The Milwaukee Bucks suffered their eighth loss in their last nine games on Saturday afternoon with their defeat at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks. Giannis Antetokounmpo sat this one out, and the Bucks were behind the eight ball from the start. 

But this was still a winnable game, and it was disappointing to see Milwaukee put up such a lackluster effort. They were out-rebounded, out-assisted, and gave up 62 points in the paint while committing 23 turnovers. All-around, it was a highly disappointing effort, and Doc Rivers said as much in his postgame press conference. 

"Mental focus," Rivers said. "It's funny, I thought we kept having opportunities to get back in the game ... And I've been around long enough to know that's going to go one way or the other. Either we're going to start rebounding and getting stops, and then it's a one-point game, or it's going to continue and it's a twenty-point game." 

This has unfortunately been the story for this Bucks team all season. We sound like a broken record every time we talk about Milwaukee's frustrating losses, because they're often marked by these recurring bad habits and lapses. 

It's one thing when you have a team that's just clearly not talented enough to win without its best player. If the Bucks were truly outmatched from a talent standpoint every single night, these types of losses wouldn't feel so bad because there wouldn't be any reasonable expectation for them to win. 

Instead, we have seen this team pull it together for extended stretches and defeat some really good teams this season. The problem is being able to do so consistently and avoid slipping into the types of mistakes that will doom you when facing a quality opponent. 

Rivers also punctuated the fact that Milwaukee simply doesn't have a lot of time to work on correcting these slippages. There's less than a month left in the regular season. The Charlotte Hornets stand a full six games ahead of the Bucks in the standings for the final Eastern Conference play-in spot. 

It's going to take some sort of herculean effort on Milwaukee's part to string together enough wins to even be in the mix for that 10th spot in the East by the middle of April. The losses have just continued to keep coming, and it's hard not to say this is just who this team is at this point.  

Giannis Antetokounmpo being back in the lineup will help, but Doc Rivers or anyone else with years of experience in these situations will tell you that it's difficult for the bad habits of an entire team to be erased by any one player's presence.