Giannis, Bucks frustrated after In-Season Tournament loss to Pacers: ‘We know it’s on us’

LAS VEGAS — Giannis Antetokounmpo was not completely satisfied. And after the Milwaukee Bucks faltered down the stretch, wanting disorganized and listless in a 128-119 loss to the Indiana Pacers within the semifinals of the In-Season Tournament, he listed the the explanation why.

“No, even if it was about the organization and the coaches, I try to shoot straight,” Antetokounmpo stated after he was requested whether or not the coaches or gamers have been to blame. “But at the end of the day, I don’t — as much as I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus, at the end of the day, the players play the game. We play the game, you know. Coaches can say whatever they want to say and put us in the position to be successful, and you hope that they do that for you.

“But you’ve got to make the plays, you know, like you don’t sprint back on defense, it’s not the coaches’ fault you don’t sprint back. If you’re not able to execute down the stretch and you turn the ball over and you throw it to your opponent’s hands, it’s not the coaches’ fault. You’ve just got to be a man, you have to take that.”

The loss knocked the Bucks out of the inaugural occasion and dropped them to 15-7 for the season. They not solely misplaced a winnable recreation, but additionally misplaced an opportunity to play for the NBA Cup and the $500,000 that gamers would get for profitable it. In the top, there was a way of disarray, which mirrored the Bucks’ play down the stretch.

“We have to come together as a team,” Antetokounmpo stated. “This is Game 22. We have 60 more games. We’ve got to keep on coming together as a team. We’ve got to keep on spending time together. We’ve got to keep watching film together. We have to keep getting on the court together.

“We haven’t had the time to practice. We play every other day. It’s hard. It’s hard. I’m not going to lie, it’s hard to practice in this league. It’s not like playing overseas. Overseas, you play one game, two games a week. You have four days a week you can come back and work on your game plan. You know what you’re going to do defensively, how you’re going to guard teams, but in the NBA, that’s not the case. You practice while you’re playing the game. But at the end of the day, in order for us to expedite our chemistry, we have to keep coming … together.”

Together was one thing they weren’t within the remaining three minutes in opposition to their Central Division foe. Before Thursday’s matchup in opposition to the Pacers, the Bucks have been statistically the league’s greatest clutch crew, posting a 31.9 web ranking in 54 minutes of clutch time basketball in 12 completely different video games.

By the time the Pacers beat the Bucks, Indiana had taken excessive spot on the clutch time web ranking leaderboard. And it was the Pacers’ composure in clutch time, in addition to their means to execute higher than the Bucks on each ends down the stretch, that allowed them to draw back when it mattered most.

“We have to be more organized,” Antetokounmpo (37 factors, 10 rebounds) stated. “We have to know what we are trying to get down the stretch. At the end of the day, like down the stretch, it’s about effort, man. It’s about effort and attitude, you have to go out there and take it. I feel like the Indiana team, that’s what they did.”

GO DEEPER

Lillard ‘can’t be upset’ over Haliburton’s Dame Time celebration

All season lengthy, the Bucks have pulled out shut video games with a reasonably easy method. On offense, they’ve taken care of the basketball and prevented turnovers, which led to their extremely proficient offensive gamers getting attractiveness on the rim. On protection, even with their struggles with it throughout different factors within the recreation, the Bucks have discovered a manner to get simply sufficient stops within the remaining 5 minutes to get a win.

On Thursday, they have been unable to do both of as they watched the Pacers run away with a win.

“They crashed the board, got defensive rebounds,” Antetokounmpo stated. “They got to their spots. They played great defense, got deflections. Nothing is going to be given to you in life. Nothing is going to be given to you in an NBA game, and we cannot just expect that to be, we run a play and because we run the play, we are going to score a bucket. Like you’ve got to execute. You’ve got to cut hard, screen harder, get open, drive the ball, you know, make something happen.

“We’ve done that in the past. Today, I don’t think we did it as well. But at the end of the day, like we have to be better down the stretch. Like we’ve got to know what we’re trying to accomplish down the stretch. I feel like sometimes we weren’t on the same page, and it cost us.”

Defensively, the Bucks didn’t have a solution for Pacers guard Tyrese Haliburton.

They tried to run their base man-to-man protection to begin the sport, however Haliburton put up 11 factors and 7 assists because the Pacers took a 63-51 lead into halftime. In the third quarter, the Bucks moved to a 2-3 zone that took the Pacers out of their rhythm. It didn’t trigger many turnovers — Haliburton ended the sport with 27 factors, 15 assists, seven rebounds and 0 turnovers — however it did mess with the Pacers’ offensive circulation as they missed some photographs to begin the third quarter.

On the opposite finish, Damian Lillard scored 16 of his 24 factors within the third quarter, together with going 4 for 4 from deep within the first six minutes of the second half. Lillard’s scorching streak introduced the Bucks again into the sport.

After preliminary struggles in opposition to the zone although, the Pacers figured issues out and began to rating on the similar tempo because the Bucks and the sport went back-and-forth for the ultimate six minutes of the third quarter and first 9 minutes of the fourth quarter. With 3:26 remaining, Adrian Griffin took a timeout with the Pacers up, 113-110, establishing the scenes that might finally determine the result of the sport.

