(1) Milwaukee Bucks vs. (8) Miami Heat: 2023 NBA first-round playoff preview

The Eastern Conference’s top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks will face the Miami Heat, who won their play-in matchup Friday to seize the East’s eighth and final playoff spot, in the first round of the 2023 NBA playoffs. The last time these two teams squared off in the postseason, Milwaukee swept Miami in 2021’s first round.

More Yahoo Sports NBA first-round playoff previews:

(2) Boston Celtics vs. (7) Atlanta Hawks

(3) Philadelphia 76ers vs. (6) Brooklyn Nets

(4) Cleveland Cavaliers vs. (5) New York Knicks

(1) Denver Nuggets vs. (8) Minnesota Timberwolves

(2) Memphis Grizzlies vs. (7) Los Angeles Lakers

(3) Sacramento Kings vs. (6) Golden State Warriors

(4) Phoenix Suns vs. (5) Los Angeles Clippers

How they got here

Milwaukee Bucks (58-24)

By hitting the ground running and, when presented with an oncoming obstacle, simply running it over like a monster truck in a demolition derby.

The Bucks exited last season firmly convinced that if they’d been whole — if they hadn’t lost Khris Middleton to a sprained left MCL in Game 2 of their opening-round series — they would’ve outlasted the Boston Celtics in the conference semifinals and been on their way to a second straight title. Even with Middleton still sidelined coming out of training camp, Milwaukee entered a new campaign intent on proving its championship mettle, smothering Joel Embiid, James Harden and the Philadelphia 76ers on opening night and beginning 2022-23 with nine straight wins.

Behind overwhelming MVP candidate Giannis Antetokounmpo, characteristically elite point-of-attack work from Jrue Holiday and Defensive Player of the Year-caliber back-line play from Brook Lopez, Milwaukee established itself as one of the NBA’s best defenses — stingy enough to prevent Mike Budenholzer’s club from losing more than two straight games until just before Christmas and keep the Bucks within striking distance of the Celtics for the East’s top spot.

It didn’t always look pretty, though. With No. 2 scoring option and primary pick-and-roll ballhandler Middleton missing the first 20 games, shooting under 33% from the field in his first seven games back, and then going back on the shelf for another five weeks — and with a sore left knee sidelining Antetokounmpo for seven games, and various illnesses costing Holiday six games — Milwaukee struggled to score, ranking 24th in the NBA in half-court offense and 25th in overall offensive efficiency past the midpoint of the season. Those persistent offensive woes called into question whether the Bucks would be able to find the gear they’d need against the elite defenses sure to stand between them and another deep playoff run.

Once Middleton came back and everybody else got healthy in late January, though, the Bucks found that gear. Milwaukee ripped off 16 straight wins, going undefeated in February to surge from 5.5 games behind Boston to sitting alone in first place at the start of March. From Middleton’s second return on Jan. 22 until the final two games of the season, when they’d already locked up the No. 1 seed and rested all of their key players, the Bucks went 29-5, outscoring opponents by 9.6 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions — the best mark in the league, according to Cleaning the Glass — with a half-court offense that ranked second, behind only the whirling dervish Sacramento Kings.

With its full roster available, though, Milwaukee has an elite defense, the ceiling of an elite offense, enough positional versatility to match up whether opponents want to play bully-ball or go small, plus a ton of postseason experience — and, when all else fails, arguably the best player in the world. If you’ve got your sights set on a second championship in three years, that ain’t a bad place to start.

Miami Heat (44-38)

By performing just well enough with their backs against the wall to get over the finish line.

Last year’s Heat won 53 games and the No. 1 seed in the East — this, despite Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Kyle Lowry and Tyler Herro barely playing 100 minutes together — and came within one Butler pull-up triple of making their second trip to the NBA Finals in three years. This year’s model, though, never really came close to finding the kind of two-way quality or consistency we’ve come to expect in Miami.

Injuries played a role. Butler and Herro both missed a chunk of time in November, and Erik Spoelstra’s desperate need for a steady hand at the tiller on offense led to the 36-year-old Lowry averaging more than 37 minutes per game over a 20-game stretch early in the season. In a perhaps related story, his production dipped dramatically over his next 20 appearances, and he’d go on to miss time — including a 15-game stretch covering nearly all of February — with persistent left knee soreness. Hoped-for second-unit contributor Victor Oladipo missed the first 25 games with his own knee issues; erstwhile sniper Duncan Robinson missed 15 following finger surgery. Neither has made a major impact.

Due in part to the myriad absences and the flagging play when available, and despite Butler turning in an All-NBA season and Adebayo averaging a career-high 20.4 points per game, the offense plummeted. A near-top-10 unit last season devolved into one of the NBA’s most punchless groups: 23rd in half-court offensive efficiency, 25th in overall points scored per possession and 27th in team 3-point accuracy, with just about every volume shooter besides Herro having a down year from distance.

