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Giannis Antetokounmpo finally knows he can destroy you
Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Giannis Antetokounmpo finally knows he can destroy you

Giannis Antetokounmpo. His name is a sentence in and of itself. From the way the 2017-18 season started, those 20 letters are all you need to know about the NBA right now. The young Buck is instilling unmitigated fear in a league full of professional assassins – and he’s literally and figuratively just getting started. The numbers yell at you like they’re trying to get your attention from the other side of a six-lane highway during rush hour, but it’s his recusant length that has him in a prime position to change basketball in the near and distant future.

Transformative players assist in the changing the vision of the hoops community. They work to broaden our perspectives, widen our worldviews. Over the past two decades, this is the single most important thing international stars have brought to the game. Dirk Nowitzki created a permanence on the perimeter for big men, Steve Nash helped to disrupt conventional offensive philosophies and Antetokounmpo is pushing the boundaries as to how devastating length can be.

On a smaller scale, Tayshaun Prince’s length was one of the most under-discussed advantages in among contemporary players who never played in an All-Star game. His outstretched arm altered the course of NBA history when he blocked a Reggie Miller breakaway layup in Game 2 of the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals. That series saw the Pacers score fewer than 70 points in three of six games, fewer than 80 in two of those games and fewer than 90 in all of them. That block, if nothing else, was the moment that symbolized not just that title run for the Pistons, but why the Lakers weren’t able to win their fourth title in five years. Prince, much like he did with Reggie Miller and Ron Artest in the series before, stifled Bryant for five games, helping hold him to 22 points on .381 shooting from the field and .171 from distance. Without question, Bryant’s struggles began and ended at the ends of Prince’s wingspan

Antetokounmpo spent many of his first three years in a daze of discovery. Young players rarely have a defined understanding of how to best utilize their physical advantages. Even LeBron James took nearly a decade to realize that he could be just as autocratic with his back to the basket as he is on running the show the perimeter. In year four, Antetokounmpo started putting the puzzle pieces where they belonged and using his length as a tool to dictate what he wanted instead of using it to react to a game being dictated to him. Through four games in his fifth season, it’s easy to want to believe that Giannis’ potential is fully realized, but there is still – somehow – room to grow.


Antetokounmpo drives for the basket Blazers forward Maurice Harkless on Oct. 21, 2017. Antetokounmpo's size along with his skills could prove to be unstoppable.  Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports

His season averages of 36.8/10.8/5.3 jump off the screen like a bottle rocket, and they become even more bewildering when you realize that he’s shooting a career-low 16.7 percent from behind the arch. He’s getting his numbers off the sheer knowledge that his unique size allows him to become unstoppable, but only if he chooses that he does not want to be stopped. While 37 and 11 feels utterly unsustainable, especially after only four games, this is what all of us said about Russell Westbrook’s quest for averaging a triple double just a season ago – a feat that overshadowed Antetokounmpo leading his team in every traditional statistical category in the same year.

If it’s not the scoring or his penchant for taking over late in games, it’s his lack of shooting that’s creating that unmitigated fear. He has a usage rate at just under 36 and his assist percentage (30.6) and turnover percentage (12.4) are both career bests. He’s getting what he wants while playing nearly mistake-free basketball without the threat of the long ball. In 2017, this is unprecedented and the most terrifying thought you’ll have this October. If and when his 3-point shot starts dropping at a rate to which defenses have to respect the sheer thought of him pulling the trigger, the possibilities are endless.

Kevin Durant, Antetokounmpo’s only true peer on the perimeter, posted a video singing his praises. "I like long, athletic guys. That's just who I am,” Durant began in response to a question about his favorite players in the league to watch. “The Greek Freak I think is a force, and I've never seen anything like him. And his ceiling is probably – he could end up being the best player to ever play if he really wanted to. That's pretty scary to think about. But he's by far my favorite player to watch."

While we’re still trying to wrap our minds about James’ potential to surpass Michael Jordan for the title for the game’s best ever, it’s even harder to process the idea that a 22-year-old kid in Milwaukee could eventually usurp them both. But when you watch him play, it’s a little easier to imagine Antetokounmpo forcing himself into the pantheon of legendary ballplayers.

He has a way of seizing momentum to reduce the size of the floor, and his long strides care not for the indomitable laws of physics. The rate of change between the time and place Giannis collects the basketball to when he reaches the rim exists on a graphical slope that’s rarely existed in the NBA. John Wall and Westbrook can get from baseline to baseline at uncompromised rates because of an archetypal speed that we’ve grown to understand. Giannis can cover the same distance in the same time because of a deviance in size.

It’s been talked about ad nauseam, but look no further than his game-winning, breakaway dunk against Portland. After wrapping his arm around CJ McCollum to poke the ball away, he caught a pass near midcourt, took a single dribble and dunked on the other end of the floor. Time and place are meaningless the opposition when solving for f(x) is represented by a Greek letter – we should be calling Giannis delta.

To fully appreciate Antetokounmpo moving forward, we must find a way to separate ourselves from the unconscious bond we have to what greatness looked like in the past and how to make sense of the unfamiliar feeling generated by what he is doing today. With broad strokes, we can’t paint a picture of his freakish skill set. Pitting his numbers against the annals of history does nothing but hollow the idiosyncrasies that make him Giannis. The biggest of those is his length, but the most important is his desire to destroy all those placed in his way with it.

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