Greek Freak Analyzed

Tag: passing

  • Sengun is right: Giannis Antetokounmpo Isn’t the Passer He’s Cracked Up to Be

    Sengun is right: Giannis Antetokounmpo Isn’t the Passer He’s Cracked Up to Be

    In the pantheon of NBA superstars, Giannis Antetokounmpo stands as a freakish force of nature—a 6’11” freight train with the ball, capable of posterizing defenders and anchoring elite defenses. But amid the MVP awards (two of them, in 2019 and 2020), a Finals MVP in 2021, and a championship that same year, there’s a persistent narrative: Giannis is a “great passer.” Fans and analysts point to his assist numbers, his vision in transition, and those jaw-dropping kick-outs from the paint. Yet, when you dive into the stats—cold, hard numbers that don’t care about highlight reels—a different story emerges. Giannis isn’t a good passer. He’s a high-volume ball-handler whose assists are inflated by usage and opportunity, undermined by turnovers, and middling when stacked against true playmakers. Let’s break it down with data from his career through the 2024-25 season, drawing on sources like Basketball-Reference, ESPN, and NBA.com.

    The Raw Numbers: Assists That Don’t Impress

    At first glance, Giannis’s assist totals look solid. Over 12 NBA seasons (through 2024-25), he’s averaged 5.0 assists per game (APG) in 859 regular-season games. That’s climbed to 6.5 APG in his last two seasons (2023-24 and 2024-25), with 433 total assists in 2024-25 alone across 67 games. But context matters. Giannis leads the league in usage rate year after year—peaking at 34.1% in 2018-19—meaning he touches the ball more than almost anyone. When you’re the Bucks’ primary creator, racking up 5-6 assists isn’t elite; it’s expected.

    Compare that to actual assist leaders. In 2024-25, Trae Young topped the NBA with 11.6 APG in 76 games, followed by Nikola Jokić at 10.7 APG. Giannis? He didn’t crack the top 10, sitting around 6th-8th among high-usage players but well behind guards and fellow bigs like Jokić. Even in April 2025, when he averaged a blistering 12.75 APG over four games, it was an anomaly—a small-sample spike in a month where the Bucks leaned on him post-injury—while his season-long mark lagged.

    Here’s a quick table of NBA APG leaders for 2024-25 (minimum 57.4 games played per 82-team pace):

    RankPlayerTeamAPG
    1Trae YoungATL11.6
    2Nikola JokićDEN10.7
    3LeBron JamesLAL9.1
    4Cade CunninghamDET9.0
    5James HardenLAC8.9
    …Giannis AntetokounmpoMIL6.5

    Giannis’s career APG trajectory tells the tale: It jumped from 1.9 as a rookie (2013-14) to 5.9 in his 2018-19 MVP year, but it hasn’t budged much since—hovering at 5.7-6.5 APG from 2022-25. For a guy billed as a “point-forward,” that’s pedestrian. LeBron James, at age 40 in 2024-25, still averaged 9.1 APG while sharing ball-handling duties.

    Advanced Metrics: Assist% Sounds Good, But…

    Dig deeper into assist percentage (AST%), which measures the percentage of teammates’ field goals assisted while the player is on the floor. Giannis’s career AST% is around 28-30% in recent years, peaking at 36.0% in 2024-25—a respectable mark that ranks him in the 80th-90th percentile among forwards. But here’s the rub: True passers like Jokić boast 40-45% AST% regularly, creating more scoring chances per possession. Giannis’s AST% spiked in 2019-20 (34.2%) thanks to Milwaukee’s improved spacing, but it dipped to 28.7% in the 2020-21 title year when defenses keyed on him.

    Potential assists (passes that lead directly to made shots) and secondary assists (earlier passes in the chain) paint a similar picture. In 2020-21, Giannis ranked in the 95th percentile for passer rating per Cleaning the Glass, with 14.9% of his passes turning into assists—better than Stephen Curry’s 11.8% that year. Sounds elite, right? Not quite. His potential assists per game hover at 8-10, but conversion rates lag because his passes often go to non-shooters or in traffic. In 2021-22, the Bucks led the league in assist-to-pass percentage at 9.2% (up to 9.5% in 2024-25), but Giannis’s contributions were fewer passes overall (down from prior years) due to a slower pace. Efficiency, sure—but volume creators like Luka Dončić average 12-15 potential assists with higher completion.

    Playoff pressure exposes this further. In the 2024-25 postseason, Giannis averaged 6.6 APG but with an AST% of just 35.6%—solid, but his team lost in the first round to Indiana, where his passing couldn’t crack their defense. Over his playoff career, his APG drops to 5.4, with notable clunkers like 4.9 APG in the 2018-19 semis.

