MILWAUKEE — Until 3:40 remaining in the third quarter of Tuesday’s game against the Boston Celtics, things were going well for the Milwaukee Bucks. In the middle of a four-game losing streak, the Bucks were up 15 points on the NBA’s only 60-win team..
Then disaster struck.
Without making contact with another player, Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo crumpled to the floor while running up the court and immediately grabbed the lower half of his left leg.
After sitting for a short period with teammates and a trainer surrounding him, Antetokounmpo put weight on the leg and then put an arm around the shoulders of teammates Brook Lopez and Thanasis Antetokounmpo to be helped off the floor. Eventually, Antetokounmpo walked back to the Bucks’ locker room under his own power.
During the fourth quarter of Milwaukee’s 104-91 victory, the Bucks announced Antetokounmpo had suffered a strain in his left soleus, which is a muscle in the calf. After the game, Bucks coach Doc Rivers told reporters that Antetokounmpo was undergoing further testing after the game for both his left calf, as well as his left Achilles tendon.
“They’re testing him for the calf, which is obviously an MRI,” Rivers said. “They’ll check them both, yeah.”
While Rivers confirmed further testing, he did say that it had not yet been completed and Antetokounmpo had just left the arena to have the imaging done.
Bucks point guard Damian Lillard, who was bringing the ball up to start an offensive possession, was the closest player to Antetokounmpo on the play when he saw Antetokounmpo go down.
“Anytime you see one of your teammates go down, it’s a real level of concern,” Lillard said. “We spend a lot of time around each other, more than we would our family, so I think that was the number one thing. And then for it to be your best player, the most important part of our team, at this point in the season, it was like an “Oh s—” moment, especially because there was nobody else around.
“And I was right next to him. So I just saw, like, kind of his facial expression, like his reaction. So, obviously, I got scared. I knew we were going to call timeout, so I just dribbled up to half court, and when he stood up, I could tell he wanted to try to put weight on it. And I saw him put some weight on him and it was like, I guess the reaction of him doing that is what made him kind of almost go back down. But I saw him put weight on it. So I was like, ‘All right. It seems stronger than what I was thinking.’
“And to see him just be able to even walk off on his own, I think that showed me a lot. And so obviously, that was encouraging to see. And now you just want him to get healthy.”
Rivers agreed with Lillard that there is real concern about Antetokounmpo’s health moving forward, especially with the NBA playoffs starting on Apr. 20.
“High, I would say that,” Rivers said of his level of concern. “But he’s Giannis. I think everyone probably feels the same way as I do right now. We’re just going to hope for the best.”
With the win on Tuesday, Milwaukee moved to 48-31 on the season. With three regular-season games remaining, the Bucks have a one-game lead over the New York Knicks for second place in the Eastern Conference. The Bucks also hold the tiebreaker over the Knicks, but have further concerns in the standings.
The Orlando Magic and Cleveland Cavaliers are both two games back of the Bucks as well. The Cleveland Cavaliers own the division record tiebreaker over the Bucks, but have now lost three straight games and won only three of their last 10 games. On the other hand, the tiebreaker is up in the air against the Magic, who face the Bucks twice in the final three regular-season games — first on Wednesday night in Milwaukee and then on Sunday in Orlando for the regular-season finale for both teams.
In between their meetings with the Magic, the Bucks face the Thunder, who they beat March 24 in Oklahoma City. This season, the Bucks are 3-3 in games Antetokounmpo doesn’t play.
The Bucks have not yet announced the results of any of the further imaging Antetokounmpo had done following the game.
So, at this point, the only diagnosis done by the team is a left soleus strain. The soleus is one of two muscles that make up the calf, so teams will often refer to soleus strains as the more general calf strain, but there are instances where teams have specified that a player suffered from a soleus strain. One of those instances occurred last season with Lillard, while he was a member of the Portland Trail Blazers.
“That s— hurt,” Lillard said in response to a question from The Athletic about how it felt when had the same injury in the first month of the 2022-23 season. “It hurt. … When I did it, usually I’m able to walk things off. I feel like I have a high pain tolerance and when I did it, I started to walk, it wasn’t just that it was that painful, it was that the muscle just can’t handle it.
“So, I think once it calmed down, you kind of figured out a way to limp around it, but it’s a weird feeling. But hearing that, I know, I know that feeling. And also as somebody who experienced that — if that’s what it is — that’s also encouraging.”
For Lillard, his soleus injury actually came about after a calf strain in the same leg kept him out earlier in the season. Lillard was first listed on the injury report with a right calf strain on Nov. 6, 2022, but he played through the injury until he eventually suffered a soleus strain a few weeks later.
“When I did it, I strained my calf and then I came back after like, I’d probably say, eight or nine days, I came back from the calf,” Lillard said. “And then … I had the soleus injury like right after I came back. I think it was like a game or two after I came back, I did my soleus. And then after that, it was like two weeks. For me, it was like two weeks and then I came back and played.”
Lillard was first listed on Portland’s injury report with the right soleus strain on Nov. 20 and he did not play again until the Trail Blazers played the Indiana Pacers on Dec. 4, approximately 14 days after the initial diagnosis.
For the Bucks, the NBA Playoffs are just 11 days away, so Antetokounmpo’s timeline will depend entirely on the seriousness of the soleus strain and whether or not that is the only injury that has occurred when the team gets the results of Tuesday night’s tests back.
(Photo of Giannis Antetokoumpo: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
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