Have the Miami Heat managed to find the holes in Giannis Antetokounmpo's game? For the second consecutive postseason, the Milwaukee Bucks' MVP is struggling to provide the same impact as he did during a dominant regular season -- which was true before he tweaked his ankle during Game 3.
Likely to win a second consecutive MVP trophy to go along with the one he has already claimed for Defensive Player of the Year, Antetokounmpo has fully mastered regular-season basketball. The playoffs, however, present a different challenge and point to the kind of skill development he still needs.
With the Bucks facing a 3-0 deficit in the conference semifinals, how have the Heat, like the Toronto Raptors last year, managed to keep Giannis in check? Let's break it down.
Where Giannis struggles most
It's not that Antetokounmpo has been ineffective. He came within an assist of a triple-double in Games 1 and 3 vs. Miami and had a 29-point, 14-rebound double-double in Milwaukee's Game 2 loss. But Giannis has set the bar high with his performance during the regular season, in which he led the league in usage rate while posting the fifth-best true shooting percentage among the 20 players with a usage rate north of 30%. By that standard his offensive production in this series is falling short.
Last year's efficiency drop-off during Milwaukee's Eastern Conference finals loss to the Raptors was even more dramatic:
There's a common link between the two series: Antetokounmpo struggling to score away from the basket. Around the rim, Giannis is an unstoppable force, even against defenses as good as the Heat's and Raptors'. He's 18-of-24 (75%) in the restricted area in this series, per NBA Advanced Stats, even better than the 74.2% he shot on those attempts during the regular season.
Get Antetokounmpo slightly farther from the basket, however, and he becomes a mere mortal. Even worse than that, perhaps. His shot chart in Game 2 didn't get any better after I tweeted about it during the fourth quarter, when it showed more red than the Heat's "statement" jerseys. Giannis finished the game 10-of-11 in the restricted area but missed all seven of his attempts from outside that range.
In particular, it's shots from inside the paint but outside the restricted area that have been Antetokounmpo's kryptonite. Our concept of points in the paint obscures the fact that not all shots in the paint are created equal. This season, for example, NBA players shot 63.5% in the restricted area and 39.9% on all other shots in the paint -- and it's that latter group of more difficult attempts that make up about a third of total paint attempts. The latter mark is actually slightly worse than their accuracy on 2-point attempts outside the paint (40.5%), making the paint divide seem irrelevant.
Even by that standard, Giannis has especially struggled in that range. He's 2-of-10 on paint shots away from the restricted area in this series after going a hard-to-believe 1-of-14 on those attempts during last year's conference finals.
Why it's hard for Giannis
Of course, every Bucks opponent wants to keep Antetokounmpo out of the restricted area and make him take more difficult shots. Few teams succeed, at least for long. The Heat and Raptors are exceptions for a couple of reasons.
First, their personnel allows them to make life more difficult for Giannis. Both Miami and Toronto are filled with long, athletic, frontcourt players who can credibly defend Antetokounmpo one-on-one or -- perhaps more importantly -- actually threaten him as help defenders.
That goes hand in hand with the second issue the Heat and Raptors have presented: They haven't respected Milwaukee's 3-point shooting. Giannis' scoring at the rim went through the roof with the addition of Brook Lopez and arrival of Mike Budenholzer, who put an emphasis on surrounding his star with four credible 3-point threats.
However, the Bucks have attempted to compensate for a lack of elite 3-point shooters with sheer volume. Their 35.5% 3-point shooting this season was slightly worse than league average (35.8%), and just three Milwaukee players (George Hill, Kyle Korver and Khris Middleton) shot better than 37% beyond the arc -- two of them reserves.
The Heat have been willing to help off below-average 3-point shooters Lopez (31%), Pat Connaughton (33%), Donte DiVincenzo (34%) and Eric Bledsoe (34%) to swarm Giannis at the paint. Thus far, the Bucks haven't been able to make them pay. In fact, Wednesday's 25 attempts from 3-point range were a season low for Milwaukee, with seven makes just one better than the team's low game. Game 3 wasn't much better as they shot just 11-of-37 from deep.
All that has left Antetokounmpo stuck staring at multiple defenders when he drives. After shooting 60% on drives during the regular season and 70% in the opening round against Orlando, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats, he has gone 3-of-9 in the first two games of this series. Last year, Giannis shot 42% on drives during the Eastern Conference finals.
What can Giannis do?
Clearly, developing as a 3-point shooter has been a priority for Antetokounmpo and the Bucks. Under Budenholzer, he has increased his 3-point attempts from 2.5 per 100 possessions the previous season to 4.0 in 2018-19 and 7.0 during the 2019-20 regular season. The thinking surely was that improved 3-point shooting would make it more difficult for defenses to sag off Giannis or lay off him to defend the drive. But that doesn't help him much once he has beaten his initial defender and gotten into the paint, which is where he has struggled in the playoffs.
Instead, I wonder if that development effort might better be directed to a couple of other areas. One would be a high-release floater that opponents might struggle to contest. Second Spectrum tracking shows Antetokounmpo attempting just 43 floaters this season, including five in the playoffs. He has gone 1-on-5 on those attempts and shot 35% overall, well below the league average of 41% on floaters.
The other possible option for Giannis is improving his post game against smaller defenders. Miami has been comfortable guarding him with smaller opponents Jae Crowder, Andre Iguodala and Derrick Jones Jr. because Antetokounmpo isn't a consistent threat posting them up. According to Second Spectrum tracking, his eight post-ups in this series have generated a total of two points.
It's worth remembering that this learning curve is to be expected for a dominant young star. At the same age Giannis is now, two-time MVP LeBron James was leaving Cleveland for Miami, where his own lack of a post game would be exposed against the Dallas Mavericks in the Heat's 2011 NBA Finals loss. LeBron went to work on his game during the 2011 lockout and returned a two-time champion.
If the Bucks complete a similar postseason flameout against the Heat, it might be time for Giannis to focus his player development in the same direction.