Who is currently the better player: Shai or Giannis?

[Optms]

You game plan to stop Giannis but not Shai.

Probably because Giannis' teammates suck. Of course you can gameplan for him when his other options are Kyle Kuzma. Context people.

[Black Jack]

Luka should not be anywhere close in this. He is to me less then Shai. Shai is consistent, a true master of the pace of the game. He is absoloutely controling tempo and makes his team better. But he's also reliable, doesn't get injured, doesn't have off performances. Luka is flakey like that.

Truthfully in the hypothetical it should be Jokic, Giannis, Wemby, Shai. And Wemby is there cause his potential is out of this world + current world.

Wemby goes first in a draft today but also Wemby, Jokic, and Giannis are the clear top three picks. Guys like Luka and SGA can be competed with but dominant bigs are another thing.

I appreciate SGA and Luka but there are other guys who could possibly one day deliver their equivalent impact or close, like Cade.

Lol. SGA has already delivered an MVP, Finals MVP and a ring on a pretty bad offense in the postseason as the only reliable scoring option, stop talking as if those three guys are in a different stratosphere to him when SGA just beat Jokic head2head, Giannis had 48 wins and a 1st round exit and Wemby was out at the end of the season. It will be very funny to come back to this if he wins this year as well, I guess you will find another way to discredit him, but it will be harder, because he will have an even better season this year.

Best player and most value aren't the same. I just said who'd go 1-2-3 in a draft that's all. Congrats to SGA for his title win. But let's not pretend OKC isn't the most loaded young team in quite awhile. Chet and J Will are both very very good as well.

[MMyhre]

Wemby goes first in a draft today but also Wemby, Jokic, and Giannis are the clear top three picks. Guys like Luka and SGA can be competed with but dominant bigs are another thing.

I appreciate SGA and Luka but there are other guys who could possibly one day deliver their equivalent impact or close, like Cade.

Lol. SGA has already delivered an MVP, Finals MVP and a ring on a pretty bad offense in the postseason as the only reliable scoring option, stop talking as if those three guys are in a different stratosphere to him when SGA just beat Jokic head2head, Giannis had 48 wins and a 1st round exit and Wemby was out at the end of the season. It will be very funny to come back to this if he wins this year as well, I guess you will find another way to discredit him, but it will be harder, because he will have an even better season this year.

Best player and most value aren't the same. I just said who'd go 1-2-3 in a draft that's all. Congrats to SGA for his title win. But let's not pretend OKC isn't the most loaded young team in quite awhile. Chet and J Will are both very very good as well.

And I say he is the best player this season, and if he wasn't last season, it was close. Your draft makes no sense because Giannis is over the top and SGA will peak higher than this these next years.

I also think Luka will be just as good as Giannis if not better this season.

Chet and J-Dub were injured and were not reliable offensive players last year. OKC was stacked defensively, not offensively as shown by their struggles in the playoffs. OKC has at times had many cold streaks from three, and went 27 % against Denvers third stringers last game for example. In the postseason they had the 4th worst 3pt % and 6th worst amount of makes. I would not call a 2nd option with 21.4 pts on 54.4 ts % "very very good" and he still has to prove more about his offense this season, and Chet was not "very very good" at any point last season.

Lillard was a much better offensive sidekick than any of them.

[balrog27]

This isn't even remotely close and it's clear as day if you watch them head to head. Giannis is so clearly a level above the highest heights Shai has ever achieved and draws SOOOOOOO much more defensive attention than Shai and has substantially more offensive gravity. There are zero NBA teams who even consider single covering Giannis in even regular season games, SGA gets left on an island 1on1 with perimeter defenders.

giannis also gets more double team coverage than MJ, but less than shaq, is Shaq > Giannis > MJ > Shai? odd reasoning you got here.

[Rdude22]

I mean even tho Shai knocks it down at a high clip, I feel like most coaches can live with him knocking down tough contested middys in single coverage with their best defensive player on him

If you don’t team scheme for Giannis he can and will dunk every single possession lol, no coach can live with that

Consider this though… if you don’t scheme against Shai, he’s going to score layups every single possession. The midrange is Shai’s counter to team’s scheming against him

Ironically, Giannis’s counter is trying to shoot more midrange jumpers but that’s the point the other poster was making about who you’d rather have to close a game. Both will give you 30+ points with a ton of freethrows, but Shai is much more versatile as a scorer, shooter, and closer.

It’s sorta like how prime versions of Jordan and Shaq both give you 30+ points and Shaq will get you double the rebounds as MJ… but those (mostly defensive) rebounds are more easily replaced by MJ’s lesser teammates than the shot creation you’ll need Shaq’s lesser teammates to create/make for him in the 4th.

[MMyhre]

This is the Dirk Vs KG argument TBH, I'd take SGA, elite scorers and closers are a must have on a contender, and Bucks most problematic roster build that was eventually their downfall in the Dame trade was to get a closer next to Giannis.

