Greek Freak Analyzed

Category: SKILLS

  • Will Giannis ever fix his free throws?

    Will Giannis ever fix his free throws?

    In short, no he wont. Here is more of a decade of data, his free throw percentage is actually getting worse.

    Let’s think about this. There have been plenty bigs in the NBA that had trouble from the line. They usually were at a stable percentage or even got slightly better with time. Giannis is getting worse! This is extra impressive given that he shoots more than anyone in the league, every season Giannis is the worse. He misses the most.

    Everybody knows Giannis tries hard. In eleven years in the NBA you pretty much know that multiple trainers, coaches and experts have been called in. Yet he is getting worse. Why? Here are potential reasons:

    1. Wrong training regime. Not talking about free throw training, I mean Giannis is in the weights room focusing on brute strength. Because that is what you all cheer him on for. That is what gets him in the photos after the game. But that is not basketball, a game of finesse and balance.
    2. Terrible shooting technique in general. Giannis started playing ball at a later age. Most of the things he does are not as fluent as other players that started younger. And he clearly lacks the body intelligence to adapt quickly to the necessary changes in small movements and muscle memory.
    3. His hands are too big. This is actually a thing. Everyone admires his wingspan and enormous fingers. Great for palming the ball (in fact Giannis is high up in palming violations too) but not so great for a stable free throw.
    4. Lack of social intelligence. In fact he brags about how he avoids training with other NBA super stars in the summer. As if it is a clever thing to do. But at the top level, they are the only ones that can make you better. Giannis obviously doesn’t know how to change up his personal development methods.

    A great example is the whole thing with the ten second rule. Giannis is in clear violation of the rule very often. He ruins the flow of the game for everyone, he ruins the already low Bucks TV ratings, it is awkward and messy. So why has he never thought of shooting the damn ball faster when at the free throw?

    Usually because he is exhausted! He has usually waited around the paint to get the easy defensive rebound. His team mates have cleared out to let him have it for his stat padding. Then he will run the floor. This – as anyone who has played ball knows – takes energy. When you have the ball you have to be ready to fend off opponents trying to get to the ball. Because Giannis has no dribbling skills he counters this by running fast. So he has made an explosion of energy to get down the court, then often got caught up in traffic, now stuck in traffic. Which is an even more tiring high stress situation for any player. So if he gets to the free throw it is because he found some more energy to push his way to the rim. Of course he needs ten seconds to recover!

    So this season so far, in the Bucks easier half of the games, Giannis has already missed almost three times more free throws than anyone else. That is 1700 seconds of wasted TV time, boring down time hurting the TV ratings and making the game worse.

    More than a decade in the NBA and shooting worse than ever. Giannis, whatever you are doing, it ain’t working and it won’t work. You are not the worse in NBA history (yet) but you are fast coming up to be the worse in NBA history that has shot so many. And despite what some fans think, a solo run to the rim that ends up in a foul when you miss the free throws is a very, very bad play for your team.

    (Here you can read about his other great source of wasted offensive efforts – Giannis is the king of violations.)

  • Giannis mid range myth – part 2 (comparisons)

    Giannis mid range myth – part 2 (comparisons)

    Giannis in the paint is legendary, right? He sure takes more than anyone else in the ‘less than 5ft’ charts. There he is , first in most field goals made at less than 5ft by an enormous margin, he takes almost double the shots of anyone else in the league. 13.2 attempted, 9.4 made. If you think about it from the analytics perspective it is often a wasted effort, particularly since he misses the free throws earned like this so much. (Part 1 of this analysis here.)

    In red players more efficient than him. Yeah, yeah, no big thing, right? Let’s look at the next distance, as per nba. com categories of distances. This is a ‘mid range’ shot. Right, right, Giannis has no floater….and no sky hook. Oh and he is also nowhere in the top 20:

    Well let’s move out a bit more then. A very mid range shot 10-14 feet from the rim. No Giannis again.

    Oh but here we are! 15-19 feet distance. Of all the ‘mid range’ distances we could be talking about, for some reason Giannis media hype just look at this. OK, let’s look, yep, he is 2nd in most made. At pretty mediocre efficiency though. In red all the players above him at the top for this season so far.

