The Milwaukee Bucks won the franchise’s first NBA championship in 50 years with a 105-98 win over the visiting Phoenix Suns on Tuesday night.
The Bucks’ 4-2 series win was sealed in front of a 20,000 crowd as 65,000 celebrated outside the Fiserv Forum.
They are only the fifth team to win the best-of-seven finals series after losing their first two matches.
Exactly three weeks after suffering a knee injury that appeared to put his role in the Finals in doubt, Giannis Antetokounmpo put in an impressive performance to secure the win.
Antetokounmpo matches the feat of Michael Jordan and Hakeem Olajuwon by collecting a regular season MVP, NBA Finals MVP and NBA defensive player of the year awards.
“I’m happy I was able to do it with this team for Milwaukee,” said Antetokounmpo.
“I want to thank Milwaukee for believing in me. I want to thank my team-mates for playing hard with me,” Antetokounmpo concluded.
Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer described the Greek forward as “a special human being”.
“I’ve learned so much from him. He’s a special leader,” he said.
“These players are champions every day. They’ve embraced getting better every day.”
Budenholzer was only four years old when NBA legends Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson led the Bucks to their only previous NBA tile in 1971, when some of the current players’ parents had not been born.
