LOS ANGELES — Things felt different from the first play of the game.
“We come out first play the game, first couple plays, and they blitz me,” Damian Lillard said of the Lakers’ defense on him in his Milwaukee Bucks preseason debut Sunday. “You know, they trap me — and the guy that I’m releasing the ball to is Giannis. So I’m just like, ‘We can do this all night.'”
“I’ve never been this much open the last five to seven years…” Giannis Antetokounmpo said of his experience playing with Lillard for the first time. “Yeah, I’ve never been this open and I’ve never seen anybody been double-teamed from the first possession of the game.”
Things were not always smooth in the debut of the NBA’s newest super duo, there was plenty of rust, but the first time Lillard and Antetokounmpo took the court together it was easy to see the potential of what could be. Lillard finished with 14 points and Antetokounmpo 16 (and Giannis only played the first half).
“It’s always gonna be a little bit of rust the first time you get back out there in the preseason,” Lillard said. “No matter how much you practice is just different in the game. That adrenaline is different for not just you but the guys that you’re playing against, so it was just a little bit different, a little bit of rust but I felt good. I felt relaxed.”
Both Lillard and Antetokounmpo talked about it taking time to find their chemistry together, that it will be well into the season as they figure things out. Especially since the team’s third-best offensive weapon, Khris Middleton, remains out due to a knee issue and has yet to play with them. The other players, such as Brook Lopez and Malik Beasley, are figuring out how to play around them, too.
Just don’t confuse adjusting to sacrificing, Bucks coach Adrian Griffin said.
“I don’t know if they need to sacrifice, I think they just need to be who they are,” Griffin said. “I had a conversation with Giannis earlier in the season, and I told him you don’t have to be anything else then Giannis and Dame doesn’t have to be anything else than Dame.”
Still, the signs were impossible to miss — the two-man game with Lillard and Antetokounmpo is going to be next to impossible to defend.
In some ways it is Lillard who is more comfortable in the offense because Griffin hired former Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts as an assistant and essentially made him the offensive coordinator.
“I think the fact that Terry [Stotts] is here, I played with Terry for nine years and a lot of the things that we run, he’s controlling that offense. So it’s all familiar,” Lillard said.
The space created with the Antetokounmpo/Lillard two-man game stood out in their debut, both to the naked eye and the two players. Early on the Bucks used a wedge set to get Antetokounmpo the ball in the post, but with Lillard one pass away help was slow to arrive. On other sets the Laker defense sagged on Lillard or Antetokounmpo, opening up quick passes to open shooters.
Or, Lillard can just do what he does and create his own shot.
“Man, that’s a hell of a combo, having that one-two punch,” Laker coach Darvin Ham said, speaking for 28 other coaches around the league. “Dame with the ball and Giannis as the screener, or even Dame as the screener Giannis with the ball, it’s not gonna be any fun for anybody [to defend].”
It will only get harder to defend as this duo gets more comfortable. Just give them time.
