Hoops Tonight - Top 25 Players in the NBA: Why Giannis Antetokounmpo is unguardable

Yannis Suntanakoopo. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to the Volume's YouTube channels. You don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at Underscore Jason Lts you guys don't miss any show announcements. And last but not least, for whatever reason, you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finished, don't forget. You can find them

wherever you get your podcasts. Under Hoops tonight. Also, before we get started, I'm very excited next week on Monday, I get to go see the Grand Turismo movie, and I'm gonna share you guys with you guys my thoughts on the movie during the show next week. But the new movie Grant Turismo is based on the unbelievable true story of a team of unlikely underdogs, a struggling working class gamer, a failed former race car driver in an idealistic motorsport executive. Together, they risk it all to take

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tier of superstars. Like I said before, I've viewed one through twelve as superstars, and I kind of use a slight separation after the top three. You guys might remember, after the beginning of this kind of superstar tier, I talked a lot about the concept of theoretical basketball, right, and it's kind of a big difference just between the way I do my list versus other people in the

way that they do their lists. Right Again, if I asked every single one of you guys as a listener to come up with your own list of one through twenty five, there, it'd be extremely unlikely that any of you guys would have the same list. Chances are every one of us, if we saw another person in the in that group's list, we'd have things that we'd vehemently disagree about, because that's just the nature of the league right now, how incredibly stacked with talent it is, and

also just the different things that we value in basketball players. Right, And I talked a lot about how much winning matters to me, because to me, it's the purpose is the purpose to why we play the game of basketball like I, and when it comes to the NBA, there's a lot of pomp in circumstance, and we can love that pomp and circumstance. I certainly do. I just like everybody else.

When I'm scrolling through the NBA dot COM's YouTube page and they show their top one hundred dunks of the year, like, I can't wait to watch that, you know, Like I love a good ankle breaker, I love a good offseason trade. I love all of that. But at the end of the day, the Larry O'Brian Trophy is the reason why we do all of this. It is the ultimate goal. It is the one thing that drives everything we do.

Everything else is just the stepping stone on the pathway towards that ultimate goal, right And so for me personally, even though I have a huge amount of belief in what someone like Luka Doncish is capable of, I would like to see him do it before I give him the same level of recognition that I give to guys that are higher on the list, based simply on the fact that I value that top tier accomplishment more than

anything else. There are six active former NBA Finals MVPs in the NBA right now, Kawhi, Leonard, Lebron James, Joanna sen Antennacumpo, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and Nicole Jokich. Those are the only six. I'm pretty sure Andrea Gudala is retiring, so you're not getting another Finals MVP anywhere else in

the NBA outside of those six guys. And you'll notice, aside from Kawhi who can't play in a playoff game because he keeps getting hurt and Lebron James, who's a million years old and underwent his first like significant playoff decline in this last year, other than those two guys who are my top four, they are all guys who have done the deed they've do on the actual thing, the actual reason why we do all of this. As much as everyone likes to be down on Kevin Durant,

the dude is a two time NBA Finals MVP. I feel like a lot of people conveniently forget what happened in twenty twenty one. Jannis, who was a deserving NBA Finals MVP, actually said after the second round series with Brooklyn when Kevin Durant, to the eyes of most people who watched the series outplayed Giannis. Janis went into the postgame presser and said that guy's the best player in the world. He said, Kevin Durant's the best player in

the world. And so even though we have a lot of people who try to pretend as though he's not the same player that he used to be, that was just twenty five months ago. Guys, Yannis hoisting the finals MVP trophy was less than twenty five months ago, and that long ago, he himself considered Kevin Durant to be the best player in the world. Now, I think Giannis is better than KD. Now, I don't think that's a

hot take. But my point is is, I'm just kind of helping to explain my rationale as to why I had Kevin Durantis high as I did at number four. To me, one, two, three, four, those guys, there's no theoretical basketball there. They've all done the deed. And like even as we look at just our top three, Yannis, Steph Curry, and Nicole Jokic, all three of them have

done it in the last twenty five months. And that is why I have those three guys all a level above everybody else in the league right now, with kd the last two playoff runs being somewhat underwhelming, it being more than five years since he won an NBA championship. That's why I have a gap represented between three and four.

