The Milwaukee Bucks did all they could against the Denver Nuggets on Monday night. To their credit, they nearly stole a win against the defending champs on their own home court.
The Bucks, however, ultimately fell short. Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray led Denver to an impressive 113-107 victory, sending Giannis Antetokounmpo and Co. back to the drawing board.
Milwaukee Bucks Star Giannis Antetokounmpo Delivers Strong Message After Nuggets Loss
As always, Giannis left it all on the court against Denver. He finished with a team-high 29 points on 11-of-19 shooting, to go along with 12 rebounds, four assists, a steal, and a block in 37 minutes in action. In the end, however, it was all for nothing.
Antetokounmpo spoke to the media after the tough loss and he delivered a stern reminder to his teammates about needing to give it everything they have in every single game, regardless of the circumstances:
“At the end of the day, the game plan is one thing but our effort has always gotta be there,” Antetokounmpo began, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I think we have very, very smart players that are on the team and sometimes when the game plan is not as accurate, our effort might not be there. And that’s not good. That’s bad. But whenever we come together as a team and we realize we have to stop a guy as a team or we have to stop the team from playing fast, from getting a lot of open threes, from driving. When we come together as a team, we can definitely do it. But we cannot just pick and choose.”
While there were flashes of brilliance from the Bucks on both sides of the ball against the defending champs, their collective effort ultimately fell short. This is exactly why Gianins is calling on his team to learn their lesson from this defeat.
“In order for you to win you have to do it all the time,” he continued. “And there’s going to be times that you lose games. But in order for you to win at a high level, there’s got to be a standard. At the end of the day, I think we set the standard as the team. Hopefully moving forward we can defend the same way. There’s going to be a lot of games that we’re going to win and we’re going to blow out teams and there’s going to be a lot of games that are going to be close that we have to let our habits we built throughout the year take over. And sometimes just our talent is going to take over, Dame’s going to take the ball and he’s going to make something happen. But as I said, we set the standard today. We can definitely defend. Moving forward I don’t see, there’s no excuse for us not to defend.”
If anything, the Bucks proved on Monday night that they are very much capable of matching up against the very best the NBA has to offer. There was a lot to take away from their defensive performance against the Nuggets, and as Giannis said, this must be something the Bucks build on moving forward.
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