The rebuilding San Antonio Spurs headed into Tuesday’s bout against the Milwaukee Bucks without their best player available. The Spurs decided to give rookie sensation Victor Wembanyamam the night off due to a sore right ankle, which gave the home team an ever bigger advantage against San Antonio. As expected, the Bucks were able to secure a 132-119 win over their opponents, which was thanks in large part to Damian Lillard’s season-high 40-point eruption. Dame made sure that there wasn’t going to be any upset on Tuesday night.
Lillard, who reached an incredible milestone on Tuesday by scoring his 20,000th career point, spoke to reporters after the game to discuss the win. Dame has been around long enough to be well aware of the fact that the Bucks were in great danger of undermining the Spurs: “I think anytime you get into a game like this with a team that’s on a losing streak, their best player is out, those are the trap games where a team like this who’s really well coached, you know they’re not going to come out and just lay off,” Lillard said, via Jim Owczarski of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “They play with a lot of pace, they move the ball, they cut hard, everything they do they do it with purpose.
“If you try to ease into a game against a team like that, you can find yourself down by 15 and it has nothing to do with ability or who is on the floor, it’s just the way that they play and the way that they’re coached. Setting a tone and establishing ourself in the beginning was extremely important.”
