While Rivers defends decision not to call timeout late in Heat loss
Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers He knew as Miles Turner’s second game-tying 3 rang off the rim, the timeout questions were coming.
The Miami Heat closed on Wednesday with a 106-103 win, their sixth straight, after Tyler Herro paced Milwaukee with 29 points and seven assists and Bam Adebayo added 17 points and 11 rebounds. The Bucks, who fell to 8-11 with their sixth straight lossgot 26 points from Ryan Rollins and 24 from Turner to come back from a 12-point deficit in the fourth via ESPN Box Score.
Down by three in the final seconds, the Bucks punted the ball instead of calling it quits. Rivers let Rollins attack in transition, the ball swung to Turner on the wing, and the big man’s contested 3-pointer with 5.7 seconds left was short. No whistles, no drawn plays, just mayhem with the live ball, just the way Rivers wanted it.
Afterwards, Rivers he didn’t flinchaccording to Eric Nehm at X, formerly Twitter. “I loved it. I loved the call. I’d do it again,” Rivers told reporters, explaining that he didn’t want to let the Heat set up a half-court defense after they were just starting to wobble. “Instead of allowing them to defend themselves, we had them on their heels.”
On some level, logic follows. The Heat were locked in all night, holding Milwaukee to 42 percent shooting and just 33 percent from deep while tying the Bucks on the glass, 47-47. Give Erik Spoelstra a free scheme timeout one last hard-to-switch look for Turner and Rollins was asking for trouble.
The The Bucks again played without Giannis Antetokounmpowho sat out a fourth straight game with a groin strain and still had a near steal NBA Cup winning on the road behind the roles of players who hit big shots.
Rivers, however, sounded like a coach who is pulling in. He wants his team to learn to execute on the fly. If the Milwaukee Bucks ever start closing out games like this, taking a gamble without a timeout Wednesday might seem less like stubbornness and more like a painful part of the process.
2025-11-27 03:37:00
