Since the All-Star Break in February, the Milwaukee Bucks have rekindled the Giannis Antetokounmpo point guard project. The season-ending hip injury to lackluster Michael Carter-Williams and a lost season have led the team to try the monstrous Antetokounmpo at the point with surprisingly positive results for the versatile guard.
The modern NBA is all about versatility. Draymond Green, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Yes, the Greek Freak is poured from the same versatile beaker as Leonard and Green. Five years ago, we might still have said that they were all cut from the same mold or chips off the same block. Except we wouldn’t. In the not too distant past, players had clearly defined positions and mostly predictable skill sets. Some players broke out of the mold, of course, but it doesn’t take long for a trail freshly blazed to become the next major highway for the entire league. Remember the crucial defensive scheming Tom Thibodeau implemented for the Garnet-Pierce-Allen Celtics? Didn’t take more than a few years before his approach to defense was the foundation for basically every team in the league.
Now, stars in the making like Kawhi and Giannis are breaking out in a new direction. The new market inefficiency of positional versatility, which is just a fancy way of saying that the value these players provide to their team are too great to box into simply “power forward,” “point guard,” or “lock down defender.”
Antetokounmpo has always dazzled with his pure athletic ability. Recently he went mid-court to slam dunk in about three dribbles of the ball. Three. He’s fast, extremely long, and a great jumper. I remember one of the first things I wrote about Giannis was that he has great ability to penetrate and his two steps after picking up the dribble are devastating, but it was the struggle of getting the ball from his hand all the way to the floor and back that was causing him problems. Antetokounmpo has fixed that problem.
The Bucks big has grown more comfortable with his body and its relationship to the game of basketball and the space of a court. He knifes through lanes, the living embodiment of the Euro step. His limbs are so long that he can bend, length, and step around bodies with massive strides that render transition defenses useless. If an NBA team wants to slow down Giannis in transition, they might want to try setting up two players, arms linked as if playing Red Rover, as if to take a charge or at least grab a blocking foul before Giannis can make a fool of them.
He’s from the same beaker as Green, because the skill set doesn’t require a rigid form. Antetokounmpo still had a couple dozen pounds to put on when he burst on the scene and it is finally starting to show up. He can work more in the block on both sides of the floor. His condor-like length allows him to do what many would-be defenders can’t – he can get to a ball around or over a big man without having to go through in the process. Occasionally a bigger body can bully him still, but he still has arms for days. Switch him off to a guard, who may be marginally faster and his arms can poke a ball lose or swat away a ball from behind. Giannis averages over 1 block and 1 steal per 36 minutes for his career.
Like Leonard, Antetokounmpo came into the league with a concerning, “broken” shot. Leonard has fixed his, shooting over 40 percent from 3-point range for the first time in his five-year career. Giannis has struggled mightily shooting from distance, but still has two years on his curve to figure it out. He may and he may not. Fortunately, he’s nearly impossible to stop when he gets his momentum going downhill.
Those on-ball concerns? Mostly gone. His turnovers are slightly up, but he is also playing over 35 minutes per game for the first time in his career. In addition to that mighty Euro step that defies defenders, Giannis has flashed some remarkable foot-speed. He spins to split defenders en route to slam dunks, for blow-bys in the lane, and when he can feel it isn’t there he turns it into a backdown. The stunning growth of the player to learn to trust what his body tells him makes him so difficult to deal with and screams about the amount of maturity the young man has accrued in less than three full seasons in the league.
The latest evolution for Antetokounmpo is one of the last pieces to his puzzle. Being able to defend positions 1 through 4 is a prized ability in the modern NBA. Even going 1 through 5 is now being sought after as the ideal, and achievable. But playing 1 through 4, or 5, on offense is much more challenging. Even players like Green and Leonard, who have become adepts at positional mastery, aren’t always meant to play every position. Leonard can cover center, but he gives up a lot of ground to much larger bodies. Green can stretch the floor on offense but isn’t a serious threat from deep on a nightly basis.
Since the All-Star Break it has been point guard in the Giannis beaker — the liquid combination of extreme length, athleticism and deadly passing. For his career, Antetokounmpo averages 3.3 assists per game with a career-best 3.9 this season. However, since moving the Greek Freak to point guard this year, his assist numbers have rocketed to 7.9. Over the last 14 games he has more than double his career-best numbers, and the rest of his game has experienced the same surge. He’s averaging 1.8 steals and 1.9 blocks, almost a full block and steal above his career numbers.
He still scores. A lot. Antetokounmpo is averaging 19.9 points since the break and is hauling down 9.9 rebounds during that stretch. Basically, he’s averaging numbers that no one else has in a very long time. The combination of points, rebounds and assists with his defensive numbers for steals and blocks, all averaged per game get him mentioned with only a select few. If Giannis continues to be the player he is right now, his numbers would read like something that was last managed by Wilt Chamberlain, as pointed out by Chris Towers in his piece as CBSSports.com. Two years ago, Giannis was a Vine highlight player who showed major flaws like a rookie will. Now, he’s showing upside that statistically draws on names like Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson. All of this is something that has taken place since Antetokounmpo took his place as the Bucks point guard.
Most of the sets they run with Giannis don’t require him to go ball heavy and they are easing him into the pick-and-roll waters, but that is really all they need right now. Keeping him on the floor with Khris Middleton, Bayless or Mayo will give them someone who is comfortable handling the ball when the burden is too great for Giannis to bear. He presents all kinds of fun wrinkles for the Bucks and problems for their opponents. His size is overwhelming for most point guards. When they have Giannis bring it up, he moves to sides, makes short passes, sets ball screens and works into the post. Or he finds fellow future star Jabari Parker on a cut. Or he passes off the Bayless, Bayless works with Mayo or Parker or Middleton or Monroe and Giannis lurks at the arc, waiting to diffuse, reset or attack.
The last piece of the Giannis puzzle is something that the play will work on during the offseason – shooting. Antetokounmpo shot charts generally look like insanely high volume and percentages in the paint for already stated reasons: size, athleticism, skill. Giannis knows that he struggles from beyond the typical 10- or 12-foot range. His 3-point shooting has been abysmal. Still, Giannis is the future. And he fits in well with the other Bucks of the future.
Speaking of the future for Milwaukee, how is this for their best five-man lineup since the All-Star Break: Mayo, Middleton, Antetokounmpo, Parker, Monroe at +8.3 in three games together, 6.4 minutes per game. It’s such a small sample size and that’s too bad, but hopefully a whole lot more of this type of lineup is waiting down the line for them. Granted, the future of Mayo and Monroe have been somewhat unclear for the Bucks. Not really a whole lot of reason to assume Mayo has any bearing on the future, but a lot of people are also looking at the possibility of a Monroe trade, and maybe that will work. One that made the rounds on the internet today as an intriguing idea: Monroe to the Knicks for Robin Lopez. But, that is another story.
Antetokounmpo is an incredibly gifted player who has more than stood out in his new role as point guard for the Bucks. The last encouraging statistic to reference is his passing relationship since taking over at point guard. In the last 14 games he is averaging more than 8.0 passes to only two players, Parker and Middleton. Both players are part of the medium or long-term plan for Milwaukee. Giannis is hitting Middleton for 16.4 passes and 1.6 assists per, while Parker is getting 14.9 passes and 2.6 assists per.
Expect big things from the Bucks, big things like Point Guard Giannis.
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