Giannis Antetokounmpo has always been in the running for the top handful of players in the world but was never truly regarded a tier 1 player in the sport. Well, that narrative has finally changed.
Antetokounmpo's case as a true contender for the best player in the world really stemmed from his regular-season success. Over the totality of the last three years, Giannis has clearly been the league's best player in the regular season, averaging 30.8 points, 13.5 rebounds, and 6.3 assists on 63 TS% per 75 possessions. In addition to this historic offensive output, Giannis was also a top 2-3 defender in each one of these seasons, allowing him to surpass the overall impact of superior offensive engines and post a staggering +19 net rating over this span.
The 2020 regular season saw Giannis record a top 5 regular season of all time. He averaged 33.2 points, 15.3 rebounds, and 6.3 assists per 75 on 61 TS% whilst also being historically great on defense, which resulted in him becoming only the third player in NBA history to win MVP and DPOY in the same season.
However, the thing preventing Giannis from claiming the title were his post-season failures, which were overblown but still disappointing. Teams in the playoffs could deploy the "wall" defense where they would load up on Antetokounmpo's attacks to the basket and these defenses were effective as they were able to dent Giannis's scoring volume and efficiency. These defenses were also able to take advantage of holes in Giannis's passing game and handle, which in turn resulted in Milwaukee's playoff offenses drastically underperforming in comparison to their regular season offenses.
It was evident that the Giannis top of the key isolation offense was not going to translate to the postseason and Antetokounmpo was going to have to change his approach if wanted to bring a championship to the city of Milwaukee. Antetokounmpo made those adjustments in the 2021 postseason and it resulted in him becoming a "fucking champion". Let's break down how he did it.
The Bucks first-round matchup was a rematch of the 2020 ECF against the defending eastern conference champions Miami Heat. Many expected this to be a challenging series for the Bucks, this same Heat team had embarrassed them just last year, and many even picked the Heat to upset the bucks again. Antetokounmpo had a fairly pedestrian offensive series by his standard averaging 23.5 points and 7.8 assists on an ugly 50 TS%. However the main adjustment for the Bucks was that Giannis was the primary defender on Jimmy Butler, a challenge he was criticized for ducking in last year's ECF, and he was absolutely sensational on that end of the floor. Giannis held Butler to just 14.5 points per game on 39 TS%. The Heat recorded just a 97 ORTG in the series,15 points below their regular-season average, and got swept as a result of it.
The second round proved to be the Buck's hardest challenge. Things were not looking good for Milwaukee after they went down 0-2 in the series and lost game 2 by 39 points! However, the Bucks remained composed, winning two in Milwaukee to tie up the series and eventually going on to win in 7 games. Giannis was sensational on the defensive end as always, recording a 107 defensive rating against an offense led by Kevin Durant, who was in the midst of having the best offensive series of his life.
Giannis was also exceptional on offense in this series, averaging 32 points per game on 60 TS%, and this was where Giannis showed the biggest adjustments in his offensive approach. Instead of the Bucks offense relying on Giannis isolations at the top of the key, they ran their offense through pick and rolls with Giannis as the screener. According to Second Spectrum tracking data, Giannis upped his ball screens from 19 a game in the regular season to 30 a game in the postseason and the Bucks scored an amazing 1.3 points per chance on these plays. Another drastic shift in Giannis's approach were his post-ups. Over the last two postseasons, Giannis posted up on merely 6.5% percent of his possessions. He more than doubled that this postseason, posting up 13.1% of the time, and it played a crucial role in Giannis scoring 40 points in a Game 7 victory against the Nets.
Giannis continued to get more comfortable against postseason defenses that loaded up on his slashing attack against the Hawks, Giannis averaged 30.7 on 61 TS% through the first three games of the series, before suffering a hyperextended knee in Game 4 that would cause him to miss the rest of the series.
This brings us to Giannis Antetokounmpo recording one of the greatest Finals performances of all time, just a week and a half after suffering what many thought would be a season-ending injury. Giannis had an all-time defensive series, symbolized by him making one of the greatest defensive plays in Finals history down the stretch in Game 4, where he guarded a pick and roll by himself and magically teleported to the rim to deny what would have been a guaranteed two points for Ayton.
Giannis was even more impressive on the offensive end in the series. Excluding Game 1, Giannis averaged 38.2 points per game on 66 TS%. Behind this supernova performance from Giannis, the Bucks were able to once again rally back from a 0-2 deficit and close the deal at home in game 6, a game which saw Antetokounmpo record maybe the greatest closeout game in NBA history with 50 points (most in a closeout game in history), 14 rebounds and 5 blocks.
Overall, (excluding game 1 against Phoenix and Game 4 against Atlanta) Giannis averaged 34 points on 60 TS% in the playoffs, which is an all-time great scoring postseason.
For the entire postseason, the Bucks recorded a rORTG of +1.5, which points towards a mediocre to above average playoff offense. However, if you exclude the Brooklyn Nets series from the consideration, the Bucks recorded a +5.5 rORTG in the postseason, which signals towards a great postseason offense.
Now, I am not excluding the Brooklyn series to boost Giannis, I am excluding it because its genuinely one of the biggest outliers we have ever seen. According to ShotQuality.com, the Bucks generated shots that should have resulted in roughly a 119 ORTG, which is amazing. Instead, the Bucks suffered from historically bad shooting luck and only recorded a 105 ORTG. This is all just a fancy way of saying that the Bucks generated good shots and just missed them.
But Milwaukee's offense wasn't what won them the championship, it was their historically great postseason defense. Although their metrics are slightly overrated due to them not facing the absolute best offensive oppositions, the Bucks still recorded a -7.7 rDRTG in the postseason. That mark is up there with some of the greatest postseason defenses since the ABA merger and falls just short of the 2019 Raptors (-9 rDRTG) and 2004 Pistons (-10.7 rDRTG).
Giannis Antetokounmpo is the next superstar in the mold of Tim Duncan and Hakeem Olajuwon, a guy who can anchor historic playoff defenses whilst also being the driving force of good to potentially great playoff offenses, and just like those guys were in their primes, Giannis Antetokounmpo is a top 3 basketball player on the planet.
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