DOWN BY ONE with 2:31 remaining in the fourth quarter on March 8 against the Los Angeles Lakers at Crypto.com Arena, the Milwaukee Bucks' star duo went to work. Giannis Antetokounmpo inbounded the ball to Damian Lillard and trailed him up the court.
Lillard began to drive toward the basket and Antetokounmpo set a screen right near the 3-point line, forcing Lakers star Anthony Davis to turn his attention toward Lillard, who responded with a bounce pass to Antetokounmpo. When Milwaukee's two-time MVP stepped foot into the paint, the Lakers' defense began to swarm him, and Antetokounmpo dished a pass to the corner, where a wide-open Pat Connaughton knocked down a 3 to give Milwaukee the lead.
On the next possession, Antetokounmpo received the ball from Connaughton, turned and took a hard dribble toward Lillard, who charged toward him from the corner. Antetokounmpo threw the ball to Lillard and set a screen to give him enough room to launch a 3-pointer. Lillard knocked it down and got fouled by D'Angelo Russell, who was scrambling to recover. The four-point play gave Milwaukee a six-point lead.
The lead wouldn't hold up that night -- Russell scored eight of his career-high 44 points in the final 1:13 seconds to lead Los Angeles to a victory without LeBron James. It was part of a disappointing 1-3 West Coast road trip for Milwaukee earlier this month, which included blowout losses to the Warriors and Kings.
But in that Lakers game, Antetokounmpo and Lillard became the first teammates in NBA history to finish with 25 points and 12 assists in the same game. They scored or assisted on 111 of Milwaukee's 122 points, including every field goal in the fourth quarter.
And together, finally, they looked like one of the league's best pick-and-roll combinations. Antetokounmpo set 23 on-ball screens while Lillard was the ball handler, per Second Spectrum, their third-highest total in a game together this season.
After the game, Bucks coach Doc Rivers sounded encouraged by what he saw: the blossoming chemistry between Antetokounmpo and Lillard. It's a connection he has pushed since the start of his coaching tenure in Milwaukee.
"Listen, you want to win all these games, but that's the stuff that we're going to keep doing more and more and more until it becomes us," Rivers said after the loss to the Lakers. "There was a stretch where Dame and Giannis were playing a two-man game and it was unstoppable."
Two days later, his premonition became reality. Against the Clippers, who were missing Kawhi Leonard and Paul George, the Bucks dialed up the actions even more -- 29 on-ball screens set by Antetokounmpo for Lillard, their most in a game together this season and the most Antetokounmpo has set for a single player in a game in his career, according to research by ESPN Stats & Information. The Bucks won 124-117.
"We're trying to just encourage it more," Rivers said. "That's what we got to get to."
The Bucks are 12-10 since Rivers became head coach, but the longtime coach says he's tried not to focus on individual results as much as the process of getting the team playoff ready. If his most pressing concern was to improve the Bucks defense -- Milwaukee has given up 113.5 points per possession under Rivers (14th), versus 116.3 before Rivers' arrival (19th) -- the next item on his coaching checklist was: establishing the on-court chemistry of his two-best players. He told ESPN in an interview after the All-Star break that he planned to do some "artificial connecting on the floor. Just so they can see it and get it."
Now, after emphasizing it in practice for weeks, the Bucks are finally starting to see that pay off.
"Things take time," Bucks forward Bobby Portis told ESPN. "S--- just doesn't happen overnight. Chemistry just doesn't be top-tier from day one. You've got to keep continuing to build it. You've got to have a system in place that fits the team and you have to have a coach that tells you what he wants.
"There's another level [Dame and Giannis] can actually get to, just making it clockwork ... you can put anybody [else] in a different spot and it still flows."
RIVERS BEGAN SOWING the seeds for a stronger connection between Antetokounmpo and Lillard before he even officially took over as head coach. He attended shootaround in Milwaukee on Jan. 26, three days before his first game at the head of the bench, and he emphasized the need for a stronger connection between the Bucks' two best players on the court.
When Rivers led his first shootaround in Denver a few days later, he had five players take the court -- three players on one side, Antetokounmpo and Lillard on the other. Then, Rivers had the two run pick-and-rolls together.
