Chippiness heating up in the NBA playoffs. Familiarity breeds contempt in Bucks-Pacers series

INDIANAPOLIS — The usually good-natured Indiana Pacers star, Tyrese Haliburton, has shown he refuses to back down from his Milwaukee Bucks rival and fellow All-Star, Damian Lillard.

It's been part of the chippiness and chirping that is beginning to heat up as it usually does during the NBA playoffs. Haliburton has a succinct explanation for what fans have seen in Pacers' series with the Bucks, saying the teams simply don't like one another.

It doesn't seem there is much love lost between Golden State and Houston, or the Los Angeles Lakers and the Minnesota Timberwolves. But for Milwaukee and Indiana, the animosity is about more than just one series.

Haliburton responded when Lillard started chattering during a timeout in Game 1 of this first-round playoff series. He did it again when the players were jawing at one another late in Game 2. And if it happens again when the series resumes in Milwaukee, just a short drive from Haliburton's hometown of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, it will likely be more of the same.

''He wants to win, I want to win and we're in the highest level, the most contentious moment here in the playoffs,'' Haliburton said after the Pacers took a 2-0 series lead. ''So it's just competition at the end of the day. But we don't have to sit here and act like there's any secret. We don't like them, they don't like us — that's just what it is.''

It's easy to understand how the Pacers-Bucks matchup reached this intensity — Game 3 will be their 18th matchup since the start of last season and Milwaukee desperately wants to avoid a third straight first-round exit, the second straight to Indiana.

A year ago, Indiana won four of the five regular-season matchups and then ousted the Bucks 4-2 by winning three of the last four playoff games. This year, Milwaukee won three of four during the regular season but has lost the first two in the postseason, where chippiness is the norm.

It is happening around the league.

— In Boston, an inadvertent elbow from Orlando center Goga Bitadze, a former Pacer, left the Celtics' Kristaps Porzingis bloodied.

— In Houston, there has been a lot of trash-talking and stare-downs with Dillon Brooks and Draymond Green among the participants. It didn't help that Jimmy Butler had to leave the game after a hard fall in Game 2 of that series.

— In Los Angeles, Anthony Edwards and Luka Doncic have helped fan the flames.

That's just playoff basketball, which comes with heightened physicality.

But for the two All-NBA guards in the Indiana-Milwaukee series, the stakes may have first ratcheted up when Haliburton celebrated a decisive 3-pointer in the final minute of Indiana's 128-119 victory over Milwaukee in the 2023 NBA Cup semifinals — stealing Lillard's signature Dame Time move by looking at his wrist. He's done it since then, too.

And then, of course, there was last season's dispute over a ball, which sent two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo racing into the Pacers locker room after he'd scored a career high 64 points.

Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers believes the flareups that were so common during his NBA playing career, one of the most physical eras in league history, are more of a sideshow.

''When you give a tech to two guys who don't do anything — they were staring at each other, they weren't going to fight — there's no tech needed,'' he said, referring to an initial scuffle between Gary Trent Jr. and Pascal Siakam. ''Like, sometimes, can we just get on with the damn game? Like, it's ridiculous. That took like 25 minutes to sort out and nothing was there.''

Siakam doesn't seem terribly fazed by any of it.

''I mean if you need an edge in the playoffs," said Siakam, who joined the Pacers in a trade in January 2024, ''we have problems.''

Haliburton, who has been a part of all the recent Milwaukee-Indiana showdowns, says playing the Bucks is different.

''Everybody says league rivalries aren't here anymore. It's right here," the Pacers guard said. "We've played like a million times over the last two years. I've seen every coverage they could throw at us, and I think those guys probably feel the same way about us. But there are still a lot of games to play, so I'm sure there will be more heated moments, more competitive moments.

"The extracurricular stuff is extracurricular, but it's fun.''

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