OPINION:
I understand the logic in the Milwaukee Bucks deciding to trade Khris Middleton. His injuries were piling up, he too often looked like a shell of what he once was physically, and his contract was an albatross for the franchise.
Even with all that acknowledged, it made it no less heartbreaking to see Middleton dealt to the Washington Wizards before this year’s NBA trade deadline.
Jrue Holiday once said that if Giannis Antetokounmpo was the soul of the Bucks, then Middleton was its heart. That feels like a perfect way to describe the duo that helmed the greatest era of Bucks basketball in most of our lifetimes.
Giannis is obviously the center of the Bucks universe; the loyal superstar who stuck it out in Milwaukee when he could’ve bolted for a bigger market and eventually delivered the franchise’s first championship in a half-century with a 50-point masterpiece to close out the 2021 NBA Finals.
But that title certainly doesn’t happen without his long-time running mate.
Middleton’s basketball journey was unconventional, to say the least, for a No. 2 player on a championship team. A torn meniscus in his knee in his last year at Texas A&M helped cause him to fall out of the first round in the 2012 NBA draft, where he was selected 39th overall by the Detroit Pistons.
Prior to his second NBA season, Middleton was a throw-in player in a package centered on Brandon Knight sent to Milwaukee in exchange for Brandon Jennings. During that 2013-14 season — Antetokounmpo and Middleton’s first as teammates — the Bucks won just 15 games total in the worst campaign in franchise history.
Seven years later, Giannis and Khris were guiding Milwaukee to the 16 wins needed in the playoffs to capture the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
It was a long path to get there filled with twists and turns, including Jabari Parker, the No. 2 pick in the 2014 draft, seeing his career derailed by injuries and never coming close to hitting his true potential.
But thanks largely to Giannis and Khris blossoming to different levels of stardom, the Bucks had the table set to become of the NBA’s top teams upon the arrival of Mike Budenholzer and Brook Lopez prior to the 2018-19 season.
Two league-best records followed by ugly postseason flameouts in 2019 and 2020 caused some national talking heads to ponder whether Giannis could be the No. 1 on a championship team, while even some Bucks fans questioned whether Middleton was a good enough second star next to Giannis to get over the playoff hump.
With Jrue Holiday added for the following season, those questions were answered with a title run headlined by the brilliance of Giannis but filled with what felt like an endless barrage of clutch shots by Middleton.
In Game 1 of Milwaukee’s first-round series with Miami, it was Middleton who hit the game-winning jumper in the dying seconds of OT. The Bucks would sweep that series. In a Game 7 classic in Brooklyn, it was Middleton who hit the go-ahead bucket in the final minute of overtime that put Milwaukee ahead for good.
When Giannis was sidelined with the Eastern Conference Finals against Atlanta tied at 2-2, Middleton was ready to take the reins by scoring 58 points over the next two games as the Bucks closed out the series.
The night the Bucks clinched the title against Phoenix in Milwaukee will always be most remembered for Giannis dropping 50 in an NBA Finals closeout game. But there is no single highlight from that night I’ve watched more than Middleton hitting a ridiculous contested jumper over Devin Booker with a minute left in regulation to put the Bucks up six.
That was the moment when I truly let myself believe the Bucks were really going to pull it off. I imagine many other fans felt the same way.
I’ll always remember everything about that run from Middleton along with so much else: him gutting it out against Toronto in the 2017 playoffs despite being so sick that he needed to go to the hospital for fluids afterward; him going supernova against Boston in the 2018 playoffs and going 25 of 41 from deep in that series; that unmatched chemistry with Giannis that made their two-man game so formidable; that buttery midrange jumper; and that constantly calm demeanor that allowed him to be such an effective No. 2 while typically flying under the national radar.
It’s sad that the day has arrived that Khris is gone from Milwaukee. But the memories will endure, and all Bucks fans can look forward to the day that No. 22 takes its rightful place in the Fiserv Forum rafters.
