The Milwaukee Bucks have been one of the hottest teams in the NBA of late. Unfortunately for them, the Indiana Pacers dragged them all the way back down to earth via a disappointing 142-130 loss on Wednesday night. This was Milwaukee’s second loss to their Central Division rivals in the span of three days, and their fourth in five games.
It comes as no surprise that Bucks superstar Damian Lillard isn’t at all pleased with this development.
Pacers ‘Embarrassed’ Milwaukee Bucks
Lillard did not hold back in calling out his team’s performance against the Pacers. Dame did not discredit Indiana for their consistently strong showing against the Bucks. Instead, the seven-time All-Star pointed to his own team’s failure to live up to the expectations as the most disappointing aspect in all this:
“I think the embarrassing part is because we are so much better than what we are showing,” Lillard said, via Eric Nehm of The Athletic. “It’s not the fact that we lost to them or they threw the ball off the glass. I mean, s— happens, it’s the NBA.
“Some teams, they got some younger guys, they kind of play a flashy style sometimes, that’s they style. That’s just part of the game. So that’s not the part that’s embarrassing, I just think that we are so much better than what we’ve shown in the games against them, is what I mean by that. But I also don’t look at it like, ‘Oh, it’s just the regular season.’ We wanted to win these games.”
The Bucks have two of the top superstars in the game today in Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo. The front office has also built a formidable roster around their two main stars, making them one of the most dangerous groups in the NBA today.
As Dame said, however, they just haven’t been playing the part of late.
A Long Road Ahead
Despite his brutally honest assessment, Lillard still sees the silver lining in their recent losses. Dame pointed out that we still haven’t even reached the mid-way point of the season and that time is still on Milwaukee’s side.
“It’s a long season, man,” Lillard said. “And I think one thing for us is we got to look at this and not just say, ‘Oh, it just went that way.’ We gotta do a better job of addressing it and just know that as the season goes on, we want to continue to just be a better team than we are right now. And in the same way the first 10 games of the season, (we said) we want to be a better team and we look back at that now and we like now (how) we look like a completely different team.
“I think if we just keep on having that type of mentality and taking those types of strides, you look up 30 games from now and we should be looking back at this like, ‘Man, that was embarrassing.’ in the same way we look back at the beginning of the season. But that’s the growth that teams go through and that’s what you experience and how long an NBA season is. So hopefully that’ll be what it is for us.”
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