Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo raced to the basket and took a hard fall.
Antetokounmpo’s fall may have put the championship dreams of the top-seeded Bucks in jeopardy.
Giannis slammed the floor with his backside after a foul in the first quarter and left Milwaukee’s Eastern Conference playoff opener for good at the beginning of the second quarter on Sunday. The Bucks lost 130-117 to the Miami Heat.
“There was an X-ray that was clear here,” Milwaukee’s coach Mike Budenholzer said. “We’ll monitor him and see how he does, see how he wakes up, how he feels the rest of tonight and tomorrow.”
Game 2 of the series happens on Wednesday in Milwaukee, and the Bucks hope that Antetokounmpo will be better by then.
“We have to wait and see what the doctors say, most importantly what Giannis says,” Budenholzer said. “Certainly we’ve been blessed with him being resilient and quick to heal, but you’ve just got to take it day by day, see how he’s doing and see how he feels.”
When he was taken out of the game, Giannis went to the locker room. He came back with 9:56 left in the second quarter but had to leave again with 8:33 left in the half and did not return.
“Didn’t look comfortable, confident,” Budenholzer said. “It felt like the right thing (to keep him out).”
Giannis Anetokounmpo had six points and three rebounds in 11 minutes.
The Heat had their own injury concerns. Miami’s Tyler Herro broke his right hand late in the second quarter, putting his status for the rest of the postseason in question.
This will be the second consecutive season where a Bucks key player suffered an injury early in their playoff run.
Khris Middleton three-time All-Star, Khris Middleton sprained the medial collateral ligament of his left knee in Game 2 of the Bucks’ opening-round series with the Chicago Bulls last season and missed the Bucks final 10 playoff games. Milwaukee lost a seven-game series to the Boston Celtics in the East Semifinals.
Two seasons ago, Antetokounmpo hyperextended his left knee and was absent for the last two games of the East finals. Giannis came back from the injury to claim the MVP title of the NBA finals after scoring 50 points in the title-deciding Game 6 victory over the Phoenix Suns that gave the Bucks their first championship in a half-century.
Milwaukee hopes that Giannis Antetokounmpo will show strength again.
“That’s our guy,” Middleton said. “We hope he’s going to be well, he’s going to be back out there with us Wednesday, but we’ve just got to focus on who’s out there at the same time. They had a guy go down also, and they continued to compete and play well. The same mindset we tried to have. It sucks when our guys go down or can’t return but we’ve still got a job to do out there.”
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