What an awful comparison. Giannis has outperformed SGA in the playoffs as a scorer in their careers on twice as large a sample size. And that's with removing SGA's early clipper stats and not removing any of Giannis' early career numbers. Not even going into Giannis being a DPOY on top of it. Giannis is a higher volume and more efficient scorer who literally closed the NBA Finals out in the most dominant fashion in the entire history of the NBA, no player has ever dominated a close out game the way Giannis did in 2021.

Talking about 2021 in late 2025 shows how little you update yourself. Giannis is not close to winning DPOY in 2025, you know, the year we are almost done with now.

Also even if you thought he was just from stubbornness, how do you argue for both an MVP and DPOY candidate only getting 48 wins in the weak east with a 25 pts 7 ast 62 ts % 2nd option?

If he is both an MVP and DPOY contender in the same year, he is better than 99-00 MVP Shaq.

Well, 99-00 Shaq won 67 games in the west, with still growing Kobe at 22.5 pts on 54.6 ts %, 4.9 ast/2.8 to as his nothing special yet 2nd option, and had one other guy averaging over 10 pts.

Clearly 24-25 Giannis is not as good as MVP Shaq, or that would translate to more wins in comparison to Shaq in a weaker conference with similar help.

As for the playoff scoring argument, Giannis peak is better in one of the longer runs, but not by much, 28.5 pts per 36 on 59.9 ts % to 29.1 pts per 36 on 57.4 ts %.
Shai had better playmaking though.

Shai in the last two runs has better points and ts% combined than all of the other 10+ game samples in the postseason of Giannis. I think he peaks close to or better than Giannis in playoff scoring the next few years, and even if he doesn't beat the peak one somehow, he will likely end up with a better overall scoring playoff resume unless Giannis can exit the first round and score as good as last year again over more games this year and in the future. Which I am not so sure he will.

[The Master]

Considering that Giannis was injured in 2023, missed the playoffs in 2024 - I'd take SGA comfortably just based on his age and durability (Giannis was also injured in 2020). I don't see that much of an argument for Giannis, really, if we talk about 'currently', he didn't have a better regular season than 24/25 from SGA in the last at least 3 years nor playoffs performances on the level of SGA from the last two seasons.

[The Golden Fang]

SGA scores more on better efficiency. Guards are less efficient than bigs in general, so that makes SGA even more valuable. SGA is a good defender as well for a guard, and even though Giannis is a better defender it doesn't make up for the fact that Shai is better offensively, while still being a very good defensive guard.

[Jailblazers7]

It’s pretty odd to me that SGA still seems fly under the radar after the season he just put together at age 27. I don’t have a problem with taking Giannis over him but to suggest it isn’t even close is ridiculous.

[MartyConlonOnTheRun]

Depends if you want the guy that is efficient and wins games?
Or the guys who look dominant?

Im not exactly sure what you mean, but put Giannis on OKC and there record isn't any worse. I would like to say they would win more games, but it is pretty hard to do when you have that many wins

[CodeBreaker]

Jokic
Giannis
SGA
Luka

[Rubios]

From another thread:

Of course, Shai has handles, a mid-range jumper… things Giannis doesn’t have.
But if we agree that SGA isn’t a pure playmaker, at the end of the day Giannis has other ways to score, grabs three times as many rebounds, generates gravity that allows him to get more assists despite having worse teammates, and thanks to his length and athleticism he’s a rim protector who can also contest or disrupt 3s.

If you teleported the current Shai to the 2022 Bucks against the Celtics, without Middleton, do you think he’d take them to a Game 7 while averaging 34/15/7?
If he played on last year’s even weaker Bucks team, could he have avoided a sweep against Indiana (they lost 4-1) while averaging 33 points, 15.4 rebounds and 6.6 assists on 65.1% TS?
And closing the series with a 30/20/13?

Shai, simply by being under two meters tall and weighing less than 90 kg, will never be able to do that.
And that’s not a knock on the third or fourth best player in the league (fourth, IMHO).

[GiannisAnte34]

I think Turner will unlock more of Giannis' inside game, similarly to how he did for Pascal

Giannis is about to have a monster season. If the Bucks win 50+ he'll be a top candidate for MVP

[PostGameDaVinci]

Giannis is an offense by himself. If you don't build a wall, he will get a shot at the rim. If you build a wall, he will find open shooters. It's a simple but effective offense.

Shai is an elite iso player but he doesn't bend the defense the way Giannis does. Teams can run the base defensive scheme against OKC, but they need to adjust for the Bucks. Giannis is better on both sides of the ball.

If they swapped team, OKC still gets a chip & the Bucks still get swept in the first round, at best.

[Jamaaliver]

SGA's offense puts him over the top IMO.

Read on Twitter

[iggymcfrack]

The universal Shai disrespect coming off an all-time season is insane

[WestbrookGOATed]

SGA can shoot.

[syrus3]

Scooby Doo needed his Robin to drop 40 in a Finals game and has teammates who are allowed to hack and foul people at every turn.