Most one-seeds in NBA history can be forgiven for not paying too much attention to their first-round matchup. After all, the eight-seed in the conference is usually the worst among all teams that qualified for the playoffs. But the institution of the play-in tournament has brought forth some changes that have proven to be devastating to Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, as evidenced by their soul-crushing defeat to the Miami Heat in the 2023 NBA playoffs.
The Bucks entered the 2023 postseason as one of the favorites to win the NBA championship, and for good reason. After all, the Bucks went on a tear in mid-January, looking like world-beaters along the way. But evidently, the playoffs is a different animal, and the playoffs clearly swallowed the entire Bucks team whole for not being prepared to a degree befitting of a championship team.
Even Giannis Antetokounmpo, fresh off an all-time classic rant about “failure”, expressed his candid thoughts about the Bucks' overall complacency that came to bite them on the backside against the Heat.
“They [the Heat] were playing to beat us and we were playing to win a championship… we were a little bit ahead of ourselves, to be honest,” Antetokounmpo said, per Eric Nehm of The Athletic.
It may be inexplicable for the core members of a team that has won a championship to be this complacent, but as the old adage goes, “even the best fall down sometimes”.
Nevertheless, some lessons are best learned the hard way. Now, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks will have a few months to process the sting of being on the wrong end of one of the most embarrassing first-round upsets in NBA history.
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