No trade can save the Bucks

Bucks’ fans like to play a game called “let’s blame everyone except Giannis” which is often followed by another game called “let’s propose ludicrous trades that can’t happen”. Of course they want another championship, after all Giannis said he would “run it back” the day they won it.

But Giannis is the reason they never will again. Watch even a small part of this video and think about it https://youtu.be/osY0NWe4M0w?si=Tt7OAdRQ91Zk63eR

That is the modern NBA. The top teams and how they play. Fast, clever basketball with constant movement and players that can think fast and execute well. Can the Bucks ever play like that? Hell no! Because Giannis can’t.

Part of Giannis’ amazing story is how he got to basketball late. He has no fundamentals, he can hardly dribble, for sure not ambidextrous and most of all, he can’t think basketball fast. He doesn’t even understand complex plays drawn out so the Bucks have to keep him out of those when necessary. It was apparent with the way coach Spanoulis tries to work around his limitations in the Paris Olympics. He kept Giannis off the floor a lot to try and get his team playing faster.

It’s not about just how fast you can get down to the other end of the floor. Giannis is great at that. And it works often in the regular season. He grabs the easy defensive rebound because his team mates clear out to let him statpad. But then the problem: instead of passing the ball to a guard, Giannis starts running the floor looking for an easy run and dunk. Any coach will tell you that this chart is ludicrous:

Giannis has the ball in his hands more than anyone by an enormous margin. Because not only does he bring the ball down, he then gets tangled in the opponents’ defence. If they are above average team even one player can confuse him and then what?

He chews up the clock looking for that easy shot by the rim (mid range is a myth – post about that coming up soon). This hurts the Bucks in multiple ways. Often it’s a turnover. Giannis is top in the NBA in turnovers most years.

When it’s not a turnover it’s a mediocre or bad pass with not much time left on the clock and not many options. So then everyone blames his team mates for missing! Giannis has always been terrible with turnovers, he has no dribble and no place holding the ball so much. At the end of last season he was the undisputed champ of the turnovers as always. Assist to turnover ratio is even worse.

The Bucks have a similar problem in defence where Giannis is slow to switch or to even understand what is going on. Again, against easy opponents in the regular season he seems awesome. But in harder match ups he really has no clue why and how they are scoring against him. People talk about his stats, blocks and such but fail to compare regular season Giannis with playoff Giannis. The drop off is enormous.

Can Giannis learn how to play modern basketball? The answer is ‘no’ or ‘absolutely impossible’. Can he find a role in a different team set up. We don’t know. He has a similar problem with the Greek national team despite a variety of different coaches trying to help him. For sure his dribbling skills are not improving. If anything the NBA officiating let’s him get away with murder most of the time and still he is near the top of the negative list of most offences for travelling, palming, 3second rules on both ends and offensive fouls. He simply can’t control his body well and he can’t think fast enough to adjust.

SOURCES FOR THIS POST:

YOUTUBE VIDEO AS PER LINK

STATMUSE.COM