Rivals in the Eastern Conference battle Sunday evening as the Milwaukee Bucks welcome in the Miami Heat.
Milwaukee has won three in a row, sweeping their back-to-back post-All-Star break games against the Clippers at home (116-110) and at Washington on Friday night (104-101).
The Bucks led by as many as 15 late in the second half but hung on despite Giannis Antetokounmpo playing on a minutes restriction and fouling out of the game.
“He’s on this minute restriction, we’re pulling him in and out. I think that’s hard for him,” Bucks head coach Doc Rivers said. “But we’re gonna continue with it regardless and see if we can figure out a way in this stretch of limitations to get him in a better rhythm.”
Damian Lillard (hamstring) and sharpshooter Taurean Prince (ankle) were also unavailable. Kyle Kuzma led the Bucks in his return to Washington with 19 points and eight rebounds.
Miami comes in off a 120-111 overtime win up north in Toronto on Friday night. The victory snapped their four-game skid.
Tyler Herro scored 28 points and newly acquired Andrew Wiggins helped close it out with big plays down the stretch and scored 25 points.
“We’re all rooting for Wigs, super happy to have him,” Herro said. “We’re trying to feed as much life and confidence in him as possible. We got another game (Sunday) where we’re gonna really need his contribution.”
Herro leads the Heat with his 23.9 points and 5.5 assists per game. Bam Adebayo leads with 10.1 rebounds per game.
The Bucks are led by 31.2 points and 11.9 rebounds per game from Antetokounmpo. Lillard dishes 7.5 assists per game, while Brook Lopez averages two blocks.
On the injury front, Lillard and Prince are considered day to day for Milwaukee while Bobby Portis will be serving game 3 of a 25-game suspension for violating the league’s anti-drug program.
The lone name on the Miami injury report is Kevin Love, who missed Friday’s game due to personal reasons.
This is the third of four games between these teams this season, with the Bucks taking the first two: 106-103 in Miami on Nov. 26 and 125-96 in Milwaukee on Jan. 23.
In the latter, Lillard led the charge with 29 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds, his first triple-double with the Bucks. Antetokounmpo scored 25 with 12 boards.
Milwaukee took the shortened three-game series 2-1 a year ago after each of the previous two seasons had been split 2-2.
These teams both have strong defenses with the Heat allowing 110.7 points per game and the Bucks giving up 112.6.
Milwaukee is scoring 114.1 points per game largely due to them shooting the second-highest clip from beyond the arc (38.5 percent).
–Field Level Media
