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Which Greek God is Giannis Antetokounmpo?

By Andrew Tobolowsky

Jan 4, 2017; New York, NY, USA; Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) is congratulated after scoring the game winning basket at the buzzer against New York Knicks during the second half at Madison Square Garden. The Bucks won 105-104. Mandatory Credit: Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 4, 2017; New York, NY, USA; Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) is congratulated after scoring the game winning basket at the buzzer against New York Knicks during the second half at Madison Square Garden. The Bucks won 105-104. Mandatory Credit: Andy Marlin-USA TODAY Sports /
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Giannis Antekounmpo has obviously blown up this year. You can count me among the initial doubters, not because I thought he couldn’t be a good and interesting player, but because, for all his extraordinary gifts, he didn’t seem like much of a scorer. He’s been playing steady minutes since he got into the league and, believe it or not, it’s already his fourth year although he is in fact only 15 years old.

Last year, his third year, he shot 50.6 percent from the floor and scored (only?) 16.9 points. Since he was scoring so efficiently, it was reasonable to think that that was his ceiling. Not bad, but not great. Plus, my Mavericks, in their absolute quest to do the worst possible thing to Dirk Nowitzki they can, to serve their extreme delusions regarding big name FAs, traded down from a Giannis-picking spot to a Shane Larkin picking spot, and I wasn’t looking forward to thinking about that all the time.

Fast-forward to this year, pleasant in so many ways, and yer man is averaging 23.9 points in exactly the same number of minutes per game. He’s shooting over 53 percent from the floor, ridiculous for a small forward, and doing it despite the fact that he is one of the league’s worst 3-point shooters. The moral of the story is that Giannis now makes every shot that is not a 3-point shot. All of them. Always. And, he’s upped his rebounding from 7.7 to 9.1 and his assists from 4.3 to 5.9. We can presume that in 2020, when he’ll almost be old enough to legally drink, he’ll be averaging 40-20-20. Russell who?

Now, the question has been raised whether Giannis is actually a Greek god, and it’s an important one. There is quite a lot of surviving material about these figures, but there’s no really good source for knowing what Zeus’ percentages in the paint — to choose one example — looked like. Giannis’ youth and athleticism certainly reminds one of Apollo in many ways, but the fact is the one thing Giannis, with his woeful 3-point shot, is not, is any kind of archer. I considered the possibility that he might be Zeus, with his thundering jams and seeming mastery over all facets of the game, but what can I say, I just think of Zeus as something of an older gentleman — Chris Paul, if you will.

Sparing you a long story about my researches, the giant desert spiders I had to fight, and the doomed temple whose foundations lay half in the underworld which I had to cleanse, it has become clear to me that Giannis is Hermes. First of all, he’s a trickster. You would never expect someone to be able to legally dunk from behind the free-throw line, but I’ve seen Giannis dunk from half-court. Second of all, he’s extremely swift, as if wearing a pair of winged shoes.

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Most importantly, however, he is a prodigy. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, likely one of our earliest sources, the first thing baby Hermes did was murder a tortoise and make it into a harp. The second thing he did was steal Apollo’s cattle. This is a guy who gets amazing things done early and often, which is very fitting for Giannis who has not yet had his bar mitzvah. Giannis, messenger of the Olympians, long may you pace the Bucks with your talents.

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