"We've laughed about it in practice," Lillard said. "[He'll] be like 'All right, Giannis set the screen. Throw it back. Now dribble it back to Dame. Dame throw it back.' And we're just going back and forth with each other for 15 seconds.
"Then, he's like, 'All right, somebody shoot.' Then we shoot and everybody start laughing."
Those sessions, even if they seemed excessive at first, have now become routine.
"Because he's done it so many times in practice and shootaround, it went from a joke to now ... it's reached a point where we're playing the game, but doing the next action with each other in mind," Lillard said.
Antetokounmpo has been vocal about his desire to develop more of a two-man game with Lillard. Before Rivers' arrival, Lillard had been the ball handler for an average of 10.1 on-ball screens per game with Antetokounmpo as the screener, which ranked outside the top 35 combinations per Second Spectrum.
The increased emphasis on developing those actions -- and the chemistry with Lillard that comes with them -- has been one of the biggest changes for Antetokounmpo under Rivers.
"Now we work on it. Sometimes, he hits me in the pocket, I look, there's nothing there. Come right back, now what [is the defense] going to do," Antetokounmpo said after a win against the Clippers. "Now, we are more patient, we have to play the game more. But again, we don't talk about it only, we practice it."
General manager Jon Horst said after firing Adrian Griffin in January that he believed the Bucks' roster was not playing to its full potential. Horst brought in Rivers, who has a track record of coaching star players, in part to help elevate the connection between Lillard and Antetokounmpo.
"To start the season, a lot of people wanted it to just click and happen right away," Lillard said. "But anytime you put two guys together who've always been the decision-maker, always had the ball in their hands for years and years and years, it's going to take time for us to learn to play with each other and learn how to play off of one another."
And for the rest of the team to learn how to play around them.
Antetokounmpo and Lillard have known all along that they'd be able to create shots for themselves with their two-man actions. Now there is an increased emphasis on using those actions to set up the rest of the team.
"Doc has done a great job of talking about our spacing after they give us that attention," Lillard said. "We're having guys cut so they have to account for a guy under the rim and then we got two shooters, one defender and we're making the extra pass a lot more often."
In those two games in Los Angeles, Lillard and Antetokounmpo scored or assisted on at least 105 points in consecutive games, becoming the only duo to do so in the past 25 seasons, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. "Them continuing to get better at it opens up the floor for everyone else on the court," Portis said.
WITH 14 GAMES remaining in the regular season, the Bucks are introducing one more wrinkle into the mix: reincorporating three-time All-Star forward Khris Middleton.
Middleton played Sunday for the first time since Feb. 6 after missing the previous 16 games with an ankle injury. Despite the monthlong layoff, he scored 22 points and made seven assists in 25 minutes, helping Lillard lead the Bucks to a win over the Phoenix Suns without Antetokounmpo, who sat out the game to rest a nagging hamstring injury.
"You just start to see just how good our team can be," Lillard said after Sunday's victory. "[Middleton] coming back, his first game just rolling out and getting 20 and making plays, it's a luxury for us to have out there."
It was only the fifth game Middleton has played in since Rivers took over as coach, but Rivers has had glowing reviews for Middleton's ability to get the team organized on the floor and add some extra playmaking to the reserve units when Antetokounmpo and/or Lillard rests. So Rivers doesn't want the development of the Lillard and Antetokounmpo pick-and-roll connection to come at Middleton's expense.
"You've got to keep all three guys in rhythm at the same time," Rivers said Sunday. "That's hard to do. Oftentimes, in basketball history, the third guy is the one who gets the least shots -- Chris Bosh, Klay Thompson with Golden State, Ray Allen with the Celtics -- but you still have to find a way to keep that third guy involved and aggressive. That'll be the trick."
When the Bucks have had their three stars on the court together this season, their results have been dominant. Milwaukee has a plus-18.2 net rating with Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Middleton on the floor, the best for any three-man unit in the NBA with at least 600 minutes played together.
While Rivers acknowledges he will have to strike the right balance, he does not believe it will be a difficult challenge, especially if Antetokounmpo and Lillard can continue building their chemistry.
As Rivers has already emphasized to his star duo, the way they play off each other will lift the rest of the team.
"That's what it's about for us, making sure we continue to grow," Lillard said. "And when it's supposed to, we'll be winning games that way. We'll be able to lean on it."