    The Turnover Trap: All Vision, No Precision

    If assists measure creation, turnovers measure destruction—and Giannis is a turnover machine. His career turnover percentage (TOV%) is 14.5%, meaning nearly 1 in 7 possessions ends in a giveaway. In 2024-25, he averaged 3.1 turnovers per game (TOVPG)—the highest among top-10 usage players. That’s more than double Jokić’s 1.6 TOVPG or Young’s 3.6 APG edge despite similar volume.

    His assist-to-turnover (A/TO) ratio? A middling 1.9:1 career mark, dipping to 1.7:1 in 2024-25. Elite passers hit 3:1 or higher; even LeBron’s at 2.5:1 in 2024-25. Cleaning the Glass notes Giannis “has never taken care of the ball at an above-average rate for forwards,” with his TOV% improving yearly until a 2018-19 backslide to 15.2%. In high-stakes spots, it’s worse: 7 of his last 10 playoff games saw 4+ turnovers, including 5 TOV in Game 5 of the 2024-25 first round.

    Why so turnover-prone? Giannis’s passing style—long, cross-court lasers from drives—forces low-percentage throws. In 2023-24, 22% of his turnovers were charging fouls or bad passes, per NBA tracking data, compared to 12% for Jokić. His AST:Usage ratio (assists per usage rate) peaked at 0.88 in 2018-19 but sits at 0.75 now—below average for creators.

    Not Even Close to the Greats: Sengun is right

    Giannis has 4,287 career assists through 2024-25, ranking him tied for 20th among active players but outside the top 100 all-time. For reference, LeBron has 11,000+ at the same age. Among MVP winners, Giannis’s 5.0 APG career trails Jokić (7.2), Russell Westbrook (8.2), and even Derrick Rose (4.2, but with better A/TO).

    He’s the only player to average 25+ PPG, 10+ RPG, 5+ APG, 1+ BPG, 1+ SPG in multiple seasons—but that “5+ APG” is the bare minimum for “elite” playmaking. Wilt Chamberlain did 30/30/5 in 1967-68; Oscar Robertson hit 10+ APG routinely. Giannis? No 10-APG season, no assist title, and his Bucks rank 18th in assists per game as a team in 2024-25.

    The Eye Test and the Bottom Line

    Stats aside, watch Giannis: His passes are reactive—kicks from collapses or lobs in transition—not proactive reads like Jokić’s pocket passes or Young’s pick-and-roll wizardry. In 2024-25, 65% of his assists came off drives (per NBA.com tracking), but only 28% led to threes, vs. 45% for elite passers. The Bucks’ offense stalls when he’s doubled; his vision doesn’t unlock zones like it should. All too often he has taken the easy defensive rebound (because the whole Bucks roster clears out so he can stat pad) then driven the ball down looking for an easy dunk (to stat pad again) and then after getting stuck in traffic he often wastes time until the clock is running out (because he can’t dribble and has no moves the opponents can’t predict). Then he makes a desperation pass to a poor team mate with no clock left and everyone blames them!

    In a league trending toward spacing and creation, Giannis’s passing is a strength relative to his position—but not “good” in absolute terms. It’s serviceable, inflated by volume, and crippled by sloppiness. With 3.1 TOVPG and sub-7 APG in his prime, he’s no playmaking savant. He’s a scorer who rebounds and occasionally finds outlets. Time to retire the “point-Giannis” hype. He can’t screen either. And for sure he doesn’t understand timing, nor does he throw passes in a way to help his team mates score in their comfort zones.

    Most of all – as usual – Giannis fans are missing the important point. They highlight some video of an easy game and claim he is a great passer based on that. (Like they do for his 3pt….) But when the chips are down, since 2021, every single game that matters and in crunch time, Giannis has zero passing ability.

    Data sourced from Basketball-Reference, ESPN, NBA.com, and Cleaning the Glass as of September 2025.

  • Why Giannis Antetokounmpo Struggles as a Passer: Breaking Down His Assist-to-Turnover Woes

    Why Giannis Antetokounmpo Struggles as a Passer: Breaking Down His Assist-to-Turnover Woes

    So this is the assist to turnover ratio for last season:

    Yes, Giannis right at the top. How about the year before that?

    You get the picture, Giannis is a terrible passer, always at the top of that chart. His evolution into a pseudo-point guard role for the Bucks shows up one glaring weakness that persists in his game: his passing. Specifically, Giannis consistently ranks among the league’s worst in assist-to-turnover ratio, a metric that measures a player’s efficiency as a distributor. So, why does a player of his caliber struggle so much in this area? Let’s dive into the how and why behind Giannis’ passing woes.

