Milwaukee Bucks fans are still buzzing from Damian Lillard’s unforgettable debut against the Philadelphia 76ers on Thursday night. Not only did the seven-time All-Star drop a record-breaking 39 points in his first-ever game for Milwaukee, but he also made sure to close out the game in crunch time with his trademark clutch heroics.
As it turns out, this was the exact message his teammates had for him deep in the fourth quarter.
Milwaukee Bucks Teammates Wanted Damian Lillard to ‘Finish’ Sixers
Thursday’s season opener went down the wire. Despite the fact that Philly did not have James Harden, the Joel Embiid-led squad was still able to put up a formidable fight against the home team.
They had no answer for Lillard, though, who scored 14 of his 39 points in the final four minutes of the contest. After the game, Dame revealed that he got a bit of a boost from his Bucks teammates in the clutch:
“Even tonight on the bench, it was like towards the end of the game — it was four minutes, five minutes — Jae (Crowder), Cam (Payne), you know, they were like, ‘Dame, finish them. Close it out‘,” Lillard said, via Jack Maloney of CBS. “And it wasn’t them telling me, ‘you gotta score, you gotta do this,’ it was just they trust my judgment and trust me making decisions. And all the way down to the very last play where I got fouled and I went to the free-throw line.
“They inbounded it to Giannis and I was reading him like, ‘what do you want to do?’ And he was like, ‘come get the ball.'”
Even Giannis Antetokounmpo wanted Lillard to do his thing. The Bucks talisman knew that it was Dame who had the hot hand, and Giannis did not hesitate to give Lillard the ball for him to close out the game.
Antetokounmpo has already said in the past that he’s more than willing to defer to his new superstar teammate, and Thursday’s win over the Sixers was a clear testament to this notion.
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