The Milwaukee Bucks find themselves confronting a familiar issue when it comes to their postseason aspirations: A star player could be sidelined or dramatically diminished for the biggest games of the year.

It happened to the Bucks last year, the year before, the year before that, the year before that (even though they won a title), in 2010 when the world was learning to Fear the Deer, even back in 1974 when Milwaukee was playing for a second championship.

Damian Lillard’s blood clot adds to a long list of Bucks playoff misfortune, and Milwaukee is once again confronting a daunting playoff challenge. Here’s a look at the bad breaks.

2024: Soleus-powered shut down for Giannis Antetokounmpo

The 2023-24 season was supposed to mark a new start for the Bucks, having acquired star Damian Lillard before the season to team with incumbent stars Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton. But only Middleton would play in all six games of the team’s first-round series against Indiana, a 4-2 loss to the Pacers.

Antetokounmpo injured the soleus muscle in his calf in early April, mere weeks before the start of the postseason, and was lost for the rest of the season, though it wasn’t clear until later that he’d be unavailable for every playoff game. Lillard gutted through his own Achilles injury, missing two of the six games, though he averaged 31.3 points per game when available.

2023: Bucks run it back (in a bad way) against Miami

Antetokounmpo was sidelined 11 minutes into Milwaukee’s Game 1 clash with the No. 8-seeded Miami Heat after he injured his back, and Miami took advantage by winning two of the first three games in the first-round series.

Giannis returned in Game 4, and Miami had its own health problem when it lost Tyler Herro. But the Heat won Game 4 and then shocked the Bucks in overtime of Game 5, with Jimmy Butler hitting a layup as time expired to tie the game before a 128-126 win at Fiserv Forum.

The Bucks, at 58-24 to post the best record in the East, won only a single playoff game. The Heat, who also eliminated the Bucks in upset fashion in 2020, went all the way to the NBA Finals before losing to Denver 4-1.

2022: Khris Middleton’s MCL sprain

The Bucks started their NBA title defense with a convincing 4-1 series win over Chicago, but it came with a monster cost: The loss of Middleton to an MCL sprain in Game 2.

Middleton, who had proven to be a matchup nightmare for the Celtics over the years, was unavailable for a big second-round clash against Boston. Still, led by Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday, the Bucks took a 3-2 lead before enduring back-to-back lopsided losses and falling in seven games. Boston went on to the Finals and lost to the Warriors 4-2.

To that point in his career, Middleton had been the picture of health, but he was slow to start the 2022-23 season and played in only 33 games, then 55 in 2023-24 before more injury issues at the start of the 2024-25 season. The 2022 postseason is, however, the only time Middleton wasn’t available in the playoffs.

2020: Breakdown in the bubble

Antetokounmpo missed the final game and a half of the second-round series inside the “bubble” of Disney World with a sprained right ankle. Realistically, the Bucks already were in serious trouble, down 3-0 in the series before his injury, and Middleton (36 points) managed to help Milwaukee rescue a Game 4 victory before the Giannis-less Bucks fell in Game 5. The fifth-seeded Heat prevailed over the top seed 4-1.

Perhaps the bigger what-if was the nature of the season itself. The Bucks had a 53-10 record on March 6, easily the best team in the East, before three straight losses before the COVID-19 shutdown (with Giannis sidelined for two of those). When play resumed at the end of July in the unusual format, the Bucks struggled to re-discover their magic, going just 3-5 in games before the playoffs and then losing a first-round game against Orlando before rallying to take the series.

There were bigger fish to fry, including a high-profile protest for social justice, but the Bucks had a special team that never seemed to get off the ground in the bubble.

2010: A gruesome injury to Andrew Bogut

The plucky Milwaukee Bucks took the third-seeded Atlanta Hawks to the brink in the first round, a 4-3 loss that included some shining performances from Brandon Jennings, John Salmons and Carlos Delfino.

It probably would have been a series victory if big man Andrew Bogut had been healthy. After a tremendous season averaging 15.9 points and 10.2 rebounds per game, landing him on the All-NBA third team and getting votes for defensive player of the year, Bogut was lost on April 3 against the Phoenix Suns. He went up for a dunk and fell hard to the ground after defender Amar’e Stoudemire flew in, landing awkwardly on his right arm in a gruesome injury. Bogut broke his right hand, dislocated his elbow and sprained his wrist.

The Bucks (46-36) had won the most games since 2000-01 and wouldn’t win that many again until 2018-19.

2001: The ‘conspiracy’ claims Scott Williams

Power forward Scott Williams wasn’t hurt in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals against the Philadelphia 76ers, but he was missing, and Bucks fans today still talk about it.

NBA vice president Stu Jackson re-evaluated an elbow Williams threw against Allen Iverson in Game 6 as a Flagrant II after it was originally ruled a Flagrant I during the game. It was his third flagrant of the postseason, and he surpassed the limit of three “points” against him with the re-evaluation. Williams found out on the team plane en route to Philadelphia that he wouldn’t be allowed to suit up in Game 7.

“I just remember the heartache, the pain of knowing we’re a championship team and to sort of have it taken away from us, without one of our key figures who was playing well in that series,” said current Bucks assistant Darvin Ham, who was inserted into the starting lineup in place of Williams. “To have it go down the way, it did was unfortunate.”

The 76ers won Game 7, 108-91, and advanced to the NBA Finals.

1974: Lucius Allen lost in March

The Bucks’ powerful three-headed monster of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oscar Robertson and Bob Dandridge carried a lot of the load for the 1974 squad, but Lucius Allen was vital.

Allen was lost March 15 to a knee injury that required surgery, and that loomed large against a Boston team in the Finals that could press and create turnovers. With Allen’s lightning-quick ball-handling off the floor, the Celtics were able to capitalize on the void and won the series in seven games.

Allen’s 17.6 points per game were third on the team that season, well ahead of Robertson (who was playing in his final games that season), and the 26-year-old was second on the team with 5.2 assists.

Bonus: The 2021 championship

If we’re playing a game of “what-if,” it’s worth noting that the Bucks were able to balance out a near-catastrophic loss in the 2021 postseason with some good fortune.

Most everyone remembers the story of Antetokounmpo suffering what looked like a surefire season-ending knee injury in the conference finals against the Atlanta Hawks, a Game 4 loss that tied the series at 2-2. But Middleton, Holiday and Brook Lopez rose to the occasion, winning the final two games of the series, and Antetokounmpo triumphantly returned for an NBA Finals for the ages.

There were no denying some breaks, too.

Hawks star Trae Young didn’t play in Games 4 (an eventual Hawks win after Giannis went out) or 5 (a Bucks win). More prominently in the Eastern Conference semifinals one series earlier, the Brooklyn Nets were ravaged by injuries to James Harden and Kyrie Irving, with the tandem missing functionally seven (and nearly eight) games between them.

There’s also, of course, the famous foot-on-the-line moment at the end of regulation in Game 7, when Kevin Durant appeared to hit a game-winning three-pointer but had to settle for a two that allowed Milwaukee to win in overtime 115-111.