It may feel like cheating to put both of these plays together, but it’s impossible to tell the story of Milwaukee’s 2021 championship without these two unforgettable moments. Without the first, the second may not have happened, and with the second, the first may not have mattered as much.<\/p>\n
Together, though, they turned the tide of the series and lifted the Bucks over the Phoenix Suns for their first title in 50 years.<\/p>\n
Late in Game 4, the Bucks were trying to protect a 101-99 lead and even the series. Devin Booker drove to his right and got around P.J. Tucker, but he was met by Giannis Antetokounmpo at about the free-throw line. Seeing an opportunity, Booker tossed a lob to Deandre Ayton on the opposite side of the lane.<\/p>\n
With one of his feet still at the foul line and his body fully turned away from the hoop at the time of the lob, Antetokounmpo turned and quickly recovered to somehow meet Ayton at the summit and block his dunk attempt<\/a>. The speed with which Antetokounmpo crossed the paint defied logic, and his recovery block immediately became one of the great clutch defensive plays in Finals history.<\/p>\n As great as that block was, though, it was largely surpassed as the iconic moment of the series in the very next game. With the Bucks up 120-119 and the clock under 20 seconds, Booker was walled off on a drive. He turned to seek help, but instead he was surprised by Bucks guard Jrue Holiday, who pried the ball away and started a runout the other direction.<\/p>\n Though he could have dribbled around to try to kill the clock, Holiday saw Antetokounmpo rim-running and looking for the ball. Holiday tossed a perfect lob from the wing and hit Antetokounmpo perfectly in stride. <\/p>\n Despite taking a midair push to the midsection from Chris Paul, Antetokounmpo threw down the emphatic dunk while his momentum took him out of bounds. After sticking the landing, he flexed and mean-mugged the cameras, seemingly knowing how cold-blooded his dunk\u2014later dubbed “The Valley Oop”<\/a>\u2014was in the moment.<\/p>\n The Bucks held on to take a 3-2 series lead\u2014their third win in a row\u2014and they closed out the series in six games thanks in large part to Antetokounmpo’s 50-point performance in the clincher. Individually, “The Block” and “The Valley Oop” were incredible. Together, they were legendary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It may feel like cheating to put both of these plays together, but it’s impossible to tell the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-712592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}