The Keys Behind the Heat’s Shocking Dominance of Giannis and the Bucks

All season long, the Heat were—at best—a middling team. They were 25th in offense. Their net rating of minus-0.5 was worse than some teams who missed the playoffs. They shot the 10th most three-pointers in the league but converted at the fourth-worst rate. And, by Game 4 of their first-round series against the Bucks, they were missing their second-highest scorer and one of their top reserves.

So of course Miami pulled off one of the greatest upsets in NBA history, knocking out the Bucks—the No. 1 seed of the entire league—in a thrilling, 128–126 Game 5 victory Wednesday. The Heat won the series 4–1, taking care of the title favorite and two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo in the process.

It’s hard to count the ways this Heat win was improbable, but we’re going to try. (Bucks fans, consider this a warning.) After posting a 112.3 offensive rating in the regular season, Miami put up 119.0 points per 100 possessions against Milwaukee—which has a top-five defense. After shooting a brick house-building 34.4% from three over its first 82 games, Miami shot 45.0% in the first round, the best of any team in the postseason field. Compared to the regular season, Miami improved its field goal percentage from every area of the floor: at the rim, the nonrestricted area of the paint, midrange, above-the-break threes and corner threes. Heck, Duncan Robinson, who went from playing only 16.4 minutes a night before the playoffs and catching a bunch of DNPs, played in every game of the series and shot 73.7% from deep.

Then there’s Jimmy Butler, the King of the Playoffs, who thoroughly dominated the Bucks and was by far the best player in the series. Butler gave buckets to any All-Defense–caliber defender Milwaukee threw his way, particularly Jrue Holiday. In the series, Butler eclipsed his regular-season scoring average by nearly 15 points a night, and shot more efficiently from three-point range, the restricted area and the paint. Butler shot 53.4% on his jump shots after converting 45.9% of them during the regular season. He basically morphed into a different offensive player, and did so while maintaining his ludicrously high defensive standards on the other end. He followed up his 56-point Game 4 with a 42-point Game 5, and he outscored Giannis—whom many believe to be the best player alive—16–9 in the fourth quarter and overtime as Milwaukee let a 16-point lead slip from its fingertips.

This doesn’t even get into all the improbable plays Miami needed to pull out the win Wednesday, which included a late Gabe Vincent pull-up three and a preposterous sideline out-of-bounds lob to Butler simply to send the game into overtime.

All series long, I waited for the clock to strike midnight on the Heat. They were a team that couldn’t shoot for 82 games, but then had one of the greatest shooting performances in playoff history against a team that’s had one of the best defenses in the league for four years running. And Butler, who while proven to be capable of raising his game along with the stakes, was seemingly taking the shots Milwaukee wanted him to take—a healthy dose of pull-up threes and contested two-pointers.

Somehow, none of it mattered. It didn’t matter that the Bucks had Giannis. It didn’t matter they had Holiday on the perimeter and Brook Lopez manning the paint. It didn’t matter that the Heat couldn’t shoot for six months before the first round. It didn’t matter that Tyler Herro missed most of the series. Miami not only pulled off a confounding upset, it did so in a completely confounding manner, scoring in a way that was frankly unimaginable for this team.

And on the losing end, the Bucks now face the wrath of takery, scorn and jokes that come with such a demoralizing defeat. Yes, coach Mike Budenholzer had a rough time this series, failing to find ways to slow down Butler, being stingy with his timeouts and more. It’s fair to wonder whether his job will be safe moving forward. The depth that seemed bountiful now looks thin. Key contributors such as Lopez and Khris Middleton could enter free agency.

And while Giannis is unimpeachable—he’s had too many huge playoff performances to question his big-game bona fides, and he missed Games 2 and 3 of this series with a back injury—his 38-point, 20-rebound stat line in Game 5 belies how poorly he played down the stretch. He shot 3-of-12 in the fourth quarter and overtime, stymied by Bam Adebayo, and missed 13 free throws. Butler got the best of him in back-to-back, must-have fourth quarters for the Bucks.

The question now is if the Heat can keep this up. Seemingly every statistical indicator would tell you this first round was an outlier. Even if you think all these numbers are analytic nonsense, if you watched the Heat play this year—a team that lost multiple times against the Hornets and needed a comeback in the play-in just to reach the first round—their performance against the Bucks strains credulity.

That, however, is the beauty of the playoffs. All that matters is what happens between the four lines on the court. After a season of struggle, the Heat’s current reality is they’re in the second round—and the one- seed is not.