PHOENIX — With six minutes, 48 seconds remaining in Tuesday night’s game against the Phoenix Suns, Milwaukee Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer brought forward Joe Ingles back on the floor as Josh Okogie tied the game at 97 with a free throw. On the Bucks’ next offensive possession, point guard Jrue Holiday immediately swung the ball to Ingles on the right side of the floor.
Advertisem*nt
Holiday and Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee’s 2023 All-Stars, were on the floor and yet, Budenholzer had called a play for Ingles. Over the next five minutes of game action that would become a regular occurrence. After the game, Ingles admitted each time it happened, he found himself internally asking Holiday the same question as Holiday called the plays and kept throwing him the ball.
“You sure?” Ingles recalled thinking. “This is your team.”
Watching Ingles play a single possession of pick-and-roll basketball reveals his supreme confidence in his ability to read the floor and make a play. Yet, Tuesday was still only Ingles’ 35th appearance in a Bucks uniform. Despite being 35, Ingles is still the new guy and Holiday and Antetokounmpo are the Bucks’ battle-tested offensive engines, which means Ingles isn’t just going to be given the keys to the Bucks’ crunchtime offense.
That, however, was not the case on Tuesday.
With Holiday struggling (4 of 14 from the field) and working hard on defense to contain Suns guard Devin Booker, Budenholzer let Ingles run the show down the stretch. Holiday had complete faith in Ingles’ ability to take the Bucks home offensively.
“I trusted Joe when he got here,” Holiday (12 points, six rebounds, five assists) told The Athletic, when asked why he was willing to let Ingles run the offense late. “I played against Joe for a long time, so we know what Joe can do. I think it was more just about him getting acclimated. I think when he plays, he takes his time, he plays his game.
“So, yeah, he has my full support.”
In the next five minutes of game action, with Ingles running the show, the Bucks pulled away and it was fueled almost entirely by Ingles’ playmaking on the offensive end. That run helped the Bucks grab a 116-104 victory over the Suns to finish their three-game West Coast trip with two wins in two nights. With the victory, the Bucks (50-19) became the first team to clinch a playoff spot and took a three-game lead over the Celtics for the top spot in the Eastern Conference.
Advertisem*nt
On his first offensive possession after his return, Ingles worked in a pick-and-roll with Brook Lopez in the middle of the floor as Holiday cleared out to the left wing and Antetokounmpo stood in the left corner. The Bucks’ left-handed Australian got into the lane, picked up his dribble, pivoted back away from the basket and found Pat Connaughton in the right corner for a 3 that gave the Bucks a lead they would not relinquish.
After Holiday committed a traveling violation on the Bucks’ next offensive possession (his sixth turnover of the night), the ball was once again in Ingles’ hands two possessions later. And the Bucks ran the exact same set and Ingles again made the right pass. This time, he found his roll man, Brook Lopez, for a bucket, plus the foul.
The Bucks got a stop on defense and the Suns fouled Holiday in transition on the next possession. He hit those free throws to build the lead up to eight points before Milwaukee went back to Ingles on the next offensive possession.
With Suns point guard Chris Paul sitting on Ingles’ left hand and refusing to let him get to the middle of the floor, Lopez flipped the screen to release Ingles to his right and give him enough space to fire off a 3-pointer on the right wing.
Antetokounmpo came up empty on the next three offensive possessions, but got fouled grabbing a defensive rebound on the start of a fourth straight possession and hit one of two at the line to improve the lead by a point before Milwaukee went back to Ingles for two more possessions to seal Tuesday’s game.
After the brief hiatus from working together, Ingles and Lopez once again worked their two-man game and Ingles found Lopez rolling to the rim for another bucket in traffic.
Frustrated by Ingles’ playmaking and desperate for a turnover with a double-digit deficit, the Suns sent a double-team trap at Ingles on the next play. The 6-foot-8 forward watched the trap come his way, put the ball up over his head and found Lopez in the middle of the floor. Lopez quickly kicked the ball out to Jae Crowder, who was making his first return to Phoenix since being traded by the Suns, for a right wing 3 and the final touches on an impressive win on the second night of a back-to-back.
Ultimately, from the moment Ingles stepped on the floor with the game tied at 97 with 6:48 remaining until Crowder splashed the 3 with 1:23 remaining, the Bucks went on a 17-4 run. Ingles recorded three points, three assists and a hockey assist and fueled almost everything the Bucks did offensively, a continuation of what he has been able to do multiple times over the last few weeks in Milwaukee.
Advertisem*nt
“He just gives us a presence in the locker room, practices,” Budenholzer said of Ingles. “As a coach, you have to figure out how to best put him in his spots and the spacing around it and the players, they gotta keep developing that chemistry, so it’s still growing. I wish you could just snap your fingers and have it immediately, but that’s just not how basketball works, but he’s been invaluable to us, especially recently.”
For Ingles, playing in clutch time and getting to run the show offensively was exactly the type of thing he was hoping he could bring to the table when he signed with the Bucks this offseason, even though he wasn’t totally sure his body would allow him to have these moments with a new team.
“It’s cool from where I was in free agency to signing and not knowing what my role would be, not knowing how my body would be, there were a lot of ifs,” Ingles toldThe Athletic. “Until the day I die, I’ll be thankful for Jon, Bud and those guys that took that gamble or whatever you call it because you never know.
“I knew with my work ethic, I knew what I wanted to do and where I wanted to be and I feel like it’s starting to work out how we all envisioned it, but it’s pretty cool to be out there with those guys at the end of the game and be the one that’s getting a play called for you. Just that trust of the guys, of Bud. So, yeah, it feels nice. It was nice to knock one down at the end when I hadn’t made one. I mean, f–k, it’s a fun team to be a part of.”
(Photo of Joe Ingles: Joe Camporeale / USA Today)
Eric Nehm is a senior writer for The Athletic covering the Milwaukee Bucks. Previously, he covered the Bucks at ESPN Milwaukee and wrote the book "100 Things Bucks Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die." Nehm was named NSMA's 2022 Wisconsin Sports Writer of the Year. Follow Eric on Twitter @eric_nehm
