Fifty Years Later: A Deep Dive Into the 2021 Championship

English feature · same subject as above · Team: Milwaukee Bucks / Star: Giannis Antetokounmpo

I The Night

July 20, 2021, Fiserv Forum. The horn went and the board read 105-98. Giannis Antetokounmpo dropped to his hands and knees on the floor, shoulders shaking. Seventeen thousand three hundred and ninety-seven people had screamed for two and a half hours, and for half a second — just half a second — the building went silent before it came apart.

He scored 50 points with 14 rebounds and 5 blocks, on 16-of-25 shooting. Milwaukee scored 105. He had half of them. The part nobody saw coming was the free throw line: he'd shot 59% at the stripe through the first five games of the series, then went 17 of 19 on the biggest night of his life, the best free-throw game of his playoff career.

He put up 20 in the third quarter, the most by anyone in a Finals quarter since Michael Jordan in 1993. He scored 33 in the second half, something only he and Jordan had done in the previous 50 years. Phoenix kept swinging — Chris Paul had 26 and kept dragging them back — but every time the door cracked open, Giannis closed it with a run-out or a free throw.

It was tied at 77 after three. He scored 13 more in the fourth. The last possession said everything about the night: Jrue Holiday wanted to run the clock, Giannis begged for the ball, Holiday gave it to him, he got fouled, missed the free throw, tapped the rebound out to Khris Middleton, who made one of two. Ballgame.

It was the second championship in Bucks history. The first came in 1971, with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson. Fifty years between them. It was also Milwaukee's first trip back to the Finals since 1974. A franchise waiting half a century for its second title isn't something you see often in any of the big four leagues.

His first words afterward went everywhere: "This is an addictive feeling." Then the one that mattered more. Asked why he'd stayed in Milwaukee, he said going to a superteam would have been the easy way. He picked the hard one.

That's the line that stuck, and it stuck because he'd just proved it. Anyone can join a ready-made contender. Winning one in the city that drafted you, after fifty years of nothing, is a different kind of thing entirely.

And it wasn't one game. He finished the six-game series with three nights of at least 40 points and 10 rebounds, something only a handful of players have ever done in a Finals. The 50 was the exclamation point, not the whole sentence. Phoenix knew exactly where the ball was going on every possession down the stretch and still couldn't stop it.

II The Finals MVP

The 2021 Finals MVP was Giannis Antetokounmpo. Over six games he averaged 35.2 points, 13.2 rebounds, 5.0 assists, 1.2 steals and 1.8 blocks while shooting 61.8% from the floor.

Here's why that line matters: no one in Finals history had ever averaged 30 points, 10 rebounds and 5 assists in a series while shooting 60% or better. Nobody. It was the most dominant interior performance the Finals had seen since Shaquille O'Neal, and Giannis did it without a jump shot anybody feared.

The 50 in Game 6 made him the seventh player ever to score 50 in a Finals game, joining Bob Pettit, Elgin Baylor, Rick Barry, Jerry West, Michael Jordan and LeBron James. It also tied Pettit's 1958 record for the most points in a series-clinching Finals game. And it made him the first player in history to put up 50 points, 10 rebounds and 5 blocks in a Finals game.

At 26 he was the youngest Finals MVP since Kawhi Leonard in 2014. The award also closed the last hole in his resume. Two MVPs, in 2019 and 2020. Defensive Player of the Year in 2020. Now a Finals MVP. That put him next to Michael Jordan as the only players in league history to hold multiple MVPs, a DPOY and a Finals MVP.

The shot chart is the part worth studying. Exactly one of his 16 made baskets came from outside the paint. In a league that had spent a decade convincing itself you can't win from in there, a man won a championship by refusing to leave — and he did it in the most efficient way the Finals had ever seen.

He knew exactly what the trophy was worth, too. Two years earlier Toronto had taken four straight from him in the conference finals. One year earlier Miami had bounced his team in five. For two straight seasons the label had been the same: a regular-season giant who went soft in May. One night in July tore it off.

Coach Mike Budenholzer called the performance off the charts. Brook Lopez called it awe-inspiring. Neither of them was reaching. You could look at the box score and argue about the free throws, but you couldn't watch the game and argue about who the best player on the floor was.

He was also only 26, which is the part that should have scared everybody else. Players who win a title as the best guy on the floor usually do it near the back end of their prime. He did it before his had even properly started, with two MVPs already banked and a Defensive Player of the Year award sitting on the shelf next to them.

III The Comeback

This series wasn't Milwaukee's at the start. Phoenix took the first two in the desert, and Game 2 wasn't close — 118-108, with Devin Booker scoring 31 and the Suns raining threes. Down 0-2 in the Finals is close to a death sentence. The list of teams that have crawled out of it is very short.

The turn came in Game 3, back in Milwaukee, where the Bucks muscled the tempo back to something they could live with and won 120-100. But the moment people still talk about is Game 4. Tie game, 103-103, Deandre Ayton rising for what looked like a dunk that would swing everything — and Giannis came from nowhere and pinned it off the backboard. Milwaukee won 109-103 and the series was level.

