Many years from now it will be shared in business school as an obvious blunder of epic dimensions. A franchise in a ‘small market’ (untrue but that is how it is presented) wins a championship after many years thanks to an amazing MVP player that everyone loves. And then…. constant failure as they drove themselves into the ground for another half century.
But how?
The rise of the Bucks I have documented here. They carefully traded players that could play around Giannis’ many weaknesses. And they won the NBA finals! Dream rag to riches story both for Giannis and the Bucks franchise. And that’s when the mistakes started:
- Overpromising. “Khris let’s run it back!” said an exuberant Giannis on winning the chip. Many players say this. It’s only natural when you are on top of the world. The problem is that they acted as if it would be easy. As if they deserved that championship. They didn’t.
- Running it back. It quickly became apparent that the team was nowhere near the other contenders. But the Bucks didn’t change anything. Some players read the signs and had had enough of the Giannis’ bullshit. Everyone was annoyed by the way he hogged the spotlight. But the media knew, anyone that knows ball knew. Giannis only got 1 vote for 1st place in MVP the next year. It was over. We all knew he can’t do clutch. And it just got worse because…
- Make it OK to blame everyone else. It’s either the coaching staff or the rest of the roster. And this is official, from the top, the Bucks’ marketing machine is promoting Giannis as the ultimate tool so indirectly answering the question “what is to blame for our failures?” with “well, must be something other than Giannis!”
- Catch22 of killing trade value for the rest of the roster. The Bucks are so busy protecting their investment in Giannis that they don’t realize that they are effectively killing their potential for trades. The NBA is no longer about throwing money around to get players. It is only about what assets you have that others want. But when you are constantly using the narrative of Giannis being perfect and everyone else to blame? Beverley , George Hill, Donte DiVincenzo were practically worthless as trade assets by the time the Bucks gave them away.
- Hiding Giannis in the playoffs with pretend injuries. It really doesn’t matter if he was genuinely injured or it was a ploy. The Bucks would have lost those series anyway. The fact of the matter is that they have hyped Giannis to overplay in the regular season by promoting his stats above everything and everyone else.
- Giannis weaknesses become apparent to all. This year they tried to spread the myth of Giannis mid range shot. It isn’t true of course. The NBA has moved ahead, the game is played in a way which makes Giannis almost irrelevant in the playoffs. Running and dunking, bully ball in the paint, only works in regular season match ups where the opponents don’t want to risk injury. Players like Wemby have the complete package. Giannis saying “I won’t take 3s” in a league of 3s is simply stupid. Especially when he is shooting the worse of any player in NBA history.
So what will happen? These playoffs they will hope to get to the second round at least. Then they can pretend that
- “with a few additions”
- “with some changes to the coaching staff”
- “with different tactics”
or some other equally hairbrained excuse for dumbies, they will have a better chance next year. Then the season will roll as always, with the Bucks killing themselves to be high in the rankings in the regular season and failing again abysmally in the playoffs. Eventually Giannis will demand a trade if he has run out of excuses or if they lose badly enough from the first round.
And it will be too late.
Even without the significant potential for injury with the way he plays, the league has moved ahead without him. It’s not just his lack of 3. Giannis’ biggest problem is that he is one of the worse screeners in the NBA, he simply doesn’t understand angles at all. He can’t play advanced systems or even understand them. He can’t switch fast enough. He trains in such a stupid way that he is getting worse at free throws even. And most of all he is a victim of his own myth. He actually believes he is one of the best players in the NBA even though he lacks connections to the other players in meaningful ways and most don’t want him on their teams.
So even if he changes team, Giannis will fail. Badly. Maybe a team that wants him to try hard in the regular season so they can rest their aging superstars for the playoffs. Will his ego allow him such a role? Can he handle being benched in the playoffs? In any case the Bucks will be without options, without a young core for the future and with a sad memory of what they think could have been.
Feel free to use this for your MBA reading material. Don’t forget to play sad violin music while you read.
*Giannis isn’t a fail story of course for himself personally, he is so rich that all this is almost irrelevant to him even if his career keeps on this downhill trajectory.
