Social media has been all over the Indiana Pacers for their rather unsportsmanlike conduct following their 140-126 loss against the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday night. Bucks guard Cam Payne has already called them out for being salty about the defeat, and now Damian Lillard has chimed in with his criticism.
Can you really blame them after seeing the Pacers take Giannis Antetokounmpo’s game ball from his career-best 56-point performance?
Indiana Bench Was Big Mad
Giannis was understandably upset when he learned that the Pacers had taken the game ball to the locker room shortly after the final buzzer. He was seen having a heated argument with Indiana star Tyrese Haliburton on the sidelines before Antetokounmpo stormed the Pacers locker room to try and retrieve something he believed that he completely deserved.
Lillard was right there with Giannis as the latter exchanged words with Haliburton. Apparently, Dame already had a hunch that something was about to go down:
“After the game I thought the game was over,” Lillard said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I was staying close to halfcourt so I could kind of have a pulse on what they was saying because I knew they bench was mad. I was kind of like in the middle because I wanted to just be aware of where people was at ’cause I knew it was heated.”
Giannis and Haliburton had heated exchange following Bucks-Pacers 😳
It involved Pacers taking game ball away after Giannis' 64-point game pic.twitter.com/zsSGraLQVi
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 14, 2023
Milwaukee Bucks Star Damian Lillard Calls Out Pacers
Lillard then could not help but shade the Pacers for their antics. Dame firmly believes that their opponents were being petty after Giannis dropped 64 points all over them. Let’s not forget about the L, too.
“They took the game ball. And, that type of stuff happens in the NBA when people get offended by how it happened,” Lillard said. “Maybe they felt like he should’ve been out of the game and he was trying to get points or whatever, so they did something like that. They took the ball and said our rookie scored his first NBA points. It’s like, you know, this dude just scored 60 you know what I mean? But that’s part of the league. That’s the gamesmanship, that’s the pettiness. it happens. I didn’t think it was that deep but it just turned into a lot of commotion and a lot of stuff. So, everybody’s safe so I guess that’s the positive. Nobody got hurt.”
He’s right, though. The most important thing here is that cooler heads prevailed and truly ugly scenes were ultimately avoided. Let’s just hope Giannis got his ball.
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