The defense — perennially the Heat’s calling card — declined, too. Miami’s seventh-place finish in points allowed per possession looks strong at first glance; landing 16th in half-court defense, though, reveals some slippage. The Heat again prevented teams from shooting at the rim at an elite level, but the limit-interior-shots-at-all-costs approach has led to Miami giving up a ton of 3-point looks for the last half-decade … and this season, Heat opponents drilled ’em, shooting 37% from beyond the arc and a league-high 40.5% from the corners.

That might be just a monthslong run of bad luck; multiple studies over the years have suggested that opponent 3-point percentage is a pretty noisy statistic that doesn’t have a ton to do with what the defense does. (“Make-or-miss league,” and all that.) But when they’re lighting you up from deep and once they’re able to get inside — the Heat were bottom-five at defending the point-blank shots they did concede, allowing opponents to shoot 68.9% in the restricted area — then maybe it’s about more than just luck. Like, say, an across-the-board size deficit. Adebayo, a legitimate All-Defensive Team candidate, is capable of erasing a ton of mistakes and covering up a lot of blemishes, but the Heat still face an uphill battle most nights with the 6-foot-7 Butler, 6-5 Caleb Martin and 6-5 Max Strus seeing the bulk of the minutes at forward, while 6-foot Lowry, 6-3 Gabe Vincent and the 6-5 but reedy Herro split backcourt duty.

Keeping the not-exactly giant P.J. Tucker wouldn’t necessarily have solved that problem, but his exit to Philadelphia still hurt. Martin did yeoman’s work in an elevated role, but the other free agents the Heat re-signed (Oladipo, the since-traded Dewayne Dedmon) haven’t paid dividends, and Miami just never found the infusion of talent it needed to compete with the likes of the Bucks, Celtics, 76ers and Cavaliers; when you’re signing Kevin Love and Cody Zeller in late February and immediately slotting them into big rotation roles, you’re in a pretty bad way.

And yet! While the Heat didn’t get above .500 for good until New Year’s Eve, they also did just enough to stay afloat, thanks largely to their propensity to win close games. Only the Dallas Mavericks played more games where the score was within 5 points in the final five minutes than the Heat, who went 32-22 in those “clutch” games, outscoring opponents by nearly 15 points per 100 possessions in crunch time, the second-best mark in the league behind only Philadelphia.

One big reason why: Butler’s ability to take over late, whether by generating high-percentage shots, getting himself to the free-throw line or making a key defensive play when the Heat had to have it. After a dismal showing in Miami’s play-in loss to the Hawks, Butler cranked it up late on Friday against the team that drafted him, scoring 13 of his 31 points in the fourth quarter and dishing a pair of assists to Strus, headlined by a huge 3-pointer with 1:14 to go that helped put the Bulls away and seal the eighth seed:

It took them as long as humanly possible to do it, but the Heat — a team that got outscored on the whole this season — finally clinched a playoff spot. Now, how they got here is irrelevant; as Butler recently told Yahoo Sports senior NBA reporter Vincent Goodwill, all that matters is that they did get here.

Head to head

Milwaukee split the season series with Miami, 2-2.

The Heat’s two wins, in a two-game baseball-style series in January, came with both Antetokounmpo and Middleton sidelined. With Lowry and Herro both sidelined, Vincent turned in his two best games of the season in that set: 28 points on 10-for-16 shooting with 6 assists in a 108-102 win, followed by 27 points on 11-for-14 shooting with 5 steals two nights later in a 111-95 rout.

The Bucks won both games in which Antetokounmpo and Middleton played: a 123-115 early February win that saw Antetokounmpo put up a 35-15-11 triple-double in just 36 minutes, and a 128-99 blowout three weeks later in which Antetokounmpo left after just six minutes with a knee injury, but Milwaukee still rolled behind six players in double figures, thanks to a plus-30 differential from behind the arc (19-for-46 for the Bucks, 9-for-40 for the Heat).

Closing lineups

Milwaukee Bucks

I know this is a hot take, but I’d probably pencil that Antetokounmpo guy into my closing lineup. Seems like he could help the ballclub a little bit.

Antetokounmpo and Holiday, arguably the best defensive guard in the sport and an aggressive isolation scorer and playmaker when called upon, will be on the court whenever it matters most. If he’s healthy enough to move laterally on defense, so will Middleton. Over the past three seasons, Milwaukee has outscored opponents by 720 points in more than 2,500 minutes with that big three on the court; no trio in the league provides a better balance of three-level scoring, point-of-attack defense and two-way schematic flexibility against top-flight competition.

