Giannis Antetokounmpo Annoyed With How Bucks Ended Season
Giannis Antetokounmpo is annoyed with how the Milwaukee Bucks ended their season. The reigning NBA MVP said this much during a recent session with the media.
“It wasn’t frustrating because we were losing,” he insisted.
“Like, losing is part of basketball, losing is part of the game, but, obviously, what was frustrating because at times I think we wasn’t ourselves.”
The Bucks went 3-5 over the course of the eight seeding games. Although nobody was expecting the top teams in the league to take these meaningless outings too seriously, clearly something about the way his team handled things irked Antetokounmpo.
“We wasn’t moving the ball as much as I wanted to move the ball or as much as [coach] wants us to move the ball,” he continued.
“We wasn’t defending as hard. As I said, there was times that we were ourselves, where we were the No. 1 team in the league on defense, but there were times that we showed that and there was times that we didn’t.”
The games themselves were largely irrelevant for teams like Milwaukee, but there is something to be said for developing momentum.
The Portland Trail Blazers, for example, are being given a far greater shot against the Los Angeles Lakers than they otherwise would have received due explicitly to the momentum they developed over the last couple of weeks and the Lakers’ lack of cohesion during the same period of time.
For that reason, Antetokounmpo’s frustration is understandable.
Here’s the whole Moe Wagner – Giannis Antetokounmpo headbutt incident pic.twitter.com/OzBIuyoWeI
— CJ Fogler #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) August 12, 2020
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Giannis Antetokounmpo Is Taking The Playoffs Seriously
Last year’s poor Eastern Conference Finals showing against the eventual champion Toronto Raptors is something that still bothers Antetokounmpo. That title was there for the taking for him and his guys – and they failed to deliver.
Antetokounmpo wants to make sure history doesn’t repeat itself.
In the first round of next week’s playoffs, the Bucks will kick things off by taking on the Orlando Magic. Even if the team is still as rusty as it looked at times during the past eight games, it is unlikely Orlando will be able to capitalize on it.
Odds makers list Milwaukee at -8000 to emerge from the series victorious, and -125 to win it in four outings.
Where things will get interesting is the second round and the conference finals.
First, the Bucks will inevitably play the winner of the No. 4 vs No. 5 match-up between the Indiana Pacers and Miami Heat. Then, if they win that, they will play the winner of the Toronto Raptors vs. Boston Celtics/Philadelphia 76ers.
Milwaukee needs to make it out of the Eastern Conference and into the NBA Finals this season. If that does not end up coming to fruition, then this won’t be the last time Antetokounmpo expresses frustration with his franchise.
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Charles Kruger has been credentialed to cover two Super Bowls, four NBA Finals, and one World Series. A 20-year veteran in the sports world, he has sources spanning the NBA, MLB, NFL, UFC and NASCAR. Currently residing in Los Angeles, Calif., he is Game 7’s go-to source for rumors surrounding the Lakers, Clippers and Dodgers.
