Don’t let the final scoreline fool you. Despite the fact that the game ended 119-116, the fact of the matter is that the Milwaukee Bucks were dominated by the Boston Celtics in the latter’s wire-to-wire victory.
Credit needs to be given where it’s due, though, and there’s also no denying that the Bucks deserve some praise for their failed comeback effort at the TD Garden.
Khris Middleton Highlights Silver Lining for Milwaukee Bucks
For Khris Middleton, Wednesday served as an eye-opening loss for the Bucks. They ultimately suffered their fifth defeat of the season, but Milwaukee was also able to prove that they can go toe-to-toe against one of the heavy favorites to go all the way this year.
“We can compete with the best of ‘em, we just have to play our best basketball,” Middleton said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Get off to better starts, which we haven’t done all year yet. You see against any team if you start slow it’s hard to play catch up the whole game.
“But, throughout the game I thought we played through a lot of rough stretches where we were still there. Our defense helped in the game and eventually our offense caught up to us. I like the way we competed all night even though we could’ve gave up. We didn’t, with how ugly it got at the start, a great crowd, hard place to play, hard place to win, but our guys stayed with it the whole night.”
The Bucks also showed their resiliency against the Celtics. They could have easily waived the white flag in this one, but they battled from 21 points down in the first half to make a game out of it.
It just wasn’t their day.
“I thought we had a lot of great looks – unfortunately they did not go down tonight,” Middleton said. “This is a night where you want those to go down. But it didn’t happen. I thought we still played well enough through stretches that kept us in the game, kept us fighting.”
For his part, Middleton logged 12 points on an inefficient 4-of-14 from the field. He added five rebounds, seven assists, a steal, and a couple of 3-pointers. However, the most significant stat of the evening for the three-time All-Star is the 29 minutes he played against Boston, which represents a new season-high for the recovering 32-year-old.
“Felt great,” he said. “I wanted to finish the game, felt we had a great chance to win and we did. Just overall I feel great. Each night I feel like I’m taking a step in the right direction.”
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