How a new focus changed Giannis’ game and improved the Bucks’ playoff outlook
WITH 1:34 left in the fourth quarter of a Feb. 27 clash against the Denver Nuggets, Giannis Antetokounmpo received a pass at the 3-point line and paused to collect himself.
He glanced at the rim, as Nuggets forward Aaron Gordon began to sag off him with one foot already in the paint.
Antetokounmpo first stepped to his left, then crossed the ball in between his legs and stepped inside the arc. As Gordon prepared to withstand a patented Antetokounmpo drive — one of the NBA’s most dominant forces — the two-time MVP, instead, pulled up from 19-feet and drained the jumper, extending the Bucks lead and extinguishing any hopes for a Denver comeback.
As he ran back up the court, Antetokounmpo turned and gave the Milwaukee crowd his signature mean mug, a scowl usually reserved for an arena-shaking dunk or block.
As recently as a few seasons ago, Antetokounmpo would have almost certainly taken the 3-pointer Gordon was giving him. During the 2019-20 season — the year he won his second MVP award — Antetokounmpo averaged career-high 4.7 attempts from 3 per game. Five years later, he’s only attempted 42 3-pointers in 50 games this season, on pace to average less than one 3-point attempt per game for the first time since 2014-15, his second season in the NBA.
That drop is intentional — a subtle tweak to a superstar’s game that the Bucks hope can not only keep him healthier down the stretch, but fuel a deep playoff run after years of early exits and disappointments.
Antetokounmpo hasn’t stopped taking jumpers entirely, however. He’s just moved in a few steps, to a zone generally forbidden by advanced analytics in favor of three’s and dunks: the midrange.
“I’ve worked on it,” Antetokounmpo told ESPN. “Guys are giving it to me. I got to shoot it because it’s less toll on my body. I got to shoot it, man.”
And so he has. Antetokounmpo has made 102 mid-range shots this season, the fourth most in the NBA, while shooting 47%, higher than mid-range masters such as DeMar DeRozan, Donovan Mitchell and Kyrie Irving.
“It’s part of my game; I’ve worked on it all summer long,” Antetokounmpo said. “They are playoff shots in my opinion. And it is a shot that I believe I can make.”
It’s adding up to another quietly excellent season for Antetokounmpo, who is averaging 30.8 points, 12.1 rebounds and 5.9 assists on 60.5% shooting, on track to repeat last season when he became the first player in NBA history to average 30 points on 60% shooting.
It’s why Antetokounmpo has found his way into the MVP conversation, with the third-best odds behind Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilegous-Alexander and Denver’s Nikola Jokic. The talks have grown recently as the Bucks have surged out of the All-Star break, going 7-1 in their first eight games out of the break and improving to a season-high 11 games over .500 before two losses this weekend — a stark turnaround after their disastrous 2-8 start to the season.
Milwaukee is starting to find the stride it envisioned after trading for Damian Lillard ahead of the 2023-24 season, but to avoid a third consecutive first-round playoff exit, the Bucks are banking on a healthy Antetokounmpo after his injuries derailed the last two postseason runs. Milwaukee was the No.1 seed entering the 2023 playoffs before Antetokounmpo injured his back in Game 1, leading the Bucks to a five-game flame out against the Miami Heat.
Antetokounmpo was averaging 42 points and 13 rebounds against Indiana last regular season, but an injured calf a few weeks before the start of the 2024 playoffs kept him out of the Bucks six-game exit against the Pacers.
The disappointment of back-to-back playoff series losses left Antetokounmpo searching for answers. For Milwaukee to make another deep playoff run, he knew he needed to be available, but he wasn’t interested in any load-managing schemes to sit out games if he was healthy.
Instead, he spent the summer working to unlock an area of his game he had long wrestled to command: his shooting. Antetokounmpo returned to Greece with a plan to master the midrange, working with a skills coach to help craft a new jump shot and, in the process, finding a way to avoid excess contact on his body.
“I’m in my thirties, obviously, [and] I believe that I have four (to) six years, still, of good basketball to give, but I got to be smarter,” Antetokounmpo said. “I got to be smarter in the way I play.”
TO HELP GREECE qualify for the Olympics for the first time in 16 years, Antetokounmpo had to do something different.
This past July, Greece matched up against Croatia in the final of the 2024 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament with a chance to qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris on the line.
Antetokounmpo often likes to quip that the rules in the international game make the game more difficult compared to the NBA, where the spacing is more free-flowing. With no defensive three-second rule in the international game, players can camp out in the paint, which, according to Antetokounmpo, is how Croatia started the game, loading the paint with Ivica Zubac, Dario Saric and Mario Hezonja in an effort to slow him down.
“I had to figure out,” Antetokounmpo said. “It’s either I drive the ball and I keep on going and fighting Zubac down there, or I just got to commit to this mid-range shot.”.
Antetokounmpo had already come into the summer with the knowledge that Bucks coach Doc Rivers wanted to position him on the elbows of the paint, roughly 15-19 feet away from the rim, on offense in the upcoming NBA season. So Antetokounmpo targeted the mid-range during his offseason workouts when he returned to Greece prior to the Olympics, bringing along Bucks assistant coach Vin Baker and skills coach Drew Hanlen to his hometown gym.
Together, they worked on a few adjustments to Antetokounmpo’s shooting mechanics. They had him focus on jumping straight up and releasing the ball on the way up instead of at the very top of his jumper as he had in the past. The uniqueness to his form makes it difficult to stop. According to ESPN research, Antetokounmpo has an average wrist height of 9.29 feet when releasing a 2-pointer this season, which trails only that of 7-foot-3 Victor Wembanyama.
