Quote:
Originally Posted by whomario
Point-Giannis: 11 games, 20.4/9.3/8.6 and 4 combined Steals/Blocks per game.
Turns out having him handle the ball instead of standing in a corner or cut to the basket waiting for Carter-Williams make up his mind is a good thing. Who ever knew ...
I maintain that even his outside shot looks good. Good form, good arc ... If he gets that to drop at even near league-average, he´s going to be devastating. Without, he could still become a cross between Amare and Kirilenko with better passing.
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That's the kind of player I was saying at the beginning of the season that Giannis would have to be for the Bucks to maintain or exceed last season's level of success given the solid veterans they ditched for one-dimensional players. I think I said as early as his rookie season that if you could play the game entirely in transition, he'd be All-NBA.
However, Milwaukee hasn't been playing the toughest slate of opponents lately and there's a long way for his jumper to go from where it is to league average; even the perimeter shots he's made over this run are pretty slow and tentative. His increase in scoring isn't due to his stroke looking better but to being put in position where he has more time to plan his drives (he hasn't made a 3 in March and has only shot 3 in 7 games, but he's certainly gotten to the line more often lately), which as you said is somewhat questionable as to how much of his current success is due to bringing him along slowly versus something that could've been happening from the beginning of the season. It will be interesting to see what will happen against opponents who have recently scouted the Bucks considering how the Bulls turned him into an offensive liability in last year's playoffs and also kept him in check last week.
Tying it together with the last few posts, Giannis was actually the youngest player to debut in the NBA since the one-and-done rule and is closer in age to Ben Simmons than Simmons is to Dragan Bender. If people sincerely believe Simmons is at minimum a multiple-time All-Star and likely to turn around a franchise singlehandedly, Giannis and LeBron are the two players currently pushing against the limits of what a non-shooting perimeter player can accomplish in the league, and those two are (and were before they got into the league) on an entirely different level than Simmons athletically.