In my opinion, it's just important from the same point of recognition to acknowledge that those three guys, Steph, Jokic and and Yannis have both recently accomplished the ultimate goal without experiencing some sort of significant decline Lebron's significant decline, Kevin Durant a couple bad playoff runs in a row, right, That's what I'm trying to signify with that gap there. But even then I told view it as much of

a gap. But I hope that helps you guys understand my ration now a little bit now looking at one through three, I ordered them one through three. You guys can guess because Giannis is today, and because I've told you guys that I think Jokic is the best player in the world, you can guess that I have it as jokis one, Steph two, Yannis three. The reason he

was pretty simple. Jokic has to be one because he literally just finished dominating everybody and literally ran through two of his peers, ran through Man, ran through Anthony Davis, a defensive pier, and Rudy Gobert ran through him two And the Sun's team that took two wins off him was Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. So, like Nicole, Jokicz ran through everybody. He deserves to be number one. Now, the reason why I had steph over Jannis had a lot more to do with the way that the Bucks

lost this year. Now, for the record, Jannis was hurt, But the larger concern with me personally surrounding this year's playoff run for Yannis was the way that he lost, specifically struggling to make shots away from the rim in the half court. It kind of felt like Jianis took a step backwards this year. He was below fifty percent from the free throw line in the playoffs, really really struggled to make shots away from the rim. He was four for twenty on field goal attempts against Miami outside

of the restricted area. And really, as we look into the future now acknowledging the reality that Yannis is a champion, this upcoming sequence of years here with him having to compete against the likes of Nikola Jokic. I do think that it's a little bit concerning that Yannis has experienced a slight decline in terms of some of his skill

development stuff. But we're going to dive into that a little bit later, and even then, it's important for me to emphasize that those little bits of criticism that I offer or towards Giannis today are meant to be viewed within the context of the very best players in the world. Obviously, I think Giannis is clearly the best regular season player in the NBA, and he's obviously capable of getting the trophy.

We've seen him do it, so I'm not trying to undercut his status as a as a proven, stamped championship level player. I'm just looking at him within the context of guys like Steph, guys like Nikolajokic, guys at the top of the league. In my opinion, if Jannis is going to one day unseat Nikola jokicch he's going to have to improve in those specific areas. A bunch of misfree throws in a non existent touch anywhere away from

the rim is not going to get it done. It's going to be a huge obstacle in that quest, but we will talk a little bit more about that later. So let's take a little look at his season this year. He played in sixty three games, career high thirty one points per game to go with twelve rebounds and six assists per game sixty one percent through shitting, which is awesome, But it was his worst efficiency marks twenty eighteen, so he's again, like I said, starting to decline a little

bit in some of those areas. The play type data, transition is still where Janis does the vast majority of his damage. He notched five hundred and ninety one points in transition in this regular season, which led the entire NBA. As a matter of fact, this is a crazy stat. Twenty eight percent, almost a third of Jannis's made field goals this year were in transition. One hundred and ninety eight out of his seven hundred and seven makes, to

be exact, were in transition. So no real basketball analysis to offer there other than to say that he's just bigger, faster, and stronger than everybody, and he weaponizes that a lot in transition to generate easy opportunities. Now, isolation was Jiannis's second most common play type. He did it about fourteen to fifteen percent of his possessions. He logged three hundred and eighty one ISO possessions this year and scored just three hundred and fifty seven points zero point ninety four

points per possession. If you guys remember our high volume ISO list, the twenty five players who attempted at least two hundred fifty ISOs, he ranked twentieth out of twenty five players. He was especially bad shooting out of those situations. His passing actually carried him in those situations. He was just forty one percent from the field when he attempted shots in isolation and just zero point eight four points per possession when you include fouls and such like that

when he shot out of isolation. He was also just zero point ninety seven points per possession in post up situations when he shot, which is only slightly above average. He did, he did pass well out of the post. I want to do a whole thing on his passing. We're gonna do that in a few minutes, kind of zooming in on the shooting here because I think it's informative,

specifically of his struggles against Miami. And this is where I want to take a look at shot making because if he's well under a point per possession, when he shoots out of ISO in post situations with his physical tools, that tells me it's a shot making problem. Now, Giannis is the very best rim attacker in the NBA, and it's not close. Eight point five restricted areamkes per game that he's the NBA seventy five percent shooting there, that's amazing.

