Damian Lillard stole the show for the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night with both Giannis Antetokounmpo (Achilles) and Khris Middleton (ankle) sidelined. There was a lot of pressure on Dame to step it up against the Big 3 of the Los Angeles Clippers, and it’s safe to say that the eight-time All-Star did exactly that.
Lillard turned in one of his best performances of the season, which came at the perfect time for the shorthanded Bucks.
Milwaukee Bucks Star Reacts to Big Win Vs. Clippers
Lillard finished Monday’s game with 41 points on 12-of-22 shooting, to go along with four rebounds, four assists, a steal, and four triples in 42 minutes of action. Dame was clutch down the stretch as well as he led the Bucks to an eye-opening come-from-behind victory against a powerhouse Clippers squad.
After the game, Lillard took us through his thought process during his majestic performance, including how the game slowed down for him as he almost single-handedly took on LA’s defense:
“It was my typical experience, I guess, for my career up until this point where I’m coming out, I’m attacking, kind of getting what I want to get early in the game and their adjustment is to run guys at me or trap or send a double team,” Lillard said, via Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “And it was familiar. So, sometimes I attacked it and applied pressure to the double team, so they didn’t think that they were just taking me out of the game.
“And then they would overreact. Sometimes, it would be a third guy coming into the paint. And then other times, I would act like I was going to attack and just make them get more aggressive and pull them out of the play and then throw it back and try to take advantage of the four-on-three. And that was that was pretty much all I did. The game kind of slowed down for me because they got aggressive. I know that that’s when you got to just kind of be a decoy and trust the next play.”
Dame didn’t do it all by himself, though. Bobby Portis also went off in this one as the veteran logged a massive 28-point, 16-rebound double-double off the bench. It was a total team effort for the Bucks too, which they will need to do all over again on Wednesday when they take on the Golden State Warriors.
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