Game 5 in Phoenix was the wildest night of the run. Milwaukee trailed by 16 and won 123-119. Giannis, Holiday and Middleton combined for 88 points, becoming the first trio since the 1985 Lakers — Kareem, Worthy, Magic — to each score 25 on 50% shooting in a Finals game.

And then the play. Final minute, Holiday ripped the ball right out of Chris Paul's hands and Giannis ran the floor for the alley-oop. A guard's steal, a forward's finish, and a 3-2 series lead on the other team's floor.

Booker's line is the cruelest stat of the series. He scored 40 in Game 4 and 40 in Game 5 and lost both — the first player in Finals history to drop 40 in consecutive games and lose both. He and Giannis also became the first pair to each score 40 twice in the same Finals. That's how good the basketball was.

Milwaukee became the fourth team ever to win a Finals after trailing 0-2, following the 1969 Celtics, the 1977 Trail Blazers and the 2006 Heat. A city that had waited fifty years for a second title had to come from behind to get it. Fitting, in a way.

The adjustment was simple and it was brutal. After Game 2, Milwaukee stopped surrendering the corner three and started daring Paul and Booker to beat them from the midrange over length. Phoenix shot 6 of 25 from deep in Game 6, 24 percent — their worst number of the series, at the worst possible moment of their season.

IV The Road

The regular season was 46-26 in a year shortened to 72 games, third in the East, and a third straight division title. It didn't look like the two years before it: Milwaukee had posted the league's best record in both 2019 and 2020 and then fallen apart in the playoffs both times.

First round: Miami, the team that had ended their season 4-1 the year before. Milwaukee swept them in four, and it wasn't especially close. In the closeout, Giannis had 20 points, 12 rebounds and a playoff career-high 15 assists. The cost was real, though — Donte DiVincenzo tore a ligament in his left ankle in Game 3 and was gone for the year.

Second round: Brooklyn, with Durant, Irving and Harden, the title favorite. Milwaukee lost the first two. Then Irving landed on Giannis's foot in Game 4 and rolled his ankle, Harden's hamstring never healed, and the series bent. It went seven, and the Bucks won 115-111 in overtime at Barclays Center.

Durant scored 48 that night, with 9 rebounds and 6 assists. He also hit what would have been a game-tying three at the end of regulation, except his toe was on the line. It was ruled a two. The game went to overtime, and Milwaukee won it. One toe. That's the whole season.

Conference finals: Atlanta. Milwaukee led 2-1 when Giannis went down in Game 4 with a hyperextended left knee and didn't come back for the rest of the series. Atlanta tied it. The Bucks still closed it out in six, with Holiday going 27-9-9 with four steals and Middleton dropping 32 — 27 of them in the second half.

Sixteen and six, with a rotation player lost and their best player missing two games in a conference final. Nobody's path is clean in June. This one just happened to end at the parade.

Nobody picked them, either. Milwaukee had the third-best record in its own conference and two years of tape proving it couldn't get out of the East. Brooklyn was the superteam, and Philadelphia and Miami were the fashionable choices. By the time the Bucks landed in Phoenix they had already beaten the most talented roster in the league and the team that had ended them a year earlier.

V The Roster Puzzle

Jrue Holiday was the most expensive and most important piece. In Game 6 he shot 4 of 19 — genuinely bad — and still led everyone with 11 assists while grabbing 9 rebounds. More importantly, he held Booker to 8 of 22 with an 0-of-7 night from three. A guard shooting like that in a closeout game and still deciding it. All defense.

Khris Middleton is the co-star nobody ranks correctly. He scored just 17 in the clincher, but he'd gone for 32 in the conference final closeout with 27 after halftime, and 23-10-6 with five steals in Game 7 against Brooklyn. When Giannis got trapped, the ball ended up with Middleton, and Middleton usually made the right play.

Brook Lopez did the invisible work: protecting the rim, holding position, and standing outside the arc so the lane belonged to Giannis. Bobby Portis scored 16 in Game 6 and was the most reliable bench scorer of the run. Pat Connaughton and Bryn Forbes stretched the floor. Jeff Teague gave them a veteran who could slow a game down.

Then there's P.J. Tucker. In Game 6 he attempted one shot, scored zero points, and finished plus-13 — the best number on the floor — with 6 rebounds in 36 minutes and a whole evening of shanking Phoenix's wings out of their spots. Milwaukee traded for him in March specifically for nights like that one.

The structure is easy to describe and hard to build: one historically great player, two guys good enough to be the best player on a good team, and a bench where every man knew which thing he was there to do. No superteam. Nobody asked to play a role that wasted him.

Divincenzo's injury is the footnote worth keeping. He was their sixth-leading scorer and shot 38% from three, and losing him in the first round thinned the wing rotation for two months. The Bucks won anyway, which tells you how deep the roster actually was by June.

What held it together was length. Milwaukee could run out Holiday, Middleton, Tucker, Giannis and Lopez at the same time and there wasn't a soft spot to hunt. That's why the defense survived every cold shooting night, and why Phoenix's ball handlers spent the whole series looking for a mismatch that kept sliding out of reach.

