Middleton scoring, Giannis block power Bucks to Game 4 win over Phoenix to even NBA Finals

Giannis Antetokounmpo thought he was going to get dunked on.

Milwaukee had just taken a 101-99 lead with 1:14 left in the fourth quarter of Game 4 of the NBA Finals when Devin Booker tossed a ball underhanded up to Deandre Ayton for an alley-oop and what looked like an easy two points to tie the game. Instead, the Milwaukee star met Ayton above the rim, blocked the shot and then flexed to the crowd.

Phoenix would turn the ball over on the following possession and never get another chance to tie the game in what turned into a 109-103 win for the Bucks to make the series 2-2.

“I saw the play coming,” Antetokounmpo said afterwards. “I saw that Devin was going to throw the lob and I was just going to jump vertical toward the rim. Hopefully I can be there in time, and I was there in time and was able to get a good block…”

His teammates felt it was a little more than a “good block.”

“That’s elite,” guard Jrue Holiday said. “That’s an elite block, to be able to read that he’s going to throw the lob and go up there and get it, yeah, that’s elite.”

Pat Connaughton said he was shocked and awed by the block and got caught admiring it.

“Luckily P.J. (Tucker) came across the lane and grabbed the rebound because I forgot for a split-second to go grab it,” Connaughton said. “In my opinion, it’s the best block of all time. Obviously, we’re a little biased and you can talk about the LeBron (James) block (in Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals) as well. But as far as a block where he was covering the pick-and-roll, he had to judge where the pass was, where Ayton was catching it and trying to dunk it, above the box, it’s about as impressive as you can get.”

The block was just the cherry on top of what was a remarkable comeback from the Bucks in the final minutes. The Suns led much of the night and had a seven-point advantage with 8:39 left. Facing the potential of a 3-1 deficit and their championship hopes slipping through their grasp, Antetokounmpo knew they had to respond.

“How bad do you want it? How bad do you really want it,” Antetokounmpo said when asked what was going through his mind at that point. “And just leave-the-game-swinging kind of mentality. Try to be aggressive. Try to get stops. Try to set screens. Do everything physically possible to put yourself in a position to win this game.

“I think everybody was feeling that. That’s what we did. It wasn’t a pretty game. But we were just able to keep composure, keep calm. We had wide-open shots that we missed that we usually make. But going down the stretch we kept believing in ourselves. We kept executing, setting screens. We kept running, we kept rebounding the ball, we kept blocking shots. We wanted this bad, and the team showed it tonight.”

Indeed it did, as Milwaukee refused to go away, outscoring Phoenix 27-14 the rest of the way. That included Middleton outscoring the Suns by himself 10-4 in the final 2:15 of the game.

“You need somebody who can make those shots,” coach Mike Budenholzer said. “Credit to him. A lot of big, tough shots, and then the tough finish in transition. He was special.”

Middleton finished with a playoff career-high 40 points after averaging 19.3 points in the first three games of the series. It came on 33 shots, which was five more than he had ever taken in a postseason game.

“I think it’s always a Khris Middleton kind of night,” Connaughton said. “At the end of the day, he makes the right plays. Tonight it called for him to be more aggressive with a jumpshot but he’s always going to be aggressive. He finds the right guys, he finds the open man, if they double him or try to blitz him, he’s the guy that we want to have the ball at the end of the game.”

Middleton and Antetokounmpo got some help from Connaughton off the bench. He hit several huge shots down the stretch, including a 3-pointer with 3:08 to give Milwaukee the lead. The guard ended up with 11 points, nine rebounds and the Bucks were 21 points better than Phoenix with him on the floor.

Milwaukee needed everything it got from Antetokounmpo (26 points, 14 rebounds, eight assists)and Middleton because Booker was nearly lights out after a poor Game 3 in which he scored just 10 points on 3-for-14 shooting. This time he put up 42 points, including 38 in the first three quarters. He did it all of it from inside the arc and the free throw line. At times the Bucks struggled to stay in front of him, while he also hit a number of tough shots with tight coverage. That included a 7-for-7 third quarter.

“It doesn’t matter at all,” said Booker, who found himself on the bench for a time after picking up his fifth foul early in the fourth quarter. “I said that after last game too, when I struggled shooting it. The main objective is to win the game. So anything that goes on throughout the game, it doesn’t matter, for real.”

The Suns pointed to two stats as the reason they aren’t going home with a chance to clinch their first title in team history — turnovers and offensive rebounding. Phoenix turned it over 17 times, its second-most in a playoff game this season, while the Bucks gave it away just five times. Meanwhile, Milwaukee grabbed 17 offensive rebounds, while the Suns had just five.

“The turnovers just crushed us tonight,” Phoenix coach Monty Williams said. “We shot 50 percent from the field, but they got 19 more possessions. Over the course of the game when you just give it up that many times the turnovers and offensive rebounding was a bit of a hill for us to climb.”

Milwaukee had a hill of its own to climb after falling into an 0-2 hole. Now the team knows its hopes of earning its first NBA title since 1971 will come down to a best-of-three series starting with Game 5 Saturday night in Phoenix.