Looking back at Giannis Antetokounmpo’s historic season for Milwaukee Bucks

Giannis Antetokounmpo has put together an awe-inspiring season and is the front-runner for Most Valuable Player. Many people know that he is a spectacular player, but it is not widely known how truly historic his numbers are.

Giannis Antetokounmpo has had an extreme amount of individual success this year in addition to leading this Milwaukee Bucks team to a league-best 60-22 record. He has put up monster numbers and utilizes his ridiculous combination of length and strength to dominate on both ends of the floor.

We’ll start simple and obvious with what Giannis himself cares the most about, team success. This season, their 60-22 record is tied for the third-best record in Milwaukee Bucks history. The only Bucks teams with better records were the NBA champion 1970-71 team and the next year in 1971-72 when they won 66 and 63 games respectively. The last time that the Bucks won 60 games was the 1980-81 season with Don Nelson as head coach and, now commentator, Marques Johnson as their leader in win shares.

Giannis has led this team to the best offensive rating in franchise history of 113.8 with his extremely efficient scoring and finding teammates for open looks. Defensively, their relative defensive rating was -5.2, meaning that they allow more than five fewer points than league average per 100 possessions. This is the third-best mark in franchise history. Overall, this is the Milwaukee Bucks’ fourth-best season in terms of simple rating system, which takes average margin of victory and adjusts for strength of schedule.

Going outside of just Bucks history and into league-wide history, there have been a total of 1,314 seasons had by NBA teams since they expanded to an 82 game season in 1967-68. Only 77 of those have had 60 wins or more, and only 59 have had more than the Milwaukee Bucks’ 60 this season. This puts their season in the 94th percentile all time.

Hopefully, there will be much more team success to speak of if they make a deep playoff run. He will need to be their leader and will definitely get the opportunity to have some career-defining moments. However the playoffs work out, there is no doubting that Giannis has lead this team to one of the best seasons ever.

The biggest reason you cannot doubt the contribution Giannis Antetokounmpo has made to this team is his 14.4 win shares. There have only been four totals higher than that in Bucks’ history and they are all held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in consecutive seasons.

Speaking of Kareem and win shares, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the Milwaukee Bucks all-time leader in win shares at 114.7. Where does Giannis rank on this list? Seventh. In only six years, a few of them being pretty ugly seasons, Giannis has already passed up the likes of Paul Pressey, Jon Mcglocklin, Terry Cummings, and Junior Bridgeman. If Antetokounmpo has another 14.4 win share season next year, he will move up to fourth, behind only Marques Johnson, and Hall of Famers, Sidney Moncrief and Abdul-Jabbar.

Moving on from team success and into Antetokounmpo’s unreal season stats. His stats, both conventional and advanced, are across almost every league leaders list there is. Obviously, his combination of points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks is off the charts. Giannis is the only player in history with 1994 points, 898 rebounds, 424 assists, 92 steals, and 110 blocks. He is the complete superstar in every aspect of the game.

If conventional numbers aren’t really your thing then here’s a few advanced metrics. His plus-minus while on the court this season was +12.5 per 100 possessions. He also tied with Rudy Gobert for the top mark in defensive box plus-minus at 5.0. If you want efficient scoring look no further than the Greek Freak who finished third in points per game while being seventh in true shooting percentage and ninth in effective field goal percentage. None of the other top seven scorers in the league were even in the top-20 in either shooting efficiency category. You’d have to go down to eight place scorer Kevin Durant who comes in at fourteenth in true shooting percentage, but still not on the top-20 list in effective field goal percentage.

He finished third in offensive and defensive win shares, showing that he can bring it on both sides of the court. He also leads the league in win shares per 48 minutes, and the only reason that he did not lead in total win shares was that the Bucks frequently won by so much that he didn’t need to play as many minutes. His defensive rating of 99.4 is second lowest in the league, joining only Hassan Whiteside as the two players this season with defensive ratings under 100.

His extremely efficient scoring, combined with his ridiculous other stat categories has made for his truly historic player efficiency rating. His PER of 30.89 is twelfth all-time behind only legendary seasons. The only seasons better are four by Michael Jordan, three by Wilt Chamberlain, three from Lebron James, and Steph Curry’s unanimous Most Valuable Player season in 2015-16. The year Giannis had is actually slightly better in terms of PER than Lebron’s season the first year he won a ring with the Miami Heat in 2011-12. That puts in context just how amazing Giannis has been this year.

Giannis Antetokounmpo also gave one of the greatest single-game performances this league has ever seen in the March 3rd game against the Philadelphia 76ers. He battled all game with Joel Embiid and sustained an ankle injury in the third quarter which he played through in an effort to help his team. He scored a career-high 52 points on 57.7 percent shooting while grabbing 16 rebounds and dishing out seven assists. He also went 19 for 21 from the free throw line. All of this led to the 18th best game in league history in terms of game score.

Now let’s talk about dunking. Giannis is very good at it. In fact, 24.6 percent of his shot attempts this year were dunks. He was second in the league at 279 dunks, only to Rudy Gobert with 306. The difference between the two is that less than half of Giannis’s dunks, 47.2 percent, are assisted. In contrast, 73.5 percent of Goberts dunks are assisted. Giannis doesn’t need help getting to the rim and finishing as his 147 unassisted dunks ranked him easily first in the league.

The one part of Antetokounmpo’s game that has been highly scrutinized is his three-point shooting. He progressed throughout the season with his monthly three-point numbers going consistently up from 6.3 percent in October to 14.3, 22.2, 30.6, and 40 percent in November, December, January, and February. He then regressed back to 26.5 percent in March. However, I believe I have found the solution for his three-point woes: Only shoot threes on weekends. This may seem ridiculous and it is, but it is extremely bizarre that on Sundays and Saturdays he’s shooting a combined 37.3 percent and on the five weekdays combined he’s shooting only 19.9 percent. Now I realize that this is probably coincidental but I had to include it because crazy coincidence stats are fun.

On a serious not about Antetokounmpo’s three-point shooting, if he can shoot in the low 30s percentage in the playoffs that will be enough to give this team a chance at a title. Giannis has had an amazingly efficient season on both sides of the ball doing absolutely everything he can for this team to win. He has put all he has into this season while he’s been on the court, but that time hasn’t even been that long. After ranking sixteenth in minutes played last season, he is all the way down to 47th this year under the season management plan of head coach Mike Budenholzer.

What we saw the last two years in the playoff was an extremely tired Giannis. He still played at a very high level, but he could have been even better. This year, the Milwaukee Bucks come into the year with a rested and fresh Greek Freak. That should scare every single team in the playoffs. Giannis had a historic regular season and he has a very good chance to make even more history this 2019 postseason, so hold onto your antlers Bucks fans, it’s going to be a fun ride.