Milwaukee Bucks: Giannis Antetokounmpo can’t afford to lose confidence at the line

Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s free throw shooting has been far from convincing to start the season, but he must stay confident.

As the Milwaukee Bucks held off the Oklahoma City Thunder to move to 7-3 on Sunday night, Giannis Antetokounmpo again showed evidence that he’s set to improve upon the MVP-winning standards he established last season.

Antetokounmpo finished with 35 points and 16 rebounds, marking his fifth straight game of 30 points or more. Not for the first time, Antetokounmpo bounced back from a tough first half to take his game to new levels and secure a win for his team after the interval.

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Through 10 games, Antetokounmpo is on track to average new career-highs in points per game (29.7), rebounds per game (14.3), assists per game (6.8), and effective field goal percentage (61.7 percent).

Giannis is also on course to set a new career-high in free throw attempts per game (11.0), yet that mark is currently coinciding with what would be a career-worst efficiency of 64.5 percent from the charity stripe.

Due to the aggressive, driving nature of Antetokounmpo’s offensive game, getting to the line and all that entails is crucial to who he is as a player. Therefore, it goes without saying that he can’t shirk that challenge. Antetokounmpo can’t let any misses get in his head, because his game is dependant on playing with a mentality that will inevitably send him to the stripe over and over again.

On Sunday in Oklahoma City, there was a glimpse of reluctance that should trouble the Bucks, though. Antetokounmpo was relentless in attacking the basket, so there was no influence of his free throw woes haunting him in that department. Instead, in the game’s final minute, a moment of overthinking and hesitation that may well be related to his struggles converting freebies could have cost the Bucks the game.

With 41.3 seconds remaining, and the Thunder showing no signs of simply rolling over and allowing the Bucks to cruise to a win, Chris Paul drained a floater to cut Milwaukee’s lead to three points. Brook Lopez proceeded to the baseline to inbound the ball, as would generally be customary for the center, only to have Antetokounmpo frantically prompt him to drop the ball once he’d picked it up.

Lopez obliged, and Antetokounmpo swapped places with him, only for a five-second inbounds violation to be called momentarily after Giannis had began to scan his options for a pass. The Thunder were not yet applying the most intense of full-court presses, and were clearly still backing themselves to get a stop given the amount of time remaining on the clock.

This was essentially an unforced error for the Bucks. With Eric Bledsoe, George Hill, Sterling Brown, and Brook sharing the floor with him, it seems reasonable to assume that Giannis realized he was the least reliable free throw shooter on the floor. Therefore, if the Thunder opted to foul, it would be best for the Bucks if he was the inbounder rather than the player tasked with knocking down the shots.

The logic was sound, but Antetokounmpo arrived at that conclusion too late to change the play by waving off Lopez. As can be seen at 8:36 in the video below, Antetokounmpo could, in fact, have just taken a simple pass from Lopez under minimal pressure at that time.

At that point, Antetokounmpo should have backed himself if that was how the play was going to unfold, rather than setting off a panicked chain of events that led to him committing an inbounds turnover, and Danilo Gallinari then tying up the game with a subsequent triple.

The Bucks managed to prevail from that point on, meaning this need not be anything more than a footnote, but it was still a sneak peek at something that neither the team or Giannis can allow to continue over the remainder of the year.

Antetokounmpo is the go-to guy for the Bucks in almost every way, and if that requires him backing himself at the free throw line with a game on the line, he needs to show unshakable confidence in his ability to get the job done, regardless of what may have gone before.

Ironically, although Antetokounmpo had missed a pair of free throws to close out the first half, he was 5-of-5 from the line in the second half when his hesitation led to that bizarre turnover. Overall, this 7-of-9 showing from the stripe was one of Antetokounmpo’s best of late.

As the season progresses, the hope will be that Giannis’ free throw percentage will steadily improve. Even if that doesn’t prove to be the case, though, Antetokounmpo can’t let those misses influence how he and his teammates play and manage their games.