EMIRATES NBA CUP

December 14, 2024

Jalen Johnson

Atlanta Hawks

Semifinal Postgame

Milwaukee Bucks 110, Atlanta Hawks 102

Q. I know that the loss stings a little bit, but what do you take away from a game like this, showing up in big moments and playing against a team that's won a championship?

JALEN JOHNSON: I mean, obviously we showed throughout this whole Cup that we belong. We can compete with the best of them.

Unfortunately, today we came up short. It's just going to give us a lot to learn from moving forward. Especially down the stretch in those last five, six minutes, I've definitely got to be better.

Just as a team, we've got a lot of room to grow. But I'm proud of everybody. We defeated a lot of odds coming in, making it all the way to Vegas. There's nothing to hang our heads about. We've just got to keep moving in the right direction.

Q. I know you were on the injury report with your ankle after you kind of rolled it in the fourth quarter. How was that? Did you feel like your normal self physically and did that affect you at all?

JALEN JOHNSON: This is something you've got to deal with. I'm not going to use that as an excuse. I played terrible tonight. That's just the bottom line. I'm going to go ahead and get treatment and just get ready for the next game and try to be as ready as possible.

Q. I just want to ask you, I know you kind of touched on it a little bit earlier, but is there something about the journey any to get here that you can appreciate and look at with your team and kind of take away and build upon?

JALEN JOHNSON: For sure. I think I said previously, we beat some very tough teams to even get to Vegas. Yhat just shows that we're capable of doing it. We're capable of competing with the best teams in this league.

So yeah, I think we've learned a lot. We appreciate what we did. And like I said before, we just came up short tonight. Yeah, that's just that.