Acquiring Giannis Antetokounmpo is far-off dream, but Knicks can test themselves against Bucks star
Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo. Credit: AP
MILWAUKEE
With the NBA season about a week old, we’ve already seen a major gambling scandal, the next phase of Victor Wembanyama’s evolution, rookie stars and so, so many fouls called.
But what we haven’t seen that Knicks fans may be eyeing most of all is a disgruntled Giannis Antetokounmpo.
The Knicks will get their first close-up look at Antetokounmpo — who’s set on getting another ring — and the Bucks on Tuesday night. Three games in, he’s hardly looked as if he’s rushing for the exit after raising eyebrows when it was revealed that if he had to leave Milwaukee — and the arena that he’s basically financed with his jersey sales — the only place he’d be interested in departing for would be Madison Square Garden and the Knicks.
The Bucks, like the Knicks, bring a 2-1 record into Tuesday, and Antetokounmpo has been doing exactly what he’s done for 12 seasons — carrying his team on his shoulders.
He became the first player in NBA history to score at least 100 points, grab at least 40 rebounds and hand out at least 15 assists in the first three games of a season. He leads the NBA in rebounds (16.0 per game) and field goals (13.7 per game).
While the stars who used to surround him — Jrue Holiday, Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton — are all gone, Antetokounmpo has managed to survive. Through those three games, the Bucks have six other players averaging double figures in scoring (and three more averaging at least seven points per game). He still has Bobby Portis, the addition of Myles Turner and the undying love of the fans in the Deer District that he helped create.
So for the Knicks, the possibility of finding some way to bring him to New York remains a far-off dream and one that they can put away for now. Better to focus on how to remain what they had not been for decades — an attractive destination for stars seeking a contender with a reasonably functional organization.
Mike Brown has presented an amicable face at the forefront of the organization, but the lure for Antetokounmpo or any other star will be what the product on the court looks like. That remains mixed right now as Brown has tried to implement a new system.
It’s no small task. The Knicks had established a style and success under Tom Thibodeau. Maybe that style wasn’t so entertaining to the critics who wanted to see a faster pace, more three-point field-goal attempts and contributions from the end of the bench, but it was one that — with many of their rivals in the Eastern Conference wrecked by injuries — likely would have placed them as a favorite to reach the NBA Finals.
At times, even the players on board seem a bit lost. No one could blame them if they thought to themselves, why not just do what we did really well to get to the Eastern Conference finals last season? But on the record, they have said the right things: that with time it will come.
The pace is faster. The threes are being fired up at a modern game rate, although connecting on 15 of 54, as they did in the loss in Miami on Sunday, might make even the most analytically inclined fans ease up on that demand.
“I don’t think it’s too much of an adjustment because we have good shooters,” Josh Hart said. “We’re pushing the pace and doing those kinds of things, so we’ve got to make sure we’re set and ready and we’re crashing and doing those kinds of things. We knew this was going to be a tough one. This was kind of our first game of having some adversity. So we’ll continue to build.”
“We’ll have days like this if we’re going to shoot the three-ball as many times as we did,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “You live and die by the three. So today we died by it. But shout-out to the testament of our fight. We were still in the game and had a chance to win it. So that’s a positive.”
The chase of Antetokounmpo has so many levels to go through. It’s not just whether Milwaukee can continue to keep him loyal to the only team he’s ever known. His desire to go to New York over any other team is pertinent only if the Knicks can come up with the pieces to satisfy the Bucks while showing him that what he sees now would not have to be torn apart to make him a part of it.
The Bucks’ loyalty to him goes only so far, too, when the return for one of the game’s greats could make or break the future of the franchise.
So the Knicks move on for now, building their own system and pieces while hoping it’s enough to chase the elusive title and hoping to remain appealing enough if it isn’t. “We’re getting there,” Brown said after Sunday’s game. “I thought we made improvement from our last game with our reads, although it didn’t show because we didn’t shoot the ball as well as we wanted to. We gave up too many transition baskets and we sent them to the free-throw line, but our reads are getting a little better. I still had to kind of direct them and steer them with different stuff to try to mix it up, but we did get a little better, which is exciting, and there are some positives we can show offensively from tonight’s game.”
Tuesday night is the chance to show that progress, whether for themselves or for Giannis.
Steve Popper covers the Knicks for Newsday. He has spent nearly three decades covering the Knicks and the NBA, along with just about every sports team in the New York metropolitan area.
