Some recent remarks suggest that Giannis wasn’t prepared for what he was experiencing.

Everyone immediately jumped to talking about how “devastating,” “unstoppable,” and “terrifying” Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo would be as a pick-and-roll duo.

I was the same. It was and still is really obvious material. Since Lillard is the greatest pull-up shooter in history who isn’t named Stephen Curry, two defenders will undoubtedly jump at him. This will leave Giannis, an athlete straight out of a comic book, in a sea of space as he charges towards the hoop. 

Perhaps my assumption that people would realise how devastating this combination would be was incorrect. I thought that their combined weight would have a cascading effect on opposing defences, making them vulnerable to attack. 

Was it really expected that Giannis would just roll freely to the hoop in order to slam the ball? Was that Giannis’s thought?

It sounds like he did in a recent article by Eric Nehm of The Athletic, which is well worth reading. 

When Lillard left the double team, Antetokounmpo found himself constantly confronting a clogged path. “The first couple of games, I couldn’t understand it,” he said to The Athletic on Nov. 20. “Why the f— is it so crowded?”

The craziest aspect, according to Antetokounmpo, is this. “You’re thinking, ‘Oh sh*t, the pick-and-roll, I’m going to get so many easy looks,'” before to the season. However, at the moment, our pick-and-roll connection is helping others more than it is helping us, as Dame is double-teamed and zoning out when I have the ball. Thus, it’s like “swing, swing,” with additional benefits for others.”

“There is too much people here. I think I travelled two or three times in the beginning of the season,” Antetokounmpo remarked, beginning to display his awareness of defenders’ positions when he catches the ball during a pick-and-roll with Lillard. “I understand, and as I turn, the man is already here. Alternatively, I turn and am ready to go hit a crowd when I receive it. It’s packed.

This is quite confusing. For the past five years, Giannis has been gazing at walls of defenders in the paint. Why, then, is he or she astonished that they aren’t putting out a red carpet to the rim simply because Lillard started the action?

This is how pick-and-rolls are usually done. On short rolls, even Draymond Green, who isn’t nearly as dangerous as Giannis as a downhill rim attacker, sees many defenders in the paint. It’s only a mathematical issue. The defence has lost a man after putting two players after the ball carrier. Due to the limited number of defenders, Giannis is urging the team to “zone up” in an attempt to stop four attacking players. 

It doesn’t take a basketball wizard to figure out that those three defenders will focus almost all of their combined efforts on stopping Giannis before he starts to lose ground. Again, it’s puzzling if Giannis didn’t anticipate this happening. 

Lillard understands this. For the better part of the last ten years, he has been getting doubled on ball screens. It’s literally an inches game, as he explains in Nehm’s piece, explaining it in great detail. 

When defences close in on Giannis, the players spacing out beyond the 3-point line will be the ones with open looks. If they can consistently make those shots, defences will naturally begin to lean slightly in their direction and away from their main duties of guarding Dame’s pull-up 3-pointers and Antetokounmpo’s rim rolls. 

It only takes a tiny bit of free space for them to destroy you. 

However, for Lillard and Giannis to receive those little pockets of space, two things must occur. It is up to the shooters to make the shots, and Milwaukee does have a large pool of competent shooters. However, the pass needs to be given to them before that may occur. Giannis is to blame for that; he doesn’t feel confident making such snap decisions. If you falter for even a single second, the defence gets back up and any advantage you may have had is gone. 

Giannis has had more time in the past to look down the walls in front of him. Before taking off like a bull out of a chute, he stood at the top of the key and gave a survey. It was not a particularly effective offensive play, but it did buy an unnatural playmaker—who is wired to be a wrecking ball—some extra time to think things through. to ascertain the terrain. Find his outlet shooters prior to him entering his drive. 

He now needs to catch up, and it takes longer to digest information now. That portion makes sense. It takes more skill to short-roll pass and ice defences than Draymond gives credit for. That Giannis doesn’t seem to have anticipated this is another thing that makes it less than comprehensible. 

In any case, this is the arrangement, and Giannis can only become more accustomed to playing as a roller in confined spaces by doing it more frequently. And that’s where it seems like Lillard is sort of telling Bucks coach Adrian Gryphon to step up the frequency of these plays, which Gryphon has been reluctant to do this season out of concern that it would jeopardise his preferred, more inclusive motion offence. 

Regarding his pick-and-rolls with Giannis, Lillard told The Athletic, “I think it just takes reps.” “I believe we should play pick-and-roll together more often. That, in my opinion, is how you improve. You get to know each other better in this way. We simply don’t play as many pick-and-rolls when I handle the ball and he sets it, in my opinion. Furthermore, we haven’t focused on it sufficiently. I believe that because we don’t run it as often as you might imagine, we don’t currently receive enough practice against the coverages. Therefore, it will merely take some time for us to master it.”

This concludes the matter. It’s easy to understand the basketball notion of great players drawing numerous defenders to expose their less skilled teammates, but it can be far more difficult to implement in real-time. That has a similarly straightforward answer: You’ll get more proficient at it the more you practise. 

Dame is not in need of reps. He is still a component of the equation. It’s Giannis who’s exploring new ground. It seems likely that he is beginning to understand. Nehm cites Giannis as saying that the screens should be positioned higher up on the floor to provide Giannis a little more floor space to make a move before the defence closes in. 

He may benefit from small creases like that, and Giannis’s realisation of this is heartening. Even yet, I find it absurd that he was blind to it from the beginning. His shooting is subpar. When Giannis has the ball on the perimeter, defences will drop into the paint, whether it’s as a roller, in isolation, or in any other configuration. Not particularly a novel idea. 

Once more, he just does not have the time that he once did to decide and pass, and for that, well, he needs more time. Should Gryphon give it to him in the hopes of perfecting what might be Milwaukee’s go-to offensive strategy come playoff time, even if it’s a little clumsy at times in the short term? Lillard included, the majority would say yes. Over the next few months, we’ll watch to see if it occurs.