Antetokounmpo spent hours each day operating from that area of the floor — shooting, passing, envisioning himself as an offensive nexus from the elbow..
“We did emphasize that this summer,” Rivers said prior to a game last month. “When he’s at that elbow and he’s stepping into it, he has great rhythm. I didn’t do anything, Giannis did a ton of work. He had to buy into it, him catching it there, him playing from the elbows, being a facilitator from there.
“It’s just such an explosive position for him to be on the floor.”
Shooting in an empty gym was one thing, but the new strategy was put to the test against Croatia, with a chance to lead his country to the Olympics.
Greece won.
“That was the game. I made six of them. I was like six out of eight [from mid-range]. That was like …” he said, snapping his fingers and opening his eyes. “If I try this, I’m going to succeed.”
Antetokounmpo finished the game with 23 points and eight rebounds in the 80-69 win that sent Greece to Paris. During the Opening Ceremony at the Olympics one month later, Antetokounmpo was the male flag bearer for Greece.
“To do it at such a high level helped his confidence and rhythm,” Baker told ESPN. “Giannis realizes he’s not going to be able to play forever. These shots were always available to him, but he’s getting smarter about which shots to take.”
Antetokounmpo never blossomed into the unstoppable 3-point shooter it was easy to envision back when debates about his “bag” were prominent social media fodder. He never shot better than 31% from 3 in a single season. But he’s unlocked a new dimension as a mid-range shooter, turning an area most teams have urged players to stay away from and marked as inefficient, into a strength that could both unlock Milwaukee’s offense in the postseason and put less stress on Antetokounmpo’s body on the way there.
“My whole career, I’ve seen a wall,” Antetokounmpo said following a game in Dallas earlier this month. “Now when I’m playing at the elbow, I’m able to get to my spot, be one step away from the rim, being able to facilitate easier, and I think I can make the 15-, 17-, 18-footer at a high rate now.”
And Antetokounmpo is pulling off something no NBA player has done in more than 30 years: He’s averaging more than 30 points per game while attempting less than one 3-pointer per game. The last to do so? Karl Malone in 1989-90.
“Me shooting a bunch of 3s — which I would love; trust me, I love shooting the ball – but right now, that’s not what my team needs from me,” Antetokounmpo said. “I know I’m going to make big 3’s, big shots. But that’s not my main focus. My main focus is to attack, facilitate, get the 15-footers all day long. If I have 20 of them, I’m going to take all 20 of them.”
AT A PRESS conference the day after the Bucks were eliminated from the playoffs last May, Antetokounmpo was left to consider his approach heading into this season. He hadn’t played a single minute of Milwaukee’s loss to Indiana after being less than 100% at the end of the 2023 series loss to Miami and he needed to find a way to stay on the floor.
He did not like the idea of sitting out games if he was healthy, but he knew he needed another way to preserve his body. So, the idea of playing a more mid-range game was enticing to him.
“It’s different, usually before when I had 18 points, it’d probably be nine drives and five dunks,” Antetokounmpo said. “More contact. More work.”
This year, he is driving the ball less, averaging 11.5 drives per game, down from a career-high 14.8 last season. But he’s still leading the NBA with 20 paint points per game.
Combining his efficiency in the paint and mid-range, Antetokounmpo is averaging 12.1 made 2-pointers per game, the most in a season since peak Shaquille O’Neal, when he won the MVP award in 1999-00 with the Los Angeles Lakers.
“It’s really good strategy,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said before Sunday’s game in Milwaukee. “Defending the elbow – it’s hard. It’s a very difficult area on the floor to defend. Obviously he’s got the drive game from there. With him, how many steps is it from the [rim]? One step from the free line. He beats you with one jab or gets you going the other way, he’s at the basket and then it’s hard to get to help.”
And maybe most crucial for Milwaukee: Antetokounmpo acknowledges feeling less wear and tear on his body.
“Last year I used to leave the game and I’m like, ‘oh man, my knee hurts, my back hurts. Everything hurt’,” he said. “Now I leave the game and I’m like, ‘oh, OK, cool. I feel better.’
“There are some days that I got to drive the ball more, but there’s other days I’ve played some games this year that I’ve shot the ball more. I’ve made those shots and I’m like, oh, OK. I left the game without 10, let’s say five to 10 possessions without contact, without pushing, without being on the ground, without being pulled from my neck to the floor and stuff.”
Mavs coach Jason Kidd noted how much more difficult Antetokounmpo’s added shooting could help his career.
“Him being able to shoot that shot just adds longevity,” said Kidd, who coached Antetokounmpo from 2014-18 in Milwaukee. “He doesn’t have to deal with the pounding. Also, it just makes it a lot harder for an opponent. He’s making that shot one-on-one. A lot of times you have to give up something.”
The evolution in Antetokounmpo’s game has helped set him up for a crucial stretch run as the Bucks fight for playoff positioning that seemed improbable a few months prior. Milwaukee is currently the No.4 seed in the Eastern Conference, fighting to hold off young up-and-coming teams like Indiana and the Detroit Pistons for home court advantage in the first round.
But the key to a long playoff run in Milwaukee is simple — and one Antetokounmpo has kept at the forefront of his mind – for almost a year.. “Preserving my body is very, very important,” Antetokounmpo said. “I have to be, man … I have to be healthy.”
Source: espn.com