front of me because I slowed down.
“I knew I wasn’t going inside the 3-point line. So he kind of got back in front of me and I just changed direction and went into space. And that’s all I was looking for, just get into space where I can get a good look at the rim. And I did and it was a pretty comfortable shot.”
For some players, trying to make a change on the fly in that situation would have been too much for them to process. Some players would have tried to run the play anyway and forced a pass to Antetokounmpo. Some players would have tried to push the ball down the court as quickly as possible and get to the rim to draw a foul, but not Lillard.
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Repeatedly, in the locker room after the game, Lillard’s teammates kept noting the same thing. With 5.2 seconds remaining and 94 feet to cover, Lillard inbounded the ball on a dead sprint and then slowed down once he got the ball back from Lopez. While other players might have continued at a breakneck pace, Lillard knew what to do.
“I’m just looking for space,” Lillard said. “I think, in my experience, every time I’m in that type of situation, I just try to avoid being in a crowd where it can be deflections or two defenders can put me in a position where I can’t get a shot off at all.
“So once I came up the slot and Brook was kind of right there, I went in front of Brook, but I went that way just to go into space to where even if — I think it was Sabonis — even if he tried to come towards me, I still would have been able to use the rest of that other three quarters of the court.”
Along with space, Lillard also needed to try to keep track of the amount of time left on the clock. That can be a difficult skill to master, but Lillard has trained himself to keep his eyes up as often as possible with the ball in his hands and knew a few different ways to keep track of the clock.
“I looked up at one point and it was four seconds, so I knew I had time to get it over half and make my move to get to that space and get a clean shot up without having to rush it,” Lillard said. “But as soon as I threw it in, I took a peek, I looked at the clock and I knew I had time.”
THIS IS WHAT DAME DOES. ⌚️ pic.twitter.com/zwNfpQxOG0
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) January 15, 2024
And while so much of the game’s final moment came down to Lillard’s clutch shot-making and his ability to know what to do in the most difficult situations, it would have been impossible for the Bucks to pull out that game in overtime without his teammates knowing exactly why Lillard was brought to Milwaukee in the first place.
“I know what this guy’s capable of doing,” Antetokounmpo said. “And that’s why down the stretch we were all looking for him. Every handoff, every pick-and-roll was Dame initiating it because that’s what he does. Down the stretch. He excels. He thrives down the stretch and he showed it tonight, man.
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“This is not gonna be the (only) time (he does) this, he’s going to hit many more shots like this. It might not be a buzzer-beater, maybe it might be we go up one or two, but that’s what he does. And we all trust him that he’s going to do that for us.”
With the trust of his teammates and the ball in his hands on Sunday, Lillard knew what to do: Hit a big shot, point to his wrist and remind the world that it’s Dame Time in Milwaukee, too.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard: Gary Dineen / NBAE via Getty Images)
Eric Nehm is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Milwaukee Bucks. Previously, he covered the Bucks at ESPN Milwaukee and wrote the book "100 Things Bucks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." Nehm was named NSMA's 2022 Wisconsin Sports Writer of the Year. Follow Eric on Twitter @eric_nehm
