Bucks MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo is changing his game, and his body may thank him for it

There is always a collective gasp when all 242 pounds and nearly 84 inches of Giannis Antetokounmpo goes crashing to the hardwood on any given night. Because invariably, it’s due to contact of ill intent to prevent basketball’s best rim destroyer from doing just that.

Calculating Antetokounmpo’s impact force could have physicists and orthopedists shaking their head.

It’s a physical game and he arguably is this generation’s greatest physical player, but even if the two-time Milwaukee Bucks’ most valuable player jokes that he’s “old” at 26 (he’ll be 27 on Dec. 6), it’s fair to wonder how long he can keep it up – and keep getting up.

He’s had his share of injuries, from his ankles to his knees to his elbow and shoulder and the court isn’t going to get any softer.

“There’s going to come a day,” Detroit Pistons head coach Dwane Casey said a year ago when it became clear Antetokounmpo was changing his game. “There’s going to come a day ‘cause the game is going to slow down for him, Father Time is going to tell him OK, those jumps, you’ve got about two, three less jumps that you can make, two, three less drives. Father Time is going to slow his game down.

"A lot like Jason Kidd. We had him in Dallas and he was one of the premier point guards, but then all at once he became a premier three-point shooter. It’s been done in the league. The history of the league has shown guys can transform their games in certain ways and I see that happening with him.”

Casey was prescient.

Through the first quarter of this season, Antetokounmpo is shaping another MVP candidacy in a different way than his first two.

In his first MVP season of 2018-19, Antetokounmpo was the most efficient player in the league at 30.89 (player efficiency is an overall rating of a player's per-minute statistical production).

His second MVP campaign of 2019-20 was even better, as he posted a 31.86 efficiency rating. It topped Wilt Chamberlain’s 1962-63 effort as the most efficient in NBA history.

Last year, Denver’s Nikola Jokić won the MVP honor in large part to his 31.3 efficiency rating, while Antetokounmpo’s dipped to 29.2.

Thus far, the Nuggets’ triple-double machine leads the league at a ridiculous 35.2 clip in just 14 games, but Antetokounmpo is second at 31.4 – and he is indeed doing it differently.

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In the preseason, the hearts of fans and NBA pundits fluttered as Antetokounmpo showed off the confidence in his jumper, from the walk-up three-pointer to the baseline fadeaway or the pullup from the elbow.

But this was all part of the plan – it’s just coming into sharper focus now.

“Obviously I’m trying to get better, I’m trying to expand my game,” he said. “I know in the past years I’ve tried to be as efficient as much as possible, and if you get easy ones close to the rim, it helps. When you get easy dunks and transition layups, it helps. But at the end of the day, I’ve said this in the past, too, if I can get 15 layups I’ll try to get 15 layups. I’ll take that any night.

"But I realize that I’ve got to keep getting better. I’ve got to shoot some turnaround jump shots, I’ve got to shoot some midrange, I’ve got so shoot some threes, I’ve got to shoot some off the dribble. I just gotta feel comfortable and confident to do that because I know down the stretch, in the playoffs, in the big games, in the games that matter the most, if I cannot get into the paint I gotta feel confident I can still help my team execute offensively.”

What’s perhaps most impressive – and scary for opponents – is that he’s done it this season despite shooting just a bit under his career average from the field and behind the three-point line.

But drill into the recent seven-game winning streak, and the numbers are even more impressive.

He’s averaging 27.9 points per game on only 16 field goal attempts (not to mention 12.7 rebounds, 5.6 assists and two blocks).

“If you go back three years ago, I definitely think he’s just continued to evolve and improve and as a team hopefully we’re doing the same thing,” Bucks coach Mike Budenholzer said. “I think he’s just got more variety. He’s definitely got a lot of confidence with his shooting. That’s grown over the year and really I think gone to another level coming into this season.

"I think his ability to find teammates has always been elite but he’s just doing I think more in different ways and hopefully more in different spots. We’ve got to continue to give him space and his teammates gotta get to the right spots. They’ve gotta move. They’ve gotta be a little bit unpredictable, but yet he still knows where they are. So, all those things is just an evolving process.

“Yeah, especially if you go back three years he and we are hopefully better and just continuing to grow.”

So, let’s look at how Antetokounmpo is changing how he produces offensively.

To begin, he gradually has dropped his shots per game inside 5 feet over the last four seasons, from 11.2 in 2018-19 to 9.0 this season.

Attempts from 10-14 feet have increased gradually, from 0.8 per game in 2018-19 to 1.8 this year. What’s important is he’s also making more in that range, improving from a 41.8% shooter in that area four seasons ago to 45.7% now.

He’s also improved his shooting from 40% from 15-19 feet in his first MVP season to 48.1% this year.

There are some more ebbs and flows in other areas of the court, but the point is the same – the way he attacks defenses is changing, is remaining at near all-time levels, but affords room for growth.

And more importantly, it may provide his body the runway to achieve it.

“I think it looks (different),” he said. “Yeah. Not, ‘it’s easier.’ The way I play right now; like usually last year, in previous years when the game was over my body was so beat up, but right now I feel like I can play another game. That comes with maturity. That comes with knowing the game and putting yourself in a position to be successful without going through a wall every single time.”