Giannis Antetokounmpo & Bucks are SNEAKY good & will surprise NBA fans

Giannis Antetokounmpo & Bucks are SNEAKY good & will surprise NBA fans

So, I caught their entire game against Toronto and I caught the end of their game against Cleveland. And they did drop that game against Cleveland. It was a tough game. Like, they Donovan Mitchell showed some really impressive shotmaking in the middle of their zone defense. Hit a couple like super tough like mid-range jump shots against great contests. And then Lonzo Ball hit a big three off the left wing. He had a big offensive rebound too down the stretch. And and they botched a coverage late and they left Sam Merrill wide open and he hit a shot. And it was just like kind of one of those things where the Bucks had to use a ton of energy to come back from a large deficit and they made some mistakes down the stretch and Cleveland ended up getting a win. But generally I’ve been very impressed by Milwaukee. I thought they looked really good, especially in the Toronto game. They beat Washington in the first game. Washington, obviously one of the bottom feeders of the NBA, but they beat Toronto in like a Toronto was like a legit physical monster of a team that is very good on defense, that has a lot of athletes that can pack the paint, that can run the floor in transition. They kicked the out of Atlanta in their first game if you guys remember. And like Scotty Barnes, it was fun to watch. Scotty Barnes like had a a a play where he drove through Giannis’s chest and like knocked him over and got a layup and straight up like got down in his face and like tried to show him up for the world to see and Giannis just like played it off and just whooped his ass. Giannis was just absolutely phenomenal uh in that game. I think he went for 30 and 20 against Toronto. like the mainly what I noticed from my first kind of impressions of Milwaukee is they just make sense on both ends of the floor. And I’ve talked a lot before about how when you’re constructing lineups, you’re you’re trying to check all these responsibilities on the floor, right? Like there’s a certain amount on offense. You need a guy that can create advantages, right? You need an onball advantage creator, preferably one that can pressure the rim. And then off of that, you like to have a screening partner, preferably multiple. And then guys who can finish plays, finish sequences. So guys that can knock down shots that are open, guys that can drive close outs and make reads, guys that can be vertical spacers. And one of the things that you kind of see that is a treat when you have Giannis, one of the top tier superstars in this league, is Giannis checks so many boxes on both ends of the floor. Obviously, he’s this devastating onball weapon, but he’s obviously he’s also a great screener. He’s also a guy that can finish plays extremely well around the basket, who can clean up stuff on the offensive glass, who can catch and finish as a cutter. I mean, hell, he hit two threes against Toronto, uh, a couple big ones above the break. Like, he can do all these things on offense. But then you go to the defensive end of the floor and it’s the exact same thing, right? like he is like kind of in and of himself a great defensive rebounding foundation. He is in and of himself a great like rim protection foundation. And then you look at the other pieces they have and they kind of layer on each other, right? Like like when you you see Miles Turner and and Giannis playing together and it just looks like a lot for an offense to deal with. Like one of the things I noticed, Miles had this play where he forced Brandon Ingram into a huge miss in crunch time. Brandon turned over his right shoulder and uh I can’t remember who he was going against, but it wasn’t Miles. Miles was in help. And Miles like made an impromptu like lunge forward to try to contest Brandon and covered a lot of ground and got a great contest. Brandon has an awful miss and Miles like recovers back into the lane and gets the rebound. And all I could think of is like Brook Lopez towards the end wasn’t moving like that. He didn’t have the He had the verticality element. He still was a decent rim protector when you could put him by the rim, but he didn’t have that like forward, back, stop, start mobility that Miles Turner has now. And so like Miles Turner like next to Giannis is a really strong defensive foundation. They’re 10th in defense to start the year. And despite having a bunch of like smaller guards on the perimeter, they’ve been a decent rebounding team to start the year. And so again, you kind of look at it and it’s like subbing in Ryan Rollins as like this athletic rim pressuring playmaker that competes and does a lot more defensively than Damen Lillard did. All of a sudden, like the team kind of makes sense in a lot of ways. You’ve got your legitimate pick and roll defender and Miles Turner that can come up to the level, but that can also run drop coverage, that could do a little bit of switching. Giannis has this devastating low man on the backline and that constant give and take with him and Miles where when Miles is up, Giannis is over. When Miles is back, Giannis is on the perimeter. They’ve got this like natural kind of low man dynamic. AJ Green is like a legitimately good defender and uh Ryan Rollins is like a good athlete that competes defensively. Like Gary Trent is now your weakest defender in your starting group as opposed to being the second weakest defender off of Damen Lillard. It just kind of like has more coherence on the defensive end of the floor. And then on the offensive end of the floor, same sort of thing. They’ve surrounded Giannis with shooting. They’ve been kind of trying to find this pick and roll uh player that they can fit alongside Giannis. They’ve tried all these different guys and Dame in a lot of ways wasn’t a great fit because he was just so one speed and so pull-up jump shot oriented that he struggled to get the ball to Giannis in the pocket. Right. But like they we saw Kevin Porter Jr. have some success by being more of like a a kind of slow methodical pick and roll ball handler with Giannis last year a little bit, but early in the season like I’ve really liked Ryan Rollins alongside Giannis. I think his give and take with him feels really natural. He’s aggressive without stepping on Giannis’s toes. He’s been one of their best like assist to turnover guys because he just keeps getting into the lane and like finishing in traffic, but making really highlevel kickout reads like he’s starting the offense for Milwaukee often that if the ball ends up in Gary Trent’s hands, it feels like it’s got a good chance to go in. The ball ends up in AJ Green’s hands, it feels like it’s got a good chance to go in. Miles Turner obviously is spacing five. It just makes sense. You’ve got a bunch of guys that can screen for Giannis and score out of screens for Giannis. You got a bunch of guys that can score and spot up. You’ve got this guard in Ryan Rollins that can attack when he’s got the basketball. Dude, like even Cole Anthony has brought like this dynamic rim pressure kickout element that has been that has been really impressive. And and Cole had a ridiculous driving layup down the stretch against Toronto. Cole was just ridiculous against Toronto. He was awesome in that game. But like they’ve just done a a really nice job of finding complimentary discounted talent to surround Giannis with. And credit to Doc Rivers. I think he’s done a really nice job of kind of like finding the right way to put the lineups together. And it all just makes sense to me. And it’s not going to be perfect. And they’re going to lose games. They dropped a game on the road in Cleveland today or yesterday. It’s not going to be perfect. But like this when I envisioned Milwaukee as my 10th best team in the league, as the team that I had that was at the top of the third tier, my case was Giannis is one of the very best players in the league. You know, he’s coming out for blood this year. And this team, this team is in an Eastern Conference where most of these teams are pretty heavily flawed. And I’ve just been, it’s only a snap judgment here from three games, but to me, Milwaukee looks like the kind of team that’s going to outkick their coverage, so to speak, and play above their uh their on paper talent because everybody just slots together really well here in the early part of the season.

Jason breaks down why he’s been impressed with the Milwaukee Bucks and their roster construction around Giannis Antetokounmpo.

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