Milwaukee Bucks: What’s trending through the fourth week of the season

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s free throw shooting has been a falling trend.

Coming into the 2020-21 season, the Bucks needed to improve as a team at free throw shooting, but that area of improvement was headlined by Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Giannis’ free throw shooting has been an issue since Jason Kidd started putting the ball in Antetokounmpo’s hands and he started attacking the basket with a combination of force and finesse never before seen in the league. Giannis has struggled in both of his MVP campaigns shooting at the free throw line and he’s only getting worse in this regard.

Last season Giannis finished the season shooting 63.3 percent on free throws. After going a ghastly 1-for-10 from the free throw line against Dallas, Antetokounmpo is shooting 57.5 percent on his free throw attempts.

Obviously, Antetokounmpo has put in a ton of work to iron out his free throw shooting deficiencies, but nothing has stuck to turn it around at this point. And we will certainly see opposing teams begin to use the “Hack-a-Giannis” strategy against him to make him beat them at the free throw line when needed.

It’s a long season and any improvement that Antetokounmpo at the foul line will go a long way in mitigating this glaring deficiency in his game.