    And in green above his total. A pathetic 1.6 shots. That’s 3.2 points per game. Is that worth all the fuss? Hell no, especially since as I explained here, Giannis forgets his mid range against harder defences or in the playoffs. Remember we are sorting by field goals made at that distance in order for Giannis to be No2 in the rankings. If we sort by field goal percentage at that same distance he is waaaaay down somewhere in the third page of results.

    And of course he is non existent in the next mid range distance, 20-24 feet.

    Giannis is also one of the worse 3point shooters in the history of the NBA (more on that here), so let’s not even go there. So where did this myth come from? Nba. com has a ‘mid range’ category elsewhere but doesn’t say what exactly they are measuring, let’s take a look.

    In red all the players with high field goals made numbers with better FG% than Giannis. Almost everybody. And remember, this is Giannis in the easy first half of the season, Bucks now have the 4th hardest schedule left in their season, so expect Giannis to fall to stats similar to last year. Which is nowhere near an ‘impressive’ mid range.

    STATS USED

    NBA. COM

  • Giannis’ mid range myth part 1

    Giannis’ mid range myth part 1

    Again today, in an easy match up which the Bucks won easily and Giannis had no opponent, people started talking about his mid range. It sure looked good when it went in, eh? Let’s look at the facts. (Part 2 of this here)

    Against the Jazz with no Hendricks , Juzang , Cody Williams , John Collins or Walker Kessler the Bucks were basically playing around as if in their gym. Even so, I would say the picture isn’t looking good. He missed three shots next to the rim. (In the orange circle I added.) And he scored 4/6 in the ‘mid range’. Oh and he wasted a 3point attempt.

    Because Giannis has no mid range. It is clear when he is actually being defended by someone. Even without Porzingis, on the 4th of December 2024 this is a more realistic look at Giannis’ mid range.

    He isn’t even scoring them so well right next to the rim against shorter opponents. And just 3/8 from the ‘mid’ range. And of course the wasted 3point shot as usual. And here is Giannis against the Knicks January 12th 2024. Even worse!

    This data is pretty solid. Here is the shot chart for Giannis over his career. He clearly has specific positions and can’t do anything with his left hand.

    And here is playoff Giannis. Which isn’t even counting tough matchups seeing as he has only progressed in the playoffs twice in his many years in the NBA.

    In the playoffs he is pretty much a one trick pony and head on down the middle. Why is this a problem? Because I am not the only one looking at this shot charts. Opponents know how to neutralise him. And they do when it counts.

    So save me the talk about “Giannis mid range” becoming a threat to the league. The only thing it threatens is to further confuse the Bucks into incorrect decisions on how they should play as a team. A weapon is only a weapon when it is consistent when you need it. Not in trash time against easy teams.

    DATA SOURCE

    STATMUSE. COM

  • Giannis plays a lot on his own: is it effective?

    Giannis plays a lot on his own: is it effective?

    So I saw this today

    As usual with BBall Index there is no explanation how the hell they figured all this out. So I look at NBA. com instead and sort Isolation plays by possession.

    Nothing new, we knew that Giannis handles the ball too much. More than any other player on the Bucks which is crazy considering he isn’t a guard. Giannis handles the ball all the time, not just ISO, but because he is looking for an easy run and dunk he aims for an ISO play. Which is stupid because it wont work in tougher games.

    In isolation plays he is 8th out of ten this season so far and clearly nowhere near as efficient as the others in this ranking. So I guess BBall index is as usual just click baiting with weird stats they made up themselves. Because if I take the whole season last year Giannis looks much better.

    18th in possessions. Much less of a ball hog, much less ISO. Sure the Bucks have played the easier part of their season so far. But it is not a good look when Giannis is heading for the ISO, not being as effective and missing free throws. (The only stat he aced last year was the number of free throws he got out of ISO plays. But then he missed them more than anyone in the league again.)

    This was his shot chart last season, a sad constant need to dunk. Distance mostly less than 80cm from the rim. No wonder I wrote that the Bucks will never win anything with him playing like that!