MILWAUKEE — Thursday was an unusual day for the Milwaukee Bucks. While they ended the night in their own beds following a 125-96 win over the Miami Heat, the Bucks had quite the journey to get there.
On Monday, the Bucks flew to New Orleans a day early for their Wednesday game against the Pelicans to beat a snowstorm that would have made traveling Tuesday to Louisiana difficult. The snowstorm that hit New Orleans on Tuesday was historic, dumping 10 inches of snow, the most since 1895, and shutting down the city. The Bucks were forced to cancel their practice across town at Tulane University as the extreme weather conditions made leaving their hotel impossible.
The team woke up on Wednesday ready to play their scheduled game against the Pelicans that night, but with roads around the city still impossible to navigate, the Bucks were forced to cancel their shootaround at Smoothie King Center, a little more than 1.5 miles away from their hotel. By mid-morning on Wednesday, word of a possible postponement of that night’s game began. The NBA officially announced the postponement at 11:16 a.m. CT.
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“Ate a lot of gumbo. A lot of gumbo, man,” Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo said of his downtime in New Orleans. “Kind of got tired of gumbo. Wasn’t able to go to practice. Wasn’t able to do much, but we had a basketball and a ballroom, so I was dribbling, just shooting the ball to the wall, just doing things to get active. Because going three days with no basketball, you get rusty.”
With an early official postponement of their Wednesday game and a game against the Miami Heat in Milwaukee on Thursday, the Bucks would have loved to spend Wednesday traveling home, but the extreme weather conditions remained. The roads were still too dangerous and no flights were leaving New Orleans anyway, so the Bucks were forced to wait around for another day.
That meant the Bucks were going to need to fly on the day of their game, a rarity in the NBA, to make it back to Milwaukee for Thursday night’s game. Their flight, though, was not scheduled until 2 p.m. CT, which meant the team was going to arrive at the Milwaukee airport shortly after 4 p.m. CT for a 6:30 p.m. CT tip.
But even that didn’t go off as planned as their flight took off from New Orleans nearly an hour late, forcing the league to delay tipoff for an hour to make sure the Bucks could not only arrive in Milwaukee safely but also still have time to get to the arena for pregame warmups.
Eventually, the Bucks managed to get to the arena. Antetokounmpo was the first player to arrive at Fiserv Forum, walking into the Milwaukee locker room at 5:13 p.m. CT, only two hours and 17 minutes before the game’s rescheduled tip time of 7:30 p.m. During the next 15 minutes, the rest of his teammates followed.
“I think we’ll be ready, but who knows,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said during his pregame media session at 5:45 p.m. “I’ll watch guys because not having done any cardio for three days and then showing up for a game two hours before the game off an airplane, my guess is our science team would probably say this is not the healthiest thing to do.”
The team eventually scratched Khris Middleton following his pregame workout, but the rest of the team — outside of AJ Green, who missed his second straight game with a left quad strain — took the floor at 7:30 p.m. and tried to beat the Heat.
That effort started poorly as the Bucks scored a mere three points in the game’s first six minutes, looking very much like a team that had only been able to use the hotel fitness center and unable to get on a basketball court for three days.
But after shaking off that initial rust, the Bucks found their groove.
After missing 11 of 12 shots to start the game and falling behind by 15 midway through the first quarter, the Bucks made nine in a row, clawing their way back to within three at the end of the frame. Then, they took control of the game with a 44-point second quarter, which was capped by Damian Lillard (29 points, nine rebounds, 11 assists) scoring six points in the final 1.1 seconds of the half to give the Bucks a 16-point lead heading into halftime.
DAMIAN LILLARD IS A BUCKET 😱 pic.twitter.com/h8vmQq3VXp
— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) January 24, 2025
“As a leader of a team, you gotta let the team know off the rip we’re not doing that,” Lillard said. “We’re not having excuses. I don’t care about the flight. I don’t care we’ve been in the hotel. You gotta take that away from the team as a leader and let them know, ain’t gonna be no excuses tonight. We gotta go out here and jump on them, like we’ve been doing.”
The Bucks started the second half with a strong defensive performance, allowing them to eventually pull away to a 29-point victory to cap a strange four days. By not playing in New Orleans, the Bucks, essentially, turned their undefeated four-game homestand into a 5-0 homestand.
By flying on game day and driving straight from the airport to the arena to play the Heat, the Bucks experienced one of the more extreme examples of life on the road. While that could have led to complaints from players, Antetokounmpo put things in perspective after the game.
“This is not the toughest conditions that I’ve played basketball,” Antetokounmpo said after putting up 25 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and three blocks. “The only difference is that we had to take a flight.
“At the end of the day, if you call this adversity, I think the team responded very well facing this ‘adversity’ — that we had to take a flight for two hours before the game. At the end of the day, we still woke up in a five-star hotel, had breakfast, sit down as a team, talked as a team while we were waiting for the bus. We had a pretty nice bus ride. And we went to our plane, charter plane, private plane, everybody has their own seat. You can order some food on the plane. Get some fruit if you want. They have drinks too. After that, your cars are warm right in front of the plane waiting for you. You get in your car and you get to the arena in like 15 minutes. And after that, you do your routine and you get ready for the game. For me, those conditions are not that bad. I’ve been in way, way worse conditions in my life.
“But if you want to call this adversity, I’m very happy and proud of how the team responded. Even though we did all that, we were locked in and came in here to win.”
After a good night’s rest, the Bucks will get on a plane again on Friday morning for a four-game, nine-day Western Conference road trip which begins Saturday against the LA Clippers in Inglewood, Calif.
Such a quick turnaround following an unusual road trip that didn’t actually feature a road game might leave some teams ready to complain about a tough schedule, but that doesn’t seem like something that will happen while Antetokounmpo is around.
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(Photo of Damian Lillard: Benny Sieu / Imagn Images)
