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Giannis Antetokounmpo’s defense is worth remembering

By Ti Windisch

HOUSTON, TX - JANUARY 18: Montrezl Harrell #5 of the Houston Rockets has his shot attempt blocked by Giannis Antetokounmpo #34 of the Milwaukee Bucks at Toyota Center on January 18, 2017 in Houston, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images)
HOUSTON, TX - JANUARY 18: Montrezl Harrell #5 of the Houston Rockets has his shot attempt blocked by Giannis Antetokounmpo #34 of the Milwaukee Bucks at Toyota Center on January 18, 2017 in Houston, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and/or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images) /
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Although his flashy dunks and ‘gyro-steps’ may get more attention, don’t sleep on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s defense.

Giannis Antetokounmpo is one of the NBA’s best offensive talents. He was 0.1 points per game away from cracking the top 20 scorers in that statistic, and only 13 players scored more total points than Giannis did last season.

It’s hard to forget that, especially as a fan of the Milwaukee Bucks, who often have highlights like this coming across the old timeline.

https://twitter.com/BehindTheBucks/status/853366054172721152

There’s definitely nothing wrong with that–by all means, go retweet and share as many Giannis highlights as possible. But make sure not to lose what the Greek Freak does in the other end in the retweeting of insane dunks and lay-ups.

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Defense is easy to forget, outside of highlight blocks, and hard to quantify. Even those big blocks are often featured on highlight reels more because they lead to big dunks on the other end than anything else. Simply put, people like scoring.

It’s an easy thing to quantify, and an exciting thing to watch. I opened this piece by simply explaining Giannis’ case as a great offensive player–he scores lots of points. That’s a rudimentary logic to use, but to a certain extent it holds up. Efficiency and other factors give those numbers more or less weight, but scoring always will have inherent value in basketball.

There is no such number on defense. There are counting stats for that end–steals and blocks have been tallied for decades–but they don’t tell the whole story. Fantastic defenders can hardly get any steals, and bad defenders can block shots or grab steals but not actually prevent the other team from scoring that often on the other possessions.

Thus, even though a great defender can have a tremendous impact on any given NBA game, it’s much harder to tell who is and is not great outside of simply watching players, and using some advanced statistics as well, although most of them don’t do a great job evaluating defense.

Luckily, the NBA All-Defensive Teams exist to help give some shine to players who are really good at defense. Guys like Danny Green and Tony Allen, who will never be All-Stars, get recognized for their defensive prowess on these teams.

The process will never be perfect–Avery Bradley should’ve made one of the two All-Defensive teams–but it’s something. Most of the time, players on the All-Defensive teams are not the best offensive players in the league.

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It’s very hard to do both things at a high level without running out of energy, even if an offensive dynamo is a good defender (there is no guarantee that they are, either). Only three players were able to score 20 points per game and make an All-Defensive team in the 2016-17 season: Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

That’s truly elite company for Giannis to be in. Davis and Leonard have been recognized as some of the best two-way players in the NBA for years. Now, Antetokounmpo is in that club as well.

Even if there’s not one stat that brilliantly shows Giannis’ impact, voters clearly saw the combination of lockdown on-ball defense and fast-twitch help defense Giannis used to help Milwaukee’s defense all season last year.

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The 131 steals and 151 blocks he put up definitely helped as well, but there’s no true substitute to simply watching Giannis play defense to see how good he is. It’s worth wondering how many of the people who seem to think the Greek Freak might be overrated have actually done that.

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