The sad part about the Milwaukee Bucks season is that they’re wasting another all-time great Giannis Antetokounmpo season. In a larger market, or during a game of Russian Roulette, Antetokounmpo would be more celebrated. He’s the player everyone was led to believe that Joel Embiid was, but without perennial All-Stars Jimmy Butler, Tyrese Maxey and James Harden.
As the league’s foremost interior scorer, he’s a Shaq-like presence underneath the rim. Antetokounmpo is a human excavator on his way to the rim. He plows through the chests of opposing defenders who endeavor to body him up. At the top of the key, the Bucks' offense often relies on Antetokounmpo building up a head of steam and bounding in the paint with the vigor of a bull in a china shop.
He's the most biomechanically sound 7-footer (or 6-foot-11ish) in league history. He's the NBA's Josh Allen, starting every snap out of the shotgun, all eyes on him, and rushing downhill at backpedaling interior defenders. A byproduct of this 3-point steroid era is the space it’s created for backdoor cuts and slashers. In an era of spaced-out offenses rife with sharpshooters spreading around the arc, Antetokounmpo eschewed the three and embraced efficient finishing at the rim.
Giannis Antetokounmpo is an all-time great who deserves better
Antetokounmpo has been the first, second or third wheel in the MVP race for more than half a decade. Throughout Nikola Jokić’s five-year run as an MVP and runner-up, Antetokounmpo has been right there. Since winning two in a row between 2018 and 2019, Antetokounmpo's finished fourth twice and third twice.
Since 2020, he's second in win shares, third in Player Efficiency Rating, second in points per 100 possessions. In 2021, Steph Curry, Embiid, and Jokic were the league’s A-Listers. Antetokunmpo finished fourth in the MVP proceedings but won his first NBA title. In 2022, Steph Curry leaped back into the discourse ahead of Antetokounmpo.
By 2023, Embiid and Jokic were jockeying for position as the NBA’s best big man in an age of giants while Antetokounmpo was largely ignored. Last season, Luka Doncic and SGA entered the fray. This season, Antetokounmpo is once again on the fringe of the MVP race.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is the undisputed frontrunner as the best player and a marquee guard on the NBA’s best regular season team. Jokic is the straw that stirs the drink for Denver. When Anetokounmpo plays, the offense is 8.2 points better per 100 possessions. With Jokic off the floor, the Nuggets offense is 21.9 points per 100 possessions worse. With SGA in the lineup, the Thunder offense is 11.2 points better per 100 possessions per 100 possessions.
However, both Antetokounmpo and Jokic and the Nuggets are flailing down the stretch. He rarely misses games due to injury and he is a force multiplier on both sides of the floor. This season he’s also added in a dollop of mid-range game, draining 44 percent of his middies on 4.2 attempts per contest.
Unfortunately, his general manager, Jon Horst, and the front office have squandered his last three seasons and the future. The Bucks either owe a pick swap or their pick entirely in every draft from this year until 2031. They just traded two of their past three first-round picks and a third has been deleted from the rotation in his second season. At 31, Antetokounmpo is facing a potentially bleak future with these Bucks as currently constituted. However, if this is the beginning of a landslide, we can still look back at and appreciate how transformative Antetokounmpo has been.