1 Troubling stat still haunts the Milwaukee Bucks despite season-opening win

The Milwaukee Bucks looked solid in their season opener against the Philadelphia 76ers.

Despite Khris Middleton's absence, they showed improvement compared to last season in several areas and got a comfortable win in Philadelphia, which is a great way to start. Still, not everything went smoothly. One old problem resurfaced and prevented the game from being close to perfect.

Giannis Antetokounmpo had a pretty good game, but he struggled with a classic enemy of his: the free throw line. The Greek Freak had 16 attempts from the line but was able to hit only nine of them, ending the game shooting 56.3 percent, a pretty low percentage that he needs to increase.

Free throw shooting is still haunting Giannis, Milwaukee Bucks

Giannis has never been a great free throw shooter, and at this point, we can assume he never will be. Yet, he needs to be somewhat consistent. If he's missing this much, it gets easier for the defense to prevent him from scoring, since every time he gets close to the rim, he can just be fouled, and the chances are he's just getting one point instead of two. He may even come up empty entirely, since he missed both of his free throw attempts twice last night.

This isn't necessarily a huge drama yet, since Giannis Antetokounmpo has always had some raw nights, but he's also been able to knock his shots down many times. Yet, it's actually getting a bit concerning.

He seemed to peak as a free throw shooter at an early stage of his career, shooting over 76 percent both in the 16-17 and 17-18 seasons but has strongly regressed since. In the last two seasons, he has averaged a poor 65.1 percent, which is quite inefficient and can get the Milwaukee Bucks into trouble in close games.

We are just into the first game of the season, though, so we'll need to see if this trend continues or if he can reverse it. At this point in his career, this might be the part of his game he needs to work on the most, and it would be pretty exciting to see him getting better at it as the year goes on.

Despite all that, Giannis Antetokounmpo finished the game with a strong line of 25 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists and was super efficient on his field goals after hitting eight out of 11. In fact, he has become more efficient over the years and became the first player in NBA history to end a season averaging over 30 points while shooting over 60 percent from the field. If he could just fix this issue, he would be nearly unstoppable.