Giannis Antetokounmpo is averaging a career-best 32.4 points this season, and played in 16 of Milwaukee’s first 17 games.
MIAMI (AP) — Giannis Antetokounmpo, the league’s leading scorer this season, was unexpectedly held out of the Milwaukee Bucks’ NBA Cup game at the Miami Heat on Tuesday night with swelling in his left knee.
He had been expected to play until about an hour before the game. The team had Antetokounmpo listed as probable with a strained left calf, and then the knee issue evidently flared up.
Damian Lillard scored 37 points to help the Bucks beat the Heat 106-103 for their fifth consecutive win.
“I never know,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said, about 90 minutes before game time and moments after the team said there was an issue with the knee. “Honestly, that’s breaking news to me, too, right now.”
Milwaukee doesn’t play again until hosting Washington on Saturday. The NBA — under the player participation policy that went into effect last season — has a rule stating that “unless a team demonstrates an approved reason for a star player not to participate in a game,” it must have the star players “for all national television and NBA In-Season Tournament games.”
Antetokounmpo, a two-time Kia MVP, obviously qualifies as a star player by league definition, and the game in Miami was both nationally televised on TNT and an NBA Cup game. The league fined the Atlanta Hawks $100,000 earlier Tuesday for violating the policy by holding Trae Young out of a Cup game against Boston on Nov. 12, after a probe concluded he could have played.
Antetokounmpo — the reigning Eastern Conference player of the week, an award he has captured 24 times — not playing against the Heat does not necessarily mean there will even be a league investigation. The eight-time All-Star is averaging a career-best 32.4 points on 61% shooting this season, and he played in 16 of Milwaukee’s first 17 games.
“Listen, the way he plays and how he works, there’s going to be things like this,” Rivers said. “And when they come, you just deal with them.”