VI The Gamble

The bet started in the 2020 offseason. Giannis could be a free agent in 2021 and the entire league was waiting for his answer. Milwaukee's front office decided to answer first by making the roster good enough to win: they sent Eric Bledsoe, George Hill, the rights to R.J. Hampton and a pile of future first-round picks to New Orleans in a four-team deal for Jrue Holiday.

It got called a mortgage on the future. Three first-rounders and two starters for a 30-year-old guard doesn't look great on paper. But without Holiday there's no defense on Booker and Paul, no 11 assists in a closeout, and no steal in the final minute of Game 5.

Then came Giannis's decision. In December 2020 he signed a five-year, $228 million supermax — the richest contract in NBA history at the time — and stayed in Milwaukee, a city of under 600,000 people where the winters are genuinely unpleasant.

That decision might mean more than the trophy. In a league where stars demanded trades every summer, a two-time MVP chose to stay with the small-market team that drafted him, and then actually brought it a championship. His explanation afterward was simple enough: going to join a superteam is easy. That wasn't the win he wanted.

Mike Budenholzer bet his job too. Two straight seasons with the best record in basketball and two straight playoff flameouts had put him under a microscope. What he got right was building the defense around Giannis's reach instead of asking Giannis to fit a system that was already drawn up.

The Tucker trade, the Portis and Forbes signings, keeping Lopez and Middleton — not one of those moves made a headline. All of them were made for a specific possession in June.

None of it started with money, either. Milwaukee took Giannis 15th in 2013 — a raw kid out of the Greek second division that half the league's scouts hadn't watched in person. Middleton came over as a throw-in on a trade and turned into an All-Star. The whole contention window was built on evaluating players correctly, not on attracting them.

VII The Tuition

Phoenix's season was its own good story. They went 51-21, second in the West. Chris Paul reached the Finals in his 16th season, at 36 years old. Devin Booker had become a genuine number one. Deandre Ayton was the answer at center, Mikal Bridges and Jae Crowder gave them wing toughness, and Monty Williams had turned years of losing into a conference title.

Their road was real, too. They beat the defending champion Lakers in six, swept Denver, and took down the Clippers in six to get out of the West. Then they won the first two games of the Finals, and everyone alive assumed it was over.

Then they lost four straight. Game 6 was the ugliest: Booker 8 of 22, 0 of 7 from three, six turnovers. Paul had 26 and no help. The team shot 6 of 25 from deep, 24%, their worst of the series. Phoenix had lost three in a row only once all season before that, and the second time ended their year.

Booker's back-to-back 40-point losses are the cruelest footnote in the whole thing. He played well enough to be the first player in Finals history to score 40 in consecutive games and lose both. Sometimes a great individual series just runs into a better team.

Paul's ending was harder to watch. Sixteen seasons, one Finals, a 2-0 lead, and then a 26-year-old dropping 50 on his head in Game 6. "Time to go back to work," he said afterward. Two years later he was traded, and that Phoenix core never got back to this floor.

Monty Williams, to his credit, said it plainly after the series: he told the Bucks they'd made him a better coach. Not many people say that while standing in the wreckage of a 2-0 lead.

They weren't supposed to be here at all. Phoenix had won at a .302 clip across the five seasons before 2020-21, the worst five-year record of any team to reach a conference final in any of the four major North American sports. Chris Paul arrived in a trade for Ricky Rubio, Kelly Oubre and a first-round pick, and the whole thing flipped inside a year.

VIII The City and the Map

Milwaukee waited fifty years. The 1971 team had Kareem and Oscar; after that, the franchise spent half a century getting close and coming up empty. By 2021 there were people in that city who had gone from birth to middle age without seeing their team win anything. On championship day the downtown filled with hundreds of thousands of them.

It's also about as small a market as the league has. Milwaukee isn't on anybody's list of places a star wants to land. There's no beach, no state income tax angle, no glamour. Which is what makes the path worth studying: they didn't sign a single marquee free agent. Their best player was the 15th pick. Middleton was a second-rounder. Every key piece came through the draft, a trade, or a re-signing.

And Giannis staying is what completes the example. A two-time MVP signing the biggest contract in league history with a small-market team and then delivering a title was treated as a kind of anomaly in 2021. Every summer since, some front office somewhere has used it to make the case to its own star.

Zoom out and it marks a handoff, too. This was the first championship of the post-LeBron, post-Durant, post-Curry era won by an international player as the unquestioned best guy on the floor. Giannis is the son of Nigerian immigrants, raised in Athens, the kid who used to sell things on the street to help his family. That image — him holding the trophy — became the league's most important export that year.

Someone asked him in the locker room what came next. He said he wanted to do it again. Nobody waits fifty years to win one and then stops at one.

There's a detail that got lost. His older brother Thanasis was on that roster and missed Game 5 of the Finals under the league's health and safety protocols. When the confetti came down, the whole family was on the floor anyway — mother, brothers, everybody. Fifty years, and the people who'd walked through the hard part with him were standing right there.

The parade came a few days later and the city shut down for it. The players rode through downtown with the trophy and the crowds packed along the river. For a place that had spent fifty years being told it was too small to matter, that afternoon finally settled the argument out loud.

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Video Recap

Official Finals MVP highlights: