The Milwaukee Bucks suffered their worst loss of the season Thursday night to the Boston Celtics.
Sure, the 41-point drubbing only tied their largest defeat of the season, but there's more to it than that. This loss came on the Bucks' home court. It also came by way of the Celtics, who have been positioned alongside Milwaukee as the possible No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference all season.
At no point did it look like the Bucks would be able to climb their way into this game, prompting a strong response from superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo.
"We know what the deal is." Antetokounmpo said postgame, per Eric Nehm of The Athletic. "It's not hard to understand. If you're not focused, if you don't play hard, they're going to kick our ass.
"It's up to us to see how we're going to deal with it."
It was an ugly loss for the Bucks, but they don't seem to believe it came from anything other than a failure of execution. Jrue Holiday, who scored 51 points on 66% shooting the night prior, finished with just six points on eight shots. His reaction was perhaps the most measured.
"I feel like we were focused on this game," Jrue Holiday said postgame, per Nehm."And we came out and just kind of (expletive) the bed. And when I say that, (I mean) we didn't play to the best of our ability. We didn't play as well as we could."
The Bucks slipped into their deficit during the second quarter, where they missed all 11 three-point shots they took and were outscored by 20 points. The Celtics just poured it on from there, with their dynamic duo of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combining for 70 points.
The Celtics took home the season series 2-1, setting up the possibility for a fun stretch run toward the playoffs -- where these teams will likely meet.
