The Milwaukee Bucks discouragingly lost to the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday night–their fourth loss in the last five games.
Shooter AJ Green and Giannis Antetokounmpo played well despite unconquerable struggles from Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton, and Brook Lopez. Another in-season tournament is not incoming to save this team with a heightened sense of motivation and urgency–those traits will have to surface internally.
Antetokounmpo played 38 minutes Saturday night and posted 31 points on 14-of-27 shooting, extending his NBA record of 27 straight games with 20 or more points while shooting 50 percent or more from the field. The Greek Freak also gathered 11 rebounds, two assists, two steals, and two blocks.
In his postgame presser, the frustrated MVP candidate commented on the team’s disappointing recent performance:
“We’re not playing well,” Antetokounmpo began. “Two close games, wasn’t able to get them, definitely hurts. Yeah, we’re not playing well. I feel like before Vegas we figured some things out, we had a great rhythm, playing very well as a team…We just got to lock in. As a team, play hard, compete, and try to get the next one.”
Antetokounmpo continued, “We just got to decide as a team to get it back. At times we play good basketball, and at times we don’t. There’s a lot of times that we step on the court and maybe feel like we can beat any team in the league, but there’s times we step on the court and any team in the league can beat us, which is incredible. We can watch film, we can talk about it, we can walk through stuff–which all those things are good…We just got to step on the floor and do it. I feel like that’s what we did a couple weeks ago.”
The longtime franchise cornerstone shared he is still working back to full strength after a recent illness briefly sidelined him. He took a moment to hold himself accountable “I got to be more aggressive. I think I can help the team more.”
Also, he acknowledged there is urgency in solving their recent trend of losing, “We got to turn it around right now.”
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