LAS VEGAS — It took them a second try, but the Milwaukee Bucks figured out how to get past the NBA Cup semifinals. The Oklahoma City Thunder, meanwhile, got it on the first try.
Giannis Antetokounmpo, the league’s leading scorer, finished with 32 points and the Bucks beat the Atlanta Hawks 110-102 in Saturday’s first Cup semifinal. And in the nightcap, Shai Gilgeous Alexander’s 32 points powered the Oklahoma City Thunder past the Houston Rockets, 111-96.
The NBA Cup final between the Bucks and Thunder will be played Tuesday in Vegas, tipping at 8:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
In Saturday’s first game, Milwaukee made good on last year’s disappointment in the semifinals. Antetokounmpo scored 12 of his points at the foul line and added 14 rebounds, nine assists and four blocks. He scored 10 in the final quarter — which began with the Hawks ahead by one — and shot 10 of 15 for the game. One of those four swats came on Clint Capela’s dunk try off a lob with 2:35 left and the Bucks up by five.
“I think the conversation within the team is that nothing matters, only win,” Antetokounmpo said. “Stats don’t matter; it doesn’t add a win or a loss to our record. Nothing really matters. How many shots, if you go 0-15, if you go 15-15, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters right here is to get a win, and that’s the message within our team right now and everybody got to stay locked in.”
Damian Lillard added 25 points and seven assists. His runner with 23.2 seconds left made it 107-100, and he poked away another attempted lob pass from Trae Young to Capela with 11.8 seconds remaining to seal the game. Brook Lopez added 16 points.
Young scored 35 points with 10 assists and seven rebounds in the loss. Jalen Johnson contributed 15 points and 10 boards for the Hawks.
The Bucks (14-11), who started the season just 2-8, were in the final four during the first in-season tournament last year but fell in the semis to Indiana. The Hawks (14-13) had won seven of their last eight with victories over the NBA’s top teams, including two over Cleveland and another over Boston.
“I think we probably looked a little sharper this time around,” Lillard said. “Last time, we were ready, but this time we came into it remembering our last experience. We came correct.”
The other Cup semifinal featured the top two defenses in the NBA, and for a half that’s how the action played out. The Rockets led 42-41 and the teams were a combined 6 of 37 on 3s.
The Thunder (20-5), who entered play as the top overall team in the West and easily the best team record wise in the Cup final four, pulled away with a steady second half.
Gilgeous-Alexander, who was fourth in the NBA in scoring coming into the game, had a big night at the foul line (14-15) and contributed eight boards and six assists. Isaiah Hartenstein finished with 21 points and eight rebounds. Jalen Williams contributed 20 points and Lou Dort added 19 points.
The Rockets (17-9) still don’t have a player averaging 20 points. They were led by Amen Thompson’s 19 off the bench. Dillon Brooks, who spent portions of the game guarding his Team Canada teammate Gilgeous-Alexander, finished with 14 points, as did Jabari Smith Jr. Houston shot just 36.5 percent from the field as a team (35 of 96).
Late in the fourth quarter, the Rockets’ Alperen Sengün and Oklahoma City’s Cason Wallace engaged in a brief shoving match that resulted in a double technical.
The tournament champions get $514,971 per player and the runner-up receives $205,988 per player. Teams that lose in the semifinals get $102,994 per player. The NBA Cup championship game is the only one that does not count as a regular-season contest.
“It’s funny — a lot of people say it’s the money and it’s not. It’s the competition,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “Now, the guys who aren’t playing, it’s the money. I’ve never been hugged more by our rookies in my life. They came in and they were celebrating like it was a big game.”
The NBA sprinkled some Vegas into its game production this weekend, installing a red carpet for players to walk upon entering the arena with a lighted path, gold wing-like decals on the walls, and the NBA Cup itself on the route to the locker rooms. Cirque du Soleil dancers performed at halftime. The league also handed out 1,000 free tickets to Doral Academy, which a league spokesman described as being “part of our typical social responsibility efforts.”
In the first game, It sounded like the Hawks had more fans than the Bucks (Milwaukee was booed by the crowd several times), perhaps because the Falcons will visit the Raiders on “Monday Night Football,” which would have given Atlanta fans months to plan to be in Las Vegas this weekend. One of the challenges of the NBA Cup is teams and their fan bases don’t find out who reaches the final four until a few days before the event, making it difficult to plan travel.
“I kind of figured there would be a lot of Hawks fans out here with the Falcons playing Monday,” Young said. “It was good. You could definitely hear them in the crowd tonight. It was good to have them out here supporting us. Wish we could have won for them.”
Neither team seemed to have a decided fan advantage in the second game, until the dust-up between Wallace and Sengün went down and enough of the crowd seemed to respond “O-K-C.” The crowd also booed Brooks, which happens virtually every time Brooks plays in Las Vegas because he is a favorite target of Los Angeles Lakers fans, dating back to the 2023 playoffs when he was a member of the Memphis Grizzlies and tried to antagonize LeBron James. There was a large contingent of them in the Vegas area.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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