But anywhere away from the rim, Yannis really struggles to put the ball in the basket. He shot just twenty nine percent on catch and shoot jumpers this year. He shot just thirty two percent on pull up jumpers this year, hooks and runners. These are all those little pop shots in the lane, you know, the ones that Jokic makes like two thirds of the time. He was just twenty one for seventy five this year on hook shots and floaters.

That's just twenty eight percent. If I really simplified it down, Yanas shot five hundred and thirty six for seven hundred and eighteen in the restricted area this year. That's seventy five percent. He was just one seventy one for five sixty everywhere else on the floor. That's just thirty point five percent, So he makes everything around the rim and makes a ton of shots there. Anything away from the rim is a bad shot for Giannis right now, even if you just zoomed in on the paint, just paint

shots that are outside of the restricted area. He was just fifty five for one hundred and ninety seven this year, which is just twenty seven point nine percent. Now one of my long standing takes with Giannis for those of you guys who've been listening to the show for a while, I've always believed his passing ability to be more important than his jump shot. But not only that, when it comes to shots over the top, I could care less

about a jump shot. I'm talking about that. The stuff in the lane is the stuff that matters the most to me to and we're gonna talk a lot more about this later, But it's the short hook shot, the pop shots, the little one handed shots in the lane that I think Jannis has to figure out because those are way more dependable and easy to get to in those situations, especially for him, And it's a shot that he's actually capable of becoming good at, and I do

think his inability to make that shot really hurt him, especially in that Miami Miami Heat Series this year. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that in a little bit before we get to the Miami Series. I want to focus on Gianni's passing for a minute, because I think it's actually one of the most underrated parts of Gianni's game. Despite not shooting particularly well, Jiannis was sixth on a high volume post up list again twenty players who ran at least two hundred post ups. He

was sixth at one point one points per possession. Why because he applies so much rim pressure that there's almost a comical packing of the paint taking place. And Giannis has a gift finding cutters and shooters out of those situations. And he holds the ball, palms it in one hand, he can see over the top, he can rifle it

to the right guy on time, on target. As a matter of fact, when Giannis passed out of the post this year and happened one hundred and twenty two times, they scored one hundred and sixty one points on them. That's one point three to two points per possession. When Yannis passes out of the post, that's insane, that's amazing. And again like that's why I talk so much about Gianni's passing, Like more important than anything is can you get to the rim? And can you make teams pay

when they pack the paint? And you can make them pay either by kicking the shooters or by making shots over the top. The reason why I harp on the hook shots so much is because eventually you have to read the situation to be like, my shooters aren't hitting shots. I you know, Wesley Matthews is not hitting today. I need to be able to hit this little hook shot, right, So that's why I harp on that. But the passing is the most important part, and he's great at it.

Remember how bad he was in ISO. I said he was twentyeighth out of twenty five isolation players. That was all because he was missing shots. He was great when he passed at ISO one hundred and forty points for the bucks on one hundred and twenty one Yiannis passes out of ISO. That's one point one to six points

per possession, which is really damn good. So I think I think that that kind of like offsets a lot of the damage that he does from the standpoint of him missing just about everything that he takes away from the rim. Yiannis's best and most effective half court play type last year was actually pick and roll in terms of both passing and shooting. Giannis ran three hundred and forty one picking rolls last year, leading to three hundred

seventy three points. It's one point zero nine points per possession, which is in the eighty seventh percentile. He personally shot fifty five percent out of pick and roll this year. I was really curious about this, so I sat down this morning and watched a ton of film on Gianni's pick and rolls, and honestly, it was interesting the way that it worked. And I put it down to three reasons.

First of all, teams have to guard Giannis with a big, strong forward, and big strong forwards just really struggle with screen navigation, not just because they're big and so they're a big easy target for a screener, but also because they just don't practice it. Guards and other perimeter players practice screen navigation from an early age, and especially in high school college, they do it NonStop. Forwards don't. They

don't practice screen navigation. They're bad at it. It's about making yourself small, taking really quick nimble steps things that big forwards don't usually do. And so you just watched these guard, these big forwards guarding Yannis as he's getting going and pick and roll and they just die on the screen every single time. And then he's either getting a ton of separations because they run a ton of pick and pop right like it's a lot of Bobby

port Is popping at the top of the key. It's a lot of Brook Lopez popping to the top of the key. And so if they don't switch it, Giannis is going downhill into the help with like like a head of steam and no one can stop him. And if they do switch it, now he's got a big, slow footed guy on him. So number one is having the big strong forwards guard him, they can't navigate. Two, they start gi honest with the head of steam from

half court. If you watch giannest pick and rolls, he's not like, you know, coming off a wide pin down, catching the ball, setting his man up with some sort of countermove and then kind of methodically going over the top. Now, screw that. They got him starting from the logo and he's like coming at you with the head of steam while there's a ball screen and it's just really really difficult to guard. And then lastly, the third thing I put down once again, his passing ability is just ridiculous.