While the zone had labored all through the second half, Myles Turner made the Bucks pay for operating zone late when he snuck inside Antetokounmpo and tipped in a rebound with 2:19 left.

“Well, (it) just kind of helped us keep the ball in front of us,” Griffin stated of deploying the zone within the second half. “Haliburton, he’s exceptional in pick-and-rolls, so we were just trying to switch up our coverages a little bit. I thought the zone got us back in, and I think if we would have rebounded a little bit better, probably a different outcome.”

For middle Brook Lopez, rebounding higher shall be necessary for the Bucks within the video games they determine to play zone shifting ahead.

“That’s definitely a key and something you have to keep in mind with any zone, so we’ll definitely have to be better at that as well,” Lopez stated of the problem of defensive rebounding in a zone. “That’s something we’ve wanted to improve at all season long anyway, regardless of what defense we’re in, so we’ll just have to take extra special care in the zone.”

And whereas the Bucks haven’t been an awesome defensive crew this season outdoors of the ultimate 5 minutes of shut video games, they’ve been a powerful offensive crew all through most video games and have gotten even higher in clutch conditions. On Thursday, the Bucks have been sloppy within the recreation’s vital moments.

That sloppiness began with a turnover from Lillard in one of many crew’s favourite offensive units, the “V-Screen.”

“I came off the pick-and-roll and I tried to — it was the same pocket pass that I had been throwing,” Lillard stated. “Myles, he just barely tipped it. He got a hand on it. It’s a play that happens sometimes. That ball gets through, Brook is going for a dunk. But it was a play that we always make, the ball gets there more times than not. He just made a good defensive play.”

As Lillard described, the turnover most likely had extra to do with Turner making a particular play than Lillard being all that careless, however that doesn’t change the play’s consequence. However, the play that possible upset Antetokounmpo and Lillard and greatest epitomized the Bucks’ lack of group offensively in clutch time got here a minute later, instantly after Turner’s tip-in.

“The play with Khris, he got the ball on the inbound and I was just running up the opposite slot,” Lillard stated. “We didn’t really have a play call, so I was standing opposite him and I didn’t know if he was going to attack or what. But he wanted to swing it to me and (get) to a step-up (screen from Lopez) and I was just kind of in the middle.

“And when he threw it, Bruce Brown just shot the gap. … In transition, I think he missed it and then you know they had somebody run, trail the play and tip it in. It’s two unfortunate plays.”

After the sport, Middleton took duty for making a careless cross on the play.

“Just gotta be better, it’s as simple as that,” he stated. “He’s denied, just gotta keep the ball and make a better pass.”

And Griffin additionally instructed reporters that he might have been higher in that scenario.

“We gotta execute better down the stretch,” Griffin stated. “I’ve got to do a better job of getting them into some certain sets down late game. But we put ourselves in a position, you know, the first half was rocky. We made some good adjustments, but we’ve got to close out in the fourth quarter, which we’ve done very well. We just couldn’t pull it off tonight.”

For Antetokounmpo, shedding an in depth recreation due to a scarcity of group isn’t acceptable.

“Obviously, the talent level that we have is incredible, but we have to be more organized,” he stated. “I feel like sometimes we’re not organized at all. We don’t know what we’re trying to get from our offense, or sometimes defensively, we’re not sprinting back. … We had a lot of situations today that they got a lot of dunks, open 3s, early 3s. We have to be better.

“We have to know what their weaknesses are, what their strengths are, where they want the ball, what spots on the floor they want the ball, and the biggest thing, I believe, is that we got to — we’ve got to want it. Nobody is going to give you nothing.”

GO DEEPER

Pacers beat Bucks to advance to NBA In-Season Tournament final

This season, the Bucks have been spectacular in shut video games and executed an awesome job closing out opponents in clutch conditions. Now they’re leaving Las Vegas sooner than they needed and with one thing to take into consideration shifting ahead.

“After this game, what we going to do about it?” Antetokounmpo requested. “Are we going to go to our rooms and just whine and cry about it or are we going to break bread and talk about the game? You know, watch this game, comment on the game what we thought, you know, me and Dame, me and Khris, me and Brook. How can me and Brook get the rebounds, how can our bench be better? At the end of the day, I felt like their bench kicked our butts. It’s simple. I saw the stat sheet. I usually don’t look at the stat sheet but I looked at the stat sheet. They do it way better than us. Everybody was 10-plus. They came in, changed the flow of the offense. They were aggressive. They were making plays. You know, our bench wasn’t good tonight.

“We have to talk about it. We have to address it. We have three days now until Monday that we play Chicago at home. We have to get on the court. We have to get in the film room. We have to talk as a team and hopefully we can expedite our chemistry. It’s not about the coach. It’s like we have to get better. It’s on us now. We have the talent, we have the experience. It’s on us. We know it’s on us.”

(Photo of Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo: Andrew D. Bernstein / NBAE through Getty Images)