A real scowl peaks out behind the practiced one. He is quick to laugh, but also to anger. When he came into the league, there were suggestions that perhaps he should play as point guard, and he still has a point guard’s instinct to include his teammates. But he has had to do so much on his own.
As a rookie, he had nineteen unassisted dunks; five years later, he had more than a hundred. So far this year, he is averaging more than twenty points in the paint while playing just over thirty minutes a game. He’s making nearly eighty per cent of his shots within five feet of the rim. A lot of them, spectacularly, are driving dunks. He is a team unto himself. On Friday night, against the Chicago Bulls, he scored forty-one points, to go with fifteen rebounds, nine assists, two steals, and two blocks. No one has a greater impact on the court right now than Antetokounmpo.
The Bucks have played with math for a long time, trying to leverage Antetokounmpo’s efficiency. But, since winning that title in 2021, the team has not been back to the Eastern Conference Finals, let alone the Finals. The Bucks have been knocked out of the playoffs in the first round three years in a row. Antetokounmpo, once criticized for poor shooting, has shot better than sixty per cent from the field in back-to-back seasons. But the team’s front office has had trouble finding the right people to fit around him, and the coaches have struggled to create space on the floor for him to move.
This past off-season was an odd one for the Bucks. After the quick playoff exit, there were rumors that Antetokounmpo would be the latest N.B.A. star to ask for a trade. As training camp began, the rumors got more specific: he had been eying the New York Knicks as a possible destination, people claimed. He was forthright when asked about it: “I’ve said this many times: I want to be in a situation that I can win,” he told the press. He added, “I’m locked into whatever I have in front of me. Now, if in six, seven months I change my mind, I think that’s human, too.”
The right to change one’s mind is not a grace often afforded to pro athletes—nor to the rest of us, for that matter. The public record is what it is, and commitment is framed as an all-or-nothing proposition. But Antetokounmpo stepped into this season with a display of strength and dominance that is awesome even from him. In the off-season, the Bucks cut the high-priced All-Star Damian Lillard and shifted some of that money to Turner, and they secured a pair of guards: Ryan Rollins, a second-year second-round draft pick, and Cole Anthony, a talented player whose progress with his previous team, the Orlando Magic, had appeared to stall. Rollins has been a terrific defender and the Bucks’ second leading scorer, and Anthony has shown a feel for moving the ball to the right spot. Turner, a six-foot-eleven center who can shoot the three, flies around to create space, and the sharp-shooting A. J. Green complements Antetokounmpo’s paint game by staying outside the three-point arc. Every player has a purpose. But it only works with Antetokounmpo. When he’s on the court, the Bucks have one of the best offenses in the league. When he’s off the court, they stink.
You could say that about many stars—it’s what makes them stars. The Denver Nuggets are nothing without Nikola Jokić; LeBron James, for decades, was a team unto himself. But Antetokounmpo’s burden seems different. There is a solitariness about him that he can’t or won’t shake. Two of his brothers are now his teammates, and he defends the rest of the Bucks as if they were his brothers, too. After the game against the Pacers, he explained his response to the crowd’s derision as an act of generosity toward Turner, who had been a critical part of the team that had knocked the Bucks out of the playoffs only a few months before. “It was just me trying to show camaraderie, encouragement to my teammate,” Antetokounmpo said. “Which, if you really think about it, four or five months ago he was the one blocking my shot, pushing me on the floor.” He added, “I respect him when I played against him, and now that he’s my teammate it’s a lot of love towards him.” Maybe so. And yet, watching the other Bucks hang off of Antetokounmpo after that buzzer-beater—as he stared into the middle distance, seeming almost oblivious to the teammates clasping at his shoulders, with his fingers on his lips as the boos rained down—I couldn’t help thinking that he still looks like a man apart. ♦