In the pick and roll situations, it's mainly kick out passes to shooters. You'll notice teams are so paranoid about Gianis getting downhill and pick and roll, they'll vacate the weekside corner and bring that third man over literally before he even gets inside the three point line. There are a lot of Giannis picking roles where he hasn't even crossed the three point line and he's just throwing that rifle pass over the top to the shooters wide open on the wing. Again, Like, that's why I put such

an emphasis on passing ability. Even if you want to say Giannis can only go to the rim, that's fair. But the only way you're stopping him from getting there is by putting all your guys in there. And if you put all your guys in there, you gotta leave people open. And if Giannis can keep hitting those guys, and if they make enough shots, you're gonna lose. And if they're missing shots, and he does happen to eventually develop some sort of shot that he can make over

the top of the defense. That's when he has the ability to challenge Yokich as the best player in the world. Again. All of this, in my opinion, makes Giannis the very best regular season player in the NBA. He's the best rim attacker in the league. He's a really good playmaker, and he's one of the five best defensive play in the league. I put it with him, Rudy Gobert, Draymond Green, bam Adebaye on Anthony Davis, and you can rank those in some order. I think Anthony Davis deserves the number

one spot this year. I don't think he's as good in pick and roll as some of his peers, particularly guys like Anthony Davis or Draymond Green, but he's still really good in those situations, and he's probably the best

help defender in the league. They like to have Brooke defend a lot of pick and rolls and have him kind of guard the guy in the weekside corner, and then he's kind of coming over as that low man because he's kind of uniquely one of the rare athletes in the league that can step over and basically guard the pick and roll three on two and defend everything at the rim, which allows brook Lopez to come out higher on his screens, right, But if there's a kickout pass,

he's one of like two or three guys in the entire world that can turn and close out to the corner from under the basket and block a three point shooter.

I famously, I've told the story a bunch of times on the show, but famously once I watched Luka Doncic pull Yannis into ball screens for the sole purpose of getting him out of help, not so he shoots over him, but just so that when he makes that kickout pass to the corner, it's somebody else closing out and they can actually get a shot off, because I watched Giannis time and time again swallow that up with his ridiculous athleticism.

So when you combine his rim pressure, playmaking and being a top five defender in the league, that's the best regular season player in the league. Especially with his consistent effort. He's one of the biggest, you know, motor guys in the league, one of the best motor, consistent motor guys that we have in the league. But we do have to talk about the Miami series, and again, I we

have to start by pointing out the injuries. Not only was he dealing with knee injury all season and probably was less than one hundred percent with the knee going into that series, but he also had that back injury that he suffered in Game one. But while he was out on the court, the same lack of touch issues that we saw in the regular season manifested in the playoffs. In the Heat Series, Giannis was twenty four for thirty

three in the restricted area. That's seventy three percent. That's only a very slight decline in efficiency from his regular season numbers, and he really only played two games in the series, so that's like twelve makes a game, which is a time and a half what he got in the regular season. That's not the issue. He was four for twenty on any other field goal attempt. He was fourteen for thirty one from the free throw line, well below fifty percent. And it was a problem because Bam,

especially in important pivotal moments in late game situations. Bam did a nice job sliding his feet and forcing Yiannis to take shots over the top. Bam also did really a job of giving ground. He was letting Yanis get down to like five ten feet, but not letting him get past him. So Giannis had to go to one of those turnaround hook shots and he just couldn't make him. This is where I want to focus on the hook

shot for a second. As I said earlier, it's the hook shot that I thought was Giannis's biggest problem in the Miami series. He was two for seven on hook shots in the Miami Series. And by the way, I did a tweet out a video that has all seven of those hook shots, so you can see specific examples