    The Numbers Don’t Lie

    To understand the scope of Giannis’ struggles, we need to look at the stats. In the 2024-25 season (as of March 9, 2025), Giannis is averaging 6.0 assists per game against 3.5 turnovers, according to recent data. That gives him an assist-to-turnover ratio of roughly 1.71:1—far from elite for a player handling the ball as often as he does. For comparison, top-tier playmakers like Nikola Jokić (around 3.5:1) or Chris Paul (often above 4:1 in his prime) showcase the kind of efficiency Giannis lacks. Even among his peers with high usage rates, like LeBron James, Giannis’ ratio stands out as subpar. Here is this season so far, second worse in the league:

    Historically, this isn’t a new issue. Last season he had the worst assist-to-turnover ratio in the NBA, and while that claim requires context (usage rate, role, etc.), it’s not far from the truth when looking at players with similar ball-handling responsibilities. Over his career, Giannis has improved his assist numbers—from 2.6 per game in his sophomore season to nearly 6.0 now—but his turnovers have climbed alongside them, often hovering around 3.0 to 4.0 per game. The result? A ratio that rarely cracks the 2:1 mark, a benchmark for competent playmaking. It is almost as if all he cares about is the absolute number of assists for his double doubles and triple doubles. Hell, could he be the definition of a stat padder?

    How Giannis’ Style Leads to Turnovers

    So, what’s happening on the court? Giannis’ passing struggles stem from a combination of his playing style, physical attributes, and decision-making tendencies.

    1. Reliance on Power Over Precision
      Giannis is a freight train in transition and a bulldozer in the half-court, using his 6’11” frame and 7’3” wingspan to overwhelm defenders. This physical dominance is his superpower, but it doesn’t translate seamlessly to passing. Unlike finesse passers like Jokić or Draymond Green, Giannis doesn’t rely on pinpoint accuracy or subtle reads. His passes often come out of sheer necessity—kicking the ball out after drawing a double-team or forcing a feed into tight windows—rather than calculated design. This leads to sloppy deliveries, intercepted lobs, or balls sailing out of bounds.
    2. High Usage, High Risk
      Giannis’ usage rate consistently ranks among the league’s highest—around 28-30% in recent seasons, per available data. The Bucks’ offense runs through him, whether he’s driving to the rim or initiating from the top of the key. With so much responsibility, turnovers are inevitable, especially for a player who isn’t a natural playmaker. Guards like James Harden or Luka Dončić, who also have high usage, offset their turnovers with elite vision and ball-handling. Giannis, however, lacks the same level of control, often dribbling into traffic or attempting ambitious passes his skill set can’t consistently execute.
    3. Limited Perimeter Game
      Giannis’ lack of a reliable jump shot forces him into predictable patterns. Defenses sag off him, clogging the paint and daring him to pass out of pressure. While he’s improved at finding open teammates—hence the uptick in assists—this also increases his turnover risk. He’s often surrounded by multiple defenders, leaving little margin for error on his passes. Smaller, quicker guards can thread needles or manipulate angles; Giannis, with his size and longer release, struggles to do so under duress.

    Why He’s “Terrible” Compared to Peers

    Calling Giannis a “terrible passer” might feel harsh given his assist totals, but the assist-to-turnover ratio highlights a real deficiency relative to his peers. Players like LeBron James or even Draymond Green, who also play point-forward roles, maintain ratios above 2.5:1 or even 3:1 in peak seasons. Jokić, another big man with playmaking duties, blows Giannis out of the water with his efficiency. So, why does Giannis lag behind?

    • Vision and Anticipation: Giannis’ court vision is not instinctual. He reacts to what he sees rather than anticipating plays two steps ahead, a hallmark of elite passers. This reactive style leads to late passes that defenders can jump.
    • Ball-Handling: For all his athletic gifts, Giannis’ handle is loose compared to smaller guards. He’s prone to strips or losing control in tight spaces, inflating his turnover count.
    • Role Mismatch: The Bucks ask Giannis to be a hybrid of a point guard and a rim-running big. It’s a tall order, and while he’s adapted admirably, he’s not wired for the precision that role demands at an elite level.

    Giannis started playing ball late in life. He simply does not have the fast responses of other players that grew up on the court and are used to pressure.

    Still, the efficiency gap remains. The Bucks’ system mitigates some of this by surrounding him with shooters and cutters, but it can’t fully mask his limitations. When compared to players who marry high assist totals with low turnovers, Giannis’ passing looks pedestrian—or worse.

    Can He Fix It?

    At 30 years old, Giannis isn’t likely to transform into a Chris Paul-level distributor. His physical tools and relentless drive are his identity, and the Bucks have won a championship with him as their chaotic, turnover-prone fulcrum. Maybe it was an extremely lucky championship run. Maybe Khris got the team through the hardest parts of those playoffs in clutch situations. That said, small improvements—like tightening his handle, refining his reads, or simplifying his passes—could nudge his ratio closer to respectability.

    Conclusion: A Flawed Giant

    Giannis Antetokounmpo’s passing struggles, epitomized by his poor assist-to-turnover ratio, are a byproduct of his unique game. He got himseld into a playmaker’s role, because he wants the ball in order to get easy buckets by running the floor but he is faltering where precision matters most. Is he a “terrible passer”? In the context of efficiency metrics, yes—he’s always among the league’s worst for his role. No two ways about it. The Bucks will not get far with Giannis running the floor like this.