Milwaukee Bucks: 3 burning questions after 3 games against the Nets

Question No. 2 for the Milwaukee Bucks: Why won’t Giannis put Blake Griffin in the basket?

According to NBA.com’s admittedly wonky matchup statistics, Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s most frequent defender in this series has been Blake Griffin. In the three games the Bucks and Nets have played together, Griffin has guarded Giannis for 19:17, and Giannis has scored 49 points.

Those points scored with Griffin as primary defender account for 57.6 percent of the total points Antetokounmpo has scored in this series so far. This seems fantastic, and like a matchup that Giannis is dominating, but he could be doing so much better.

As you can see in the above clip where Giannis waffles with the ball for a dozen seconds, at times he appears to be tentative when Griffin checks him. This is even though he has historically dominated this matchup at every opportunity. He seems to be bailing out the Nets defense with 3-pointers — and these are wasted offensive possessions — at a disproportionate frequency when he gets this matchup.

Antetokounmpo has taken 16 3-pointers in this series (he went 1-of-8 in Game 3), and 10 of those have come in the 19 minutes where Griffin has guarded him. He’s shooting 20-of-30 from the floor in those possessions when he doesn’t chuck up a no-hope 3-pointer, so why on earth doesn’t he simply ram the ball through Blake Griffin at every opportunity?

Whatever is happening here is a major credit to Griffin, by the way. He was never considered much of a defender earlier in his career, but in the twilight of his playing days, he’s finding a niche as what appears to be Giannis Antetokounmpo’s nightmare.