Saturday’s highly-anticipated matchup between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Dallas Mavericks lived up to all the hype. It was a tough battle between two teams with championship aspirations this season, which in the end, resulted in the Bucks outlasting their opponents, 132-125.
The fans definitely got their money’s worth out of this one.
Adrian Griffin Comments on Milwaukee Bucks’ Win
After the game, a relieved Adrian Griffin spoke to reporters to discuss his team’s hard-fought victory over Luka Doncic and Co. The Mavs certainly did not make it easy for the Bucks as Dallas did all it could to steal away a win at the Fiserv Forum.
The Bucks held on, though, and it resulted in their fourth straight victory in what has been an eye-opening run for this new-look squad.
“It was a gritty win,” Griffin said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “You need these wins to build some character down the road and our guys will know what it’s like to play in games like this and come out with a win.”
Griffin also spilled on Milwaukee’s late-game tactics — one that involved choosing to let Kyrie Irving handle the basketball as opposed to the Bucks leaving Dallas room to score from beyond the arc:
“Especially when we were able to take over the lead, we didn’t want to give up the three,” Griffin said. “You give up the three, they’ll get back in the game. We had pick our poison – that was Kyrie going one-on-one. He makes tough shots, he gets in the paint, great body control, just out of this world. That’s what he does. But if you send multiple bodies at times and they start spraying (passes) around and the three ball gets them back in the game. So you have to pick and choose at times and maybe if we were playing from behind with a few minutes (left) in the game we probably have to run a couple bodies at him and try to get the ball out of his hand, but we were able to score and keep the lead.”
It was a tough decision to make, especially considering how Kyrie was red-hot in this one. The All-Star point guard finished with a team-high 39 points, with Luka Doncic not far behind with 35 of his own.
There’s no doubt that it was a risk to let Kyrie do his thing and try and cover him one-on-one. In the end, however, the bold tactic paid off for Griffin and the Bucks.
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