The Milwaukee counterbalance Booker and rally 16 points in Phoenix to chain their third consecutive triumph in the NBA Finals
If the Milwaukee Bucks end up winning this ring, Giannis Antetokounmpo You will have a good photo album. The block to DeAndre Ayton, vital to win the fourth game, can now add the alley-oop over Chris Paul to sentence the fifth at the Suns’ home (119-123). With one more win, win his first title in half a century.
And in that photo, as usual in a more secondary plane than it deserves, camouflaged with the scene, appear Jrue Holiday. A player who has reached stardom (discreet but stardom) by way of sacrifice in favor of the group.
It was not Holiday who signed the acrobatics, which does not enter his repertoire, but the work that made it possible. From the robbery to Devin Booker, surprising him from the weak side when he was looking for a basket that would have put the Suns ahead, the timing to put the ball in the air and Antetokounmpo in orbit.
Holiday is one of those players who make everything work without attracting or claiming the spotlight.
Eight months ago, after two years falling prematurely in the playoffs and pressured by the renewal of Giannis, the Bucks pledged their entire future to seize Holiday. The base fit the mold of the third sword they needed: a great competitor, an extraordinary defender and a player who, without demanding prominence, unloaded Antetokounmpo from the ball.
Until this fifth game of the Finals, Jrue Holiday was fulfilling his part of the bargain in defense but not in attack, where the weight fell again excessively on Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton. Until on the biggest day of the season, with the option to steal the home field factor and stay within a home ring win, his best version emerged.
After an overwhelming exit from the Suns (37-21, 73.7% from the field goal), Holiday lit the reaction with 14 points in the second quarter. Of the 43 that Milwaukee scored in that act, the point guard was involved in 27. 19 of them in the first four minutes. As resounding was the Bucks attack in the two central quarters, a pace that only Booker (40) managed to follow after the break.
Following in the wake of Holiday (27 points, 13 assists) this time Middleton marched, impeccable and cold when Phoenix pressed the most in the final stretch (29), and Antetokounmpo (32), leader in the last quarter, brittle again in the shots. free, and definitive with that mate. An action that will go directly to his album although, as he himself ran to stand out, like the ring if they end up winning it, it would not have been possible without Jrue Holiday.
After losing the first two rounds of the Finals, the Bucks have won the next three and are just one away from winning the ring for the first time in half a century. It was in 1971, with Lew Alcindor as MVP, a few weeks before he publicly asked to be called Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
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