Following practice on Saturday afternoon, Milwaukee Bucks head coach Doc Rivers acknowledged Giannis Antetokounmpo did not participate beyond a walkthrough – but refused to rule out the two-time league Most Valuable Player for Sunday’s Game 1 of the Bucks’ first-round playoff series with the Indiana Pacers.

Antetokounmpo had not practiced all week and is still less than two weeks removed from a left soleus (calf) muscle strain suffered April 9 against Boston, but Rivers never wanted to formally say his star player could not go at the opening of their series.

But in the first official injury report filing Saturday afternoon the Bucks listed Antetokounmpo as doubtful.

It would not come as a surprise to the team for Antetokounmpo to not play in not only Game 1, but perhaps the first few early games of the Pacers series, as a strain in the soleus part of the calf muscle is not only painful but can take multiple weeks to heal.

Bucks all-star point guard Damian Lillard missed 15 days with a strain of his soleus muscle last season, for example.

Antetokounmpo played through a myriad of maladies this season but was largely available for the Bucks, but they did go 4-6 without him. Three of those four, wins, however, were against playoff teams in Phoenix, Orlando and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Those facts had Lillard say it wasn’t difficult to prepare for this series without Antetokounmpo, “because when you bring him back, you get better. We gotta prep as we are right now and I think the beauty of that is we know that’s enough. We beat really good teams how we are right now.

“It’s the best team I’ve been on. So we capable. We can win games. And when we get him back we’ll be even better. That’s how I’m looking at it. I’m not looking at it like oh man, we can’t. We’ve shown it and I’ve been there before.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Bucks officially update Giannis Antetokounmpo's injury status