Basketball – Milwaukee exits Miami and advances to semi-finals

Milwaukee is the first team to qualify for the conference semifinals in the East, after its fourth consecutive victory over Miami (120-103) on Saturday after another collective show of force.

It is a scathing revenge that the Bucks took on the Heat who had walked on them (4-1) last summer, in the Orlando bubble, before reaching the championship final.

At the time, Giannis Antetokounmpo was playing on one leg and players had their minds elsewhere following their historic one-match boycott in the name of fighting racial injustice.

This time, everyone except Donte Di Vicenzo, injured in the left ankle and forfeited for the rest of the season, is 100% and well focused on the supreme goal of a second title, 50 years after the first gleaned by the legendary Lew Alcindor – the future Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – and Oscar Robertson.

If Antetokounmpo has multiplied, achieving a convincing triple-double (20 pts, 15 assists, 12 rebounds), he was not the best scorer of his team, the pivot Brook Lopez scoring 25 points (8 rebounds).

In total, six Bucks players finished with 10 or more pawns, including replacement shooter Bryn Forbes (22, 7/14 three-point) and Khris Middleton (20 pts, 11 rebounds).

In this series, the Heat will have deluded only in the first game, lost after extra time (109-107), and during the first period of this meeting where he was back to the wall, leading by seven points at the break.

Jimmy Butler also managed a triple-double (12 pts, 10 assists, 10 rebounds) and Bam Adebayo (20 pts, 14 rebounds) also fought well, but the gap between the two teams, both physically that of the game produced, and over the matches on the mental level, was too heavy to fill.

The play-offs continue during the day with the 4th game between Portland and Denver, the Nuggets leading 2 to 1. In the evening, Washington will receive Philadelphia which leads 2-0, and Utah will move to Memphis (1-1).