The Milwaukee Bucks are done. They are now out of the running for the NBA In-Season Tournament after being eliminated by the Indiana Pacers in the semifinal on Thursday night.
It was a gutting loss for the Bucks, who came into Thursday’s do-or-die matchup as the favorites to win the tournament. Tyrese Haliburton and Co., however, had other ideas.
Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Message for Milwaukee Bucks
After the game, a disappointed Giannis Antetokounmpo spoke to the press to discuss his team’s deflating loss. The former back-to-back MVP got brutally honest with his assessment of his side’s lackluster performance on the evening:
“The talent level that we have is incredible, but we have to be more organized,” Antetokounmpo said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “We have to be more organized. I feel like sometimes we’re not organized at all. We don’t know what we try to get from our offense, or sometimes defensively we’re not sprinting back. We don’t – we create a lot of – shoot a lot of early threes. At the end of the day, you have to protect the ball. You have to know where the ball is.
“We had a lot of situations today that they got a lot of dunks, open threes, early threes. We have to be better. And the other thing is that obviously our chemistry, game-by-game, going to keep on getting closer. Again, because we have new players on the team, Malik (Beasley) and Dame, which we’ve played a lot of years in the previous years with the same, basically, core, and now it’s different.”
That’s a handful of issues that Giannis pointed out right there. Even the seven-time All-Star himself seems to be a tad confused about what really went wrong against Indiana. Either that or it’s just that not too many things went right on Thursday night. It could be a combination of the two as well.
Whatever the case might be, Giannis and the rest of the Bucks will now need to go back to the drawing board after this disappointing loss.
It’s just extremely frustrating to accept the fact that Milwaukee just let a golden opportunity slip through their hands — a feeling that will surely stick with the fans and the players alike.
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