GSP wrote:HeartBreakKid wrote:If Giannis played with a playmaker and was put in a system that allowed him to get some easy buckets I don't see how he would be much less effective than Davis on offense. Yes, Davis can shoot - but shooting isn't literally the only thing that matters in the half court.
Put Davis in Milwaukee and I don't see him doing that well.
Milwaukee is built around Giannis and his inability to shoot or really be a threat past 10ft at the rim. He needs 4 out to be effective on offense b/c of his limitations. Ad is far more versatile, can play pick and roll or pop with any guard, can space the floor himself, handle at the post and his dribble drive game isnt predictable like Giannis.
In the regular season Bucks wouldnt be as dominant with Ad compared to Giannis but in the playoffs Miami isnt taken Ad out of the game by packing the paint and building a wall to thwart his transition game. Giannis sucks in the halfcourt and Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez were both more reliable options for Milwaukee. That would not be the case with Ad whos a far better halfcourt player
Not sure Giannis is even better defensively. As much as his offense got exposed on defense he was having alot of problems with Miamis offense and shooting. Ad is far more versatile and mobile on the perimeter.
Ad is just flatout better on both ends when the games slow down in the halfcourt in the playoffs. Giannis without transition is basically a more brutish and athletic Paskal Siakam in the halfcourt. Ad is a far superior playoff performer and he was even before this season
Milwaukee is built primarily around defense, which is why they have Eric Bledsoe. Eric Bledsoe is not a 4 out guard - Malcolm Brogdon very much is, and is not on the Bucks anymore. So I disagree that that is the primary reason the Bucks were built, and more importantly is not the optimal way to build the Bucks.
Also, having a primary playmaker and one that can play outside are not mutually exclusive things.
To say Giannis sucks in half court is an exaggeration. People keep saying it's easy to guard Giannis, but I'm pretty sure if you ask the NBA players he goes up against including the ones in the post season - they would probably giggle at that. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to keep him out of the paint, and while it is do-able it requires a ton of resources to accomplish that. If Giannis is given another star player then that would open up a punishment against this type of defense naturally. Aka, gravity.
Gravity only works if your teammates are at a certain threshold. Packing the paint is naturally going to severely hinder any one who is overly damaging in the paint, including Anthony Davis and even Lebron James. We have literally seen LBJ be severely hindered before when his teammates aren't good enough to exploit his gravity (by San Antonio in two different points in his career), LBJ has a very versatile game, but take away his ability to get lay ups and it's not hard for a legitimate team to out score him.
Giannis' stats this season are actually very comparable to Anthony Davis' from 2018 in the post season.
A lot of people will dismiss this as Orlando just defending Giannis poorly, but if we omit Anthony Davis first round series against the Blazers, then his stats in the second round against GSW are much more similar than they are different to Giannis.
Anthony Davis actually did "poorly" against GSW. GSW was the 11th ranked defense in 2018, the same exact defense as Miami. If you want to argue that GSW's defense is much better than it looks, you can very easily argue the same for Miami.
Anthony Davis only made .6 3s in that series at 25% - so that's out of the picture. He also averaged the same amount of free throws despite being a much better freethrow shooter than Giannis. Davis was well under 50% from the field. Now - the kicker is this, Anthony Davis averaged nearly 28 points against GSW - while Giannis averaged nearly 22 points.
Six points is a substantial difference but there are two things to keep in mind
Giannis only averaged
30 minutes per game - Anthony Davis averaged
40.5 minutes per game. So per 36, Giannis was actually
more productive. This is not even taking into account that Giannis has to create his own offense
and he more than doubled Davis APG as a result of that, while only averaging
.2 more TOV. (Giannis had 5 APG on 2.8 TOV, Davis had 2 APG on 2.6 TOV). Giannis was more efficient while also having the production to match.
Number two, Giannis was
heating up before he got injured. Giannis scored
19 points in 11 minutes - that doesn't sound like he was easy to guard at all. When you keep in mind that he was on pace to have like a
60 point game - he was basically injured prematurely on his best game of the series, and in a small sample size of
only 3 games prior to that that makes a
huge difference on his stats.
Looking at their round 2 performances against identically ranked defenses in the same round in the post season, it doesn't seem like Davis is much better on offense at all. I don't know why Giannis scoring 19 points in 11 minutes gets brushed under either, that's a pretty big deal - the take away people get is that the Bucks won without him...but like...they didn't. He got them 20 points out of barely playing, so obviously they would have won with him. Actually, without those hyper efficient 19 points the Bucks would have been swept.
EDIT: Also noticed that 3 of the games Davis played in were blowouts - so not all his numbers came in overly competitive situations. So yeah, his dominance in his 2018 post season is greatly overblown.