Indiana Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton made all sorts of headlines after his heroic performance against the Milwaukee Bucks — and rightfully so. Haliburton stayed ready throughout the game, and he stepped it up in crunch time to carry the Pacers to a 122-113 victory over the Bucks in their own home floor.
It was another impressive outing for the All-Star point guard, which prompted a very honest reaction from Milwaukee talisman Giannis Antetkounmpo.
Milwaukee Bucks Star Speaks Out on Tyrese Haliburton’s Performance
Haliburton finished the win with a team-high 26 points on 11-of-22 from the field. He flirted with a triple-double too by logging nine rebounds and 11 assists, to go along with a steal, a block, and just two turnovers in 37 minutes of play.
The Bucks did a commendable job on limiting Haliburton from distance, forcing the guard to go just 1-of-7 from his attempts from beyond the arc. According to Giannis, he’s pleased with the type of defense the Bucks fronted Haliburton with in the first half. What happened after he break, however, was a different story.
“I’ll be very, very honest with you — I feel like in the first half we did a good job on him on the switches,” Antetokounmpo said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He wasn’t able to get downhill. Most of the points that he scored, if you saw they were with lobs and they were with Brook, when Brook was back he was able to come off the pick-and-roll and shoot the pocket twos and the floater. But we was able to keep Brook away from him and kind of pre-rotate and whenever Brook was coming out then I’d take him or maybe Malik took him, or I take him and I watch and then we did not allow him to get downhill. In the first half we did that very, very well. But in the second half, we didn’t.”
Regardless of how effective their defense on Haliburton was in the first half, what’s matter is what happened in the clutch. Down the stretch, it was Haliburton who dominated the game, knocking down shot after shot against a Bucks defense that clearly had no answer for the 6-foot-5 combo guard.
The Bucks face the Pacers again on Wednesday and unless they are able to solve this Haliburton dilemma, it’s very much possible that they face a similar undesriable result.
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