Lopez, in all likelihood, will join them. At first glance, you’d think a 7-1, 282-pound center would profile as a liability in the context of a postseason series against opponents who might look to downsize and spread the court. In practice, though, it’s not easy to play this particular giant off the floor.

Lopez shoots well enough to space in his own right, drilling a career-high 37.4% from deep this season on nearly five 3-point attempts per game. He can punish switches by taking smaller defenders to the block — he’s scored 103 points on 88 post-ups against non-centers this season, according to Second Spectrum, which works out to a very healthy 1.17 points per possession — and by pounding the offensive glass for putbacks or to extend possessions. And while the Bucks would much prefer to have Lopez sagging back to lock down the paint in their trademark drop pick-and-roll coverage, he’s not drawing dead when drawn out into deep water; Milwaukee allowed 0.994 points per chance on possessions that saw Lopez defend an isolation, middle-of-the-pack among players to guard at least 100 isos (and just a tick behind Draymond Green’s mark).

Generally speaking, the positives of having Lopez on the floor far outweigh the potential negatives of him getting roasted in space in the wrong matchup. Should Milwaukee run into one of those matchups, though, Bud can either turn to Bobby Portis alongside Antetokounmpo (a look that has hasn’t defended well this season, but has been great in years past) or slide Antetokounmpo to center — an alignment in which the Bucks outscored opponents by more than 10 points-per-100 during the regular season.

Miami Heat

Adebayo, Butler and Herro lead the Heat in “clutch” minutes this season. While Herro gives opponents a guard to target on switches and in isolation, his pick-and-roll play, 3-point shooting and midrange pull-up game likely make him important enough to Miami’s chances of generating late-game offense that Spoelstra will stick with him until he’s got no other choice. The Heat have outscored opponents by 87 points in 243 minutes with that trio on the court this season — a strong number.

From there, in the absence of another solid two-way option like Tucker was last season and Crowder was during the Finals run, Spo will probably mix and match. Martin can bolster the perimeter defense; Strus and Love can give you some more shooting; Lowry and Vincent offer another ballhandler.

None of those options seems particularly likely to scare the Bucks. They’re the ones Spoelstra’s got, though, so he’ll have to find a way to make them as dangerous as possible.

Matchup to watch

How Adebayo fares against Lopez and the Bucks’ drop coverage.

In their 2020 playoff matchup in the bubble, Adebayo shot 60% from the field against Milwaukee, including 15-for-29 (51.7%) on floater-range and midrange shots — many of which he splashed over the top of Lopez as he hung back in the paint. The Heat scored 4.3 more points-per-100 with Adebayo on the floor in that series than off it; they beat the Bucks in five.

The following spring, though, the script flipped. Lopez continued to hang deep, essentially ignoring Adebayo away from the front of the rim and daring him to hit those same shots. This time, Adebayo shot 17-for-40 (42.5%) on those floaters and midrange Js, consistently seeming to have a hard time gauging Lopez’s length and finding a comfortable release point; that uncertainty and discomfort bled over into his playmaking, as one of the best passing big men in the game totaled just 17 assists against 11 turnovers. The Heat scored a dismal 94.2 points-per-100 with Adebayo on the floor in that series; they got swept.

Those short jumpers will be a battleground again; Milwaukee’s not going to just chuck its tried-and-true defensive strategy without making Adebayo and his teammates prove they can beat it. The good news for Miami: Adebayo led the NBA in shots taken and made in the paint but outside the restricted area, and shot 46.9% on the floaters and midrange Js combined. The bad news: He’s entering the series having just shot a combined 6-for-21 in two play-in games, including just 5-for-17 on those looks.

If Adebayo can’t consistently cash in those in-between looks the Bucks will give him, it’s hard to see Miami finding enough pathways to points to be able to hang for long against the better and deeper Bucks. But if Adebayo can shake off his rough offensive play-in performances, confidently step into the space Lopez concedes and drill them at an elite clip, it might prompt Milwaukee to bring Lopez up higher — which, in turn, could open up more room in the paint for cutting, driving and general mischief-making of all kinds.

BetMGM series odds

Milwaukee Bucks (-1200)

Miami Heat (+750)

Series schedule (all times Eastern)

Game 1: Miami at Milwaukee on Sunday (5:30 p.m., TNT)

Game 2: Miami at Milwaukee on Wednesday (9 p.m., NBA TV)

Game 3: Milwaukee at Miami on Saturday, April 22 (7:30 p.m., ESPN)

Game 4: Milwaukee at Miami on Monday, April 24 (TBD)

*Game 5: Miami at Milwaukee on Wednesday, April 26 (TBD)

*Game 6: Milwaukee at Miami on Friday, April 28 (TBD)

*Game 7: Miami at Milwaukee on Sunday, April 30 (TBD)

*if necessary

Prediction

Bucks in five