Giannis Antetokounmpo caps off spectacular month of February

Giannis Antetokounmpo capped off a spectacular month of February for the Milwaukee Bucks in appropriate fashion on Friday night with a 133-86 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Giannis Antetokounmpo has had a spectacular month for the Milwaukee Bucks. The heavy favorite to win the NBA’s MVP award for the second straight season, Antetokounmpo recorded surreal numbers en route to what will likely be an Eastern Conference Player of the Month award.

Antetokounmpo and the Bucks wrapped up the month in appropriate fashion, beating the visiting Oklahoma City Thunder 133-86. The Thunder came into this game on a nine-game road winning streak, and he dropped a fairly typical 32 points, 13 rebounds and six assists in 32 minutes. He was +44 in his time on the floor.

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The Bucks were 8-0 in the month of February in games he played (he missed two games before the All-Star break for the birth of his son), and they had an unbelievable +28.4 net rating when he was on the floor.

In eight games in February, he averaged what has become a fairly typical 27.9 points, but he added a ridiculous 17.5 rebounds and 6.5 assists. The combination of scoring, rebounding and playmaking while providing historic defense tells the tale of just why he’s a virtual lock at this point for the league’s most coveted award.

What’s most incredible is that these numbers aren’t too far off from his season stats. His scoring was actually down from 29.7 points per game, but his rebounds were up significantly from his season average of 13.7. His assists are fairly static at 5.8 per game.

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s advanced numbers are practically game-breakers. His usage rate on the season leads the NBA at 36.2 percent. His effective field goal percentage is 59.1 percent which leads all players with usage rates over 30 percent.  His 61.2 percent true shooting percentage is second, behind only James Harden‘s 62.4 percent.

Among all these high-usage players who have usage rates over 30 percent, he has the fifth-highest offensive rating at 113.6 and he has the best defensive rating by a mile at 96.9. Giannis Antetokounmpo has the only defensive rating under 100 among all high-usage players, and his rating is a staggering 4.2 points better than Joel Embiid, second-best on the list.

He has a net rating of +16.8, 6.1 points better than LeBron James who sits in second place. The only player this decade with a net rating higher than his is Stephen Curry, who did it in 2015-16 with the Golden State Warriors with a rating of +17.7.

While Curry broke the game with his transcendent shooting, Antetokounmpo does so with his interior dominance and unparalleled defense.

His +8.83 PIPM (player impact plus-minus) laps the field. The gap between him and the second-place James Harden (+6.45) is the same as the gap between Harden and the 11th-place (and fellow Bucks teammate) Brook Lopez.

He has the sixth-best offensive PIPM at +4.62, and he has the best defensive PIPM at +4.21. He is the only player in the top six offensively to have a defensive PIPM in the top 20, with Kawhi Leonard being the closest at 21 with a defensive PIPM of +2.10.

Giannis Antetokounmpo isn’t just blowing away the MVP field, he’s blowing away the Defensive Player of the Year field as well in what has quickly become a historically significant season.

The Milwaukee Bucks are on a better-than-70 win pace (70.9, currently), and they have their best player to thank for it.