MILWAUKEE — Even after a 24-point victory, Damian Lillard couldn’t help himself from being critical of his own team’s performance.
“We left a lot of points on the board, too,” Lillard told reporters. “We missed free throws. We missed some shots in the paint.”
While that might sound like the type of thing most players say after a game, the Milwaukee Bucks had not just completed a typical performance. They had just defeated the New York Knicks 146-122 in the In-Season Tournament quarterfinals.
Their offensive performance, which Lillard suggested could have been even better, was the highest-scoring performance from any team in an NBA game this season and the Bucks pulled it off against the Knicks, who had recorded the league’s third-lowest defensive rating entering Tuesday’s game.
“I thought this was probably our best offensive game (of the season),” Lillard said after putting up 28 points and seven assists in the win. “This could have easily been a 160, 165-point game. That doesn’t mean we’re going to turn into a team that does that every night, but I do think we’ve got that type of explosiveness. We can’t depend on having these types of nights all the time, but it’s … a look at the kind of nights we can have offensively sometimes.”
