Bucks' Damian Lillard Details Challenge of Building Chemistry with Giannis Antetokounmpo

The All-Stars had an uneven start to their partnership in Milwaukee.

Feb 23, 2024; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Milwaukee Bucks guard Damian Lillard (0) and forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) shake hands before the start of the game against the Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Matt Krohn-Imagn Images / Matt Krohn-Imagn Images

Though Damian Lillard had hoped to join a title contender in a trade away from the Portland Trail Blazers, his first year with the Milwaukee Bucks was fraught with challenges. Dealing with abnormal head coaching churn, a shallow bench, and his own basketball mortality, the eight-time All-Star point guard fell short of his championship hopes in 2023-24. In the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs against the lower-seeded Indiana Pacers, Lillard missed a pair of games, while Bucks All-NBA power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo missed all six, and the team was given the boot.

Lillard's chemistry with Antetokounmpo required a bit of a learning curve, but by the end of the year, the duo had developed a pretty lethal pick-and-roll game. Heading into 2024-25, both players find themselves armed with three exciting new weapons: fresh starting shooting guard Gary Trent Jr., new bench forward Taurean Prince, and fresh reserve point-of-attack defender Delon Wright — all inked to veteran's minimum contracts, making them a steal for a capped-out Bucks squad.

As Lillard told Alex Squadron of Slam Online, it took a while for Lillard and Antetokounmpo to finesse their dynamic.

"I think it developed great over the course of the season," Lillard said. "He’s not a super talkative person and I’m not a super talkative person myself. Over time, I’ve become [more outspoken] the more that I start to build relationships with people, especially on the team. And I think as the season went on, me and him definitely started to talk more and more, and I started to come to his house to do conditioning or work out together. We’re on the phone. I’m sending him clips and stuff like that. And this summer, we’ve been in constant communication. We both know that we need each other. I think he’s excited coming into the season just like I am, because we became a lot closer as the season went on and we started to learn [about] each other a lot better. So having a full offseason of being connected to each other and being able to go into this next season, I think we’re both going to be ready. And we’re both excited to do what we gotta do."

Talk next turned specifically to the arc of Lillard and Antetokounmpo's pick-and-roll fit. To hear Lillard tell it, part of the reason the pick-and-roll action took time to develop was due to the fact that, during the Adrian Griffin era of their season, they weren't featured in pick-and-rolls together much.

"To start the year, we just weren’t in a lot of pick-and-rolls together for a long time," Lillard noted. "We were playing in transition, or I was in ISO [isolation plays], or he was in ISO. It just wasn’t a lot of pick-and-rolls. The best way to get chemistry in pick-and-rolls is to be in a lot of pick-and-rolls together. And I think it got to the point with Doc [Rivers, Griffin's midseason replacement] where he was having us in practice, just, Set it. Throw it to Giannis. Giannis, give it back to Dame. All right, Dame, throw it back. All right, Giannis, uphill DHO. It was almost like the team was laughing at us, just repping it out over and over."

Lillard was too polite to explicitly note the timing of the change. But reading between the lines, it sure seems like the upgrade from Griffin to Rivers (even though Griffin posted a stronger regular season record) positively impacted the improvement of what could be a lethal piece of offensive action heading into 2024-25.

"Then in games, we ended up being in a lot of those actions together a lot more the second half of the year," Lillard said. "I started to see what he was thinking, and I think he started to see what I was thinking, and then we would talk about it. Once you start to build chemistry, then I can start directing a little bit more because we are more connected, instead of me just trying to tell him what I want him to do [when] we haven’t even really worked together on it."

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