Bucks Forward Gets Extremely Honest About Recent Benching

Matt Levine | 3 Hours Ago

Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

The Milwaukee Bucks recently decided to bench longtime wing Pat Connaughton and it could have been a risky move. The veteran has become one of the more important pieces to the roster and the move to the bench could have hurt his morale with the organization.

However, Connaughton took the benching as a sign to get better. The forward has always been a team-first player and decided that he wanted to do whatever he could to help the team win more games.

“I’ve always been a team-first guy and whatever I need to do to help the team win is what I’m going to try to do,” Connaughton said. “Winning has followed me where I’ve gone, or I’ve followed winning some people may say, but again at every level it’s kind of been there. I don’t think it always shows up on the statistics.

“It’s something that I have to remain confident and understand that we’ve got a great team and we’re trying to do some great things and we didn’t get out to the start of the year that we wanted to. Continue to be a professional with it but continue to understand that I’ve won a lot of games in my career at every level, but especially in the NBA, and I’ve won at the highest level and I know the things that I bring to the table will help us win more than they won’t.”

The benching has helped the team as Milwaukee has started to turn their season around. They hold a record of 9-9 on the year now and are looking very much like the squad that many believed they would be at the start.

For the year, Connaughton has averaged 5.3 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.8 assists. But he has kept his head up and is doing the little things for the team.

Center Brook Lopez even acknowledged the play of Connaughton despite the recent benching.

“He’s always been so solid for us,” Lopez said after the win over the Heat. “Even when we were struggling at the beginning of the season, he’s one of the guys who was coming in, being solid, doing Pat things – getting to the basket off DHOs (dribble-handoffs), getting downhill, making the right plays, being a leader out there. He has one of the highest basketball IQs, if not the highest basketball IQ out there. He’s a great communicator, so he’s always great at getting everyone on the same page. He does so many intangible things that just make us better.”

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