of the types of looks that he was getting. The reason why I want you guys to watch that video is I'm going to talk a little bit about the specific footwork that it takes, because before you think this was injury related, Giannis was thirteen for thirty seven on hook shots this year, which is like thirty five percent. Here's why the hook is important. He's not close to having a dependable jump shot like miles and miles away. He's not one off season of work away from being

a good jump shooter. He's not two off seasons of work away from being a good jump shooter. He'll be lucky to have a dependable jump shot. When he's thirty five years old, he just has two. There's too much ground to make up. He's not streaky, he's not anything. He's just not good at making those shots. But he can in one summer become a player who has a dependable hook shot. He's capable of that. Why because it's

an easy shot for him to get. It's a ton of separation with how big and strong he is and how tall and athletic he is. The footwork is easy. It's just try to bulldoze your way to the rim. If you get cut off, quick pivot and spin to your back to the basket and take a right handed hook shot over your left shoulder. And you'll see the specific footwork I'm talking about. If you guys watch the video I put up. There was the one in game. There was two that he took at the end of games.

One at the end of game four and one at the end of game five, and they're both in the video, and in both of them, he's starting up top, he's bringing the head of team down, Bam cuts him off. He pivots over that left shoulder and gets a great look, and he just can't make it. But the interesting part of those clips is if I saw Giannis dribble down and take a pull up eighteen foot or and he missed it, you go, okay, Miami wants him to take that shot, like he's never gonna make that shot, right.

But the hook shots, a good shot like that is a locked in Miami defense defending like their lives are on the line to win a series. And Giannis is so damn big and strong and has such good control over the basketball that he gets an easy, little seven eight foot pop shot in the lane. He's got everything there except for the finish. That to me, is way more dependable than anything involving the jumper for him, not to mention, he can get to it from anywhere, post

up situations. Just there's a couple of them in there that you'll see that he made where he just had the ball on the right left block, dribble, dribble, get into the lane, easy hook shot, and he makes it. He can get to it and pick and roll. He can get to it in ISO. Those are more like he gets down, he'll get cut off, pivots into a spin move and just takes the hook shot out of the spin move right especially when he's driving towards his left. But even when he drives towards his right, he could

pivot back and then back over his left shoulder. That's the shot he has to add. In my opinion, If he adds that, that will make him a much more dependable half court scorer in the playoffs. Here's why I'm harping so hard on this stuff with Giannis. A championship is a championship Giannis has stamped forever in my book. But let's be honest, Giannis's next championship will probably be harder. Why because you'll probably have to go through more talent

to get there. Why because the league is just more stacked. Now I'm not again. You guys know how I feel about undercutting championships. A championship is a championship is a championship. That said, we can look at twenty twenty one and acknowledge that a Paul George led Clippers team probably won't be a conference finalist next year. Trey Young led Hawks team probably won't be a conference finalist next year. A Devin Booker led with Chris Paul behind Sun's team probably

won't be a conference finalist next year. In the Eastern Conference, You're most likely going to see Damian Lillard, Jimmy Butler and bam Adebayo, or something like Jason Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Chris tops Porzingis. Those are much more talented teams

in that Atlanta Hawks team. Right when you get to the finals, you're most likely going to see like Devin Booker flanked by Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal, or Lebron James and Anthony Davis and Austin Reeves, or Nikola Jokic, who has all of the same power in his game that Giannis does, manifest it in a different way, more methodical, but the same type of relentless, unstoppable power, except for he makes all of his shots away from the rim,

and he's a better playmaker than you. So the point is is it's not what he is a has accomplished. Giannis is stamped forever. But let's be real about what the future is going to look like. As of right now, Yannis has to get better in order to have a better chance of competing over the course of the next five to ten years. I believe he will. For the record, I think you saw I think it was somewhat evidenced

in his social media behavior. But I think Jannis is aware of the fact that he knows that he's got to go up a level. And this is a guy who plays too hard, who works too hard, who cares too much. So I expect Giannis to make that improvement. But he's got to start making his free throws again. Can't regress in that sense, and he's got to figure out some sort of shot he can make over the

top of the defense. If you can figure that out and he's healthy, I think he's got a chance to go blow for blow with Nicole Jokic over the course of the next half decade. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. Is always I sincerely appreciate your support and I will see you next time. The volume