Milwaukee Bucks Player of the Week (Jan. 10th – Jan. 16th)
Player of the Week Rankings
1. ???
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo
3. Khris Middleton
The Greek Freak was in rare form this week. He put up four point-rebound double-doubles in five games. That is some really nice consistency for a young player.
Giannis Antetokounmpo did some really cool things this week but this was my personal favorite. This is one of the better alley oops of the season for the Bucks!
Giannis played in all five games this week and averaged 19.6 points (53.2% shooting), 11.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 0.8 steals, and 1.6 blocks in 38.9 minutes per game. He was first in rebounds per game for the Bucks, second in blocks, third in points, and fourth in both assists and steals.
Additionally, his +/- was the best on the team with +10.2. The Bucks were awesome when Antetokounmpo was on the court!
In the first game of the week against the Knicks, Giannis had a quiet performance. He had 8 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists. It was his worst individual performance of the week but he still helped his team. The Bucks outscored the Knicks by seven when Giannis was on the floor. It was not enough to get Milwaukee the win, however.
Next against the Bulls, Giannis bounced back nicely. He had 29 points (10-14 from the field), 10 rebounds, and 5 assists. It was one of his best games of the season. Here is a particularly crafty play for two of his 29 points. It is fun watching Giannis weave through the lane and make really good defensive players look silly.
The third game of the week was a matchup in D.C. against the Wizards. Giannis had 19 points, 11 rebounds, 6 assists, and 2 steals in this one. He shot above 50% from the field and was an instrumental piece on offense. He tied for the team lead in both assists and free throw attempts. Despite Antetokounmpo’s good game, the Bucks still lost this one.
The next game was against the Hawks. This game went to overtime and Giannis played the most minutes of any player on either team with 50. Besides racking up a lot of minutes, Giannis produced a BIG double-double in this one with 28 points and 16 rebounds. He also had three blocks. The Greek Freak hit a clutch three with just over a minute remaining in OT to effectively end the game and give the Bucks the win.
In the final game of the week against the Hornets, Antetokounmpo had 14 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, and 3 blocks. In the victory, he led his team in +/- with +21. The Bucks were flat-out dominant when Giannis was on the court in this game.
This was a great week for Giannis. He had a lot of big point totals but the thing I was most impressed by was his consistently awesome rebounding. In the five games he had rebounding totals of: 10, 10, 11, 16, and 11. A stretch like that makes you think Giannis might be able to average double-digit rebounds for a whole season at some point in his career.
The Bucks have been a dismal rebounding team this season. Currently the Bucks rank 28th in the NBA in rebounds per game. However, they won the rebounding battle in three of their five games this week and against the Knicks they were only out-rebounded by one. A big part of that team success on the glass can be attributed to Antetokounmpo’s rebounding.
Giannis had one of his better weeks of the season but the same issues that have plagued him over the course of the year and have kept him from making the Player of the Week Rankings reared their ugly head again this week.
He tied for the team lead in both turnovers and fouls per game, with 2.8 and 3.2 respectively. If he could have reduced some of his mistakes he would have been the Bucks Player of the Week.
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