Milwaukee Bucks: Giannis Antetokounmpo brashly defending MVP throne

The Milwaukee Bucks have a bona fide superstar in Giannis Antetokounmpo. His early defense as the reigning MVP has been dominant.

The Milwaukee Bucks and their fans are riding as high as they have in nearly 50 years, since the team won its only title in 1971. Giannis Antetokounmpo is arguably the league’s best player, the reigning MVP and the best player to wear a Bucks jersey since Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then named Lew Alcindor, dominated the league in the early 1970s.

Last season was the start of something great, with Antetokounmpo finally getting the help he needed at every level to ascend into the pantheon of current NBA stars. New head coach Mike Budenholzer helped a roster beaten down by Jason Kidd become something great.

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Sixty wins and a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference Finals commenced, with a conservative offensive scheme and a bombs-away offensive approach prepared to dominate the league, all centered on the brilliance of a man who grew up on the streets of Greece and entered the league scrawny and relatively undeveloped.

That Giannis Antetokounmpo is no more, replaced by one with outspoken musculature and a fear of exactly no one in the league. His impossibly long arms and graceful balance — not to mention strength, power, rhythm, speed and a visceral ferocity — make him nearly impossible to stop.

Kawhi Leonard and an all-time great playoff defense slowed him down last May when the Toronto Raptors beat the Bucks en route to a title; whether that can be replicated again will be a topic of hyper-focus come the 2020 postseason.

Antetokounmpo has improved as a player each and every season he has been in the league, increasing his scoring margin from 6.8 points per game as a rookie to 27.7 points per game a year ago — every year going up, never flat-lining or having an off season. This year the 6’11” power forward is putting up 30.5 points per game, yet another step forward.

It seems impossible for the “Greek Freak” to build on his numbers from last year. Simply in terms of raw stats, he averaged those 27.7 points, 12.5 rebounds and 5.9 assists per game. Only Oscar Robertson has ever hit those numbers over the course of a season.

The team’s wins and his numbers led to a well-deserved Most Valuable Player award, one he brought home despite James Harden scoring at similarly insane rates.

This season Antetokounmpo is upping the ante, again increasing his production as the reigning MVP is averaging 30.5 points, 14.5 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game — those numbers something no other player has ever matched. Points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, 3-pointers, free throws, PER, effective field goal percentage, win shares per 48 minutes, box plus-minus — all are at or above career marks for Antetokounmpo.

Add it all up and the Bucks should not only be considered Eastern Conference favorites at this early junction (all due respect to the Boston Celtics, who need to prove their hot start is something greater), but Antetokounmpo should be the early favorite for MVP.

Winning back-to-back MVP awards is nothing to take lightly, as it’s the mark of an all-time great. Stephen Curry is a top-20 player all-time and is the most recent player to win back-to-back. LeBron James went back-to-back twice. Tim Duncan, Michael Jordan, Steve Nash, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Moses Malone, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and the aforementioned Abdul-Jabbar each did it once.

That’s 11 players, including this author’s personal top five players of all time, eight of the top 10 and all 11 in the top 30 all-time. Winning one MVP could be an outlier for a player, a season where the narrative came together with an open field and team success to elevate a good-but-not-great player.

Derrick Rose is an obvious example, but others such as Allen Iverson, Dave Cowens or Russell Westbrook won the MVP without being an NBA pantheon member.

Winning back-to-back MVP awards? That is special, difficult and a sign of greatness. If Antetokounmpo continues his truly dominant play to start the season, leading the Bucks to another sterling record with elite two-way play, redefining the big man position and continuing to baffle fans and opponents alike, he enters rarefied air.

It will not be an award simply handed to him, as the field is difficult. Harden is once again lighting the world on fire as a scorer, James has become a triple-double machine with the league’s most popular franchise and the reigning Finals MVP (Leonard) is at the helm of the current title favorite, the LA Clippers.

Fellow big men Karl-Anthony Towns and Joel Embiid are putting up strong numbers, while guards Damian Lillard and Luka Doncic are offensive powerhouses. This is no reduced field.

Even so, Antetokounmpo stands at the front of it and he may be unstoppable. The Milwaukee Bucks have lost Khris Middleton for a month or more, still cannot seem to get Eric Bledsoe to be consistently great and have to find the right balance of bench units to iron out inconsistencies there. The team is far from a perfect product.

At the heart, however, Antetokounmpo has become close to one himself. Were a rematch with the Toronto Raptors or similarly imposing Philadelphia 76ers to come in the playoffs — or even with Kawhi Leonard in the NBA Finals — he will need to prove himself capable of overcoming complete defensive attention.

That’s an important question, but one that doesn’t factor into the MVP discussion.

What does is regular season play, and no one in the league combines his level of offense and defense. Giannis Antetokounmpo is a historically great player in the heart of his prime, and he may still have even more to come. Right now, that seems to include a second straight MVP award.