Giannis Antetokounmpo outlined changes for Bucks to start winning

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Giannis Antetokounmpo began his 13th season in a unique place in his career, as not just the best player on the Milwaukee Bucks, but their longest-tenured and oldest of the rotation players.

It’s a different kind of leadership position for the 31-year-old, who has often preferred to lead by example. He’s become more vocal over the last few seasons, but without Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez, Pat Connaughton and even Damian Lillard, Antetokounmpo is at the top of the mountain in more ways than one.

And it’s been a frustrating season for him.

Individually, he’s been largely unhealthy since straining his left adductor back on Nov. 17. He has played 30 minutes in a game just twice since Nov. 15. He usually misses over a dozen games per season, but rarely for extended periods like he has for the adductor and a right calf strain.

As a team, the Bucks enter the new year at 14-20 and out of the postseason picture entirely. Currently, they have nearly the same odds of winning a top-four pick in the NBA draft (11.7%) in the lottery as earning a playoff spot (12.1%).

The Bucks have not been this bad, this deep in a regular season since they were 13-21 on Jan. 1, 2015. In that season they finished 33-49 and 12^th in the Eastern Conference. Playoff disappointments aside, the Bucks have been a playoff lock for about a decade.

And Antetokounmpo has said from the moment the season began in October that the Bucks were talented and could be dangerous if they played hard and right (with effort, ball spacing and movement) every night. If not, he has flatly said they will not be good.

Unfortunately, the team has not had that effort consistently enough. And they have not been successful.

Now they’re in a dogfight. Antetokounmpo knows this.

He said it on Dec. 27 after a win in Chicago, when he windmill dunked his way to a postgame shoving match between his teammates and the Bulls. It was a symbolic gesture to his team that they have to play hard for 48 minutes, that if they miss the playoffs the team will be broken up. He followed that up after a win in Charlotte on Dec. 29 that the team complained about non-calls or not getting the ball enough too often.

Then following a brutal loss to the Washington on Dec. 31, where the Wizards scored four points in the final 30 seconds to win 114-113, head coach Doc Rivers unloaded on the team for lack of focus and effort.

And Antetokounmpo once again found himself having to explain how things need to change, and in short order, for a great story to be written. Because he knows, perhaps better than most, that once you get into the postseason, anything can happen.

Here are Antetokounmpo’s big picture comments from his postgame media session before the New Year:

Following a roughly two-minute breakdown of the final 30 seconds of action against the Wizards, Antetokounmpo added, “I feel like winning two sometimes, we won two games in a row, sometimes our focus wasn’t there. We started the game by doing the right thing. I think we went a little bit away from that.

"Just gotta do a better job just keep on staying for 48 minutes, move the ball, calling plays, getting to the right spot, trust one another, getting downhill and understand that we can’t do this on our own. It gotta be a team effort. Win or lose we gotta do it together.

"I think that’s a summary for the whole game pretty much.”

Bucks head coach Doc Rivers talks with forward Giannis Antetokounmpo during their game Dec. 31 at Fiserv Forum. The Wizards beat the Bucks, 114-113.

Q: Doc Rivers says the team did not deserve to win the game based on how the team played. You’ve seen these mistakes throughout the year. How do you break out of it?

Antetokounmpo: “In basketball sometimes, you play the way you play, you might not deserve to win the game but you still win the game. Unfortunately that wasn’t that night. There’s been a lot of nights I’ve been a part of ugly wins, they call it. Which, I don’t care. When I go back home I don’t care if it’s ugly or pretty, nasty, dirty, clean, whatever. I still love when I win. But, OK. Coach Doc might not be wrong. I think we didn’t play at a high level. We didn’t trust one another. Kept them in the game too much.

“And at the end of the day we have to understand it’s either we are going to try to build winning and good habits, or we’re not. We cannot win the game, two games on the road against two really good teams, in my opinion, Chicago and Charlotte and come back home and give a game away. Just put ourselves back in the position we just are. We have a very tough schedule coming up and every win, every game counts right now. It’s either we can like, go the other way or we are going to figure out a way to win games.

“But sometimes it’s hard when like, some people are trying to do the right thing and other people are not trying to. It might be discouraging at times. But I’ve been part of teams, really good teams that two, three guys, four guys, try to do the right thing and they do the right thing and it pulls everybody else. I’ve been on teams that two, three guys try to do the right thing and three or four guys not try to do the right thing and it pulls the team to the wrong direction.

“But as a leader I just gotta be better. I have to be better. Defensively I have to be better. Gotta move the ball more. I gotta playmake more. I think the way the offense gotta be played more around me. I feel like I get the ball only in positions that I gotta score. I gotta playmake better and also try to score. Go back to what I do. Put on the cape.”

Q: How do you continue to build that trust?

Antetokounmpo: “Don’t get discouraged. I feel like, and maybe it’s me, too, sometimes. Once the ball is moving the right way and the ball might not go in. But we did the right thing. Sometimes you might break a play and you score, but it’s not the right thing. You know? So, but, building winning habit and good habit is when you consistently do the right thing over and over again and you hold one another accountable on doing the right thing. That’s where you build winning habits.

"You know, some days you’re gonna get away with not doing the right things, and that’s when you have the ugly wins and that’s when you have tough shots, one-on-one iso game, you can get away with it because there’s some players on this team that are extremely talented.

“But, overall, 82 games, it’s gonna catch up on you. And sometimes, as I’ve seen we win one game, we win two games - win two games, sorry, the last time we won two games (in a row) was October - but when we win we go back to that. Maybe that has to do with growth. We’ve gotta grow. We gotta grow, man. We gotta understand what position we are right now.

"And I feel like a lot of people don’t understand it. Tomorrow is going to be Jan. 1st right? We’re 11th in the East. My whole career when I’ve had winning seasons, like January to February before the break you gotta stack up wins and we have a tough schedule. I don’t think we understand this could make us or break us.

“And, I don’t want to break. I want to be made. So, as a leader, as I said, just gotta keep myself accountable. Keep on trying to do the right thing. Keep on moving the ball. I gotta playmake more. And, just hope that that can inspire people to follow and try to do the right thing.”

Q: You mentioned getting back to ‘doing what you do.’ Can you do that with a minute restriction?

Antetokounmpo: “Yeah, it’s kind of hard because I’m not in the shape that I need to be. I haven’t played for 20-something days. Like, if I play 10, 15 games in a row I’ll be in top shape. It’s kind of easy, not easy, but it’s easier to do harder stuff. And now, (Dec. 29) 24 (minutes), (Dec. 31) 28 (minutes), I don’t know what next game is gonna be, if it’s gonna be 26, 28, whatever. So, I’m just gonna try to make the most out of the minutes that I’m out there.

“And it’s not just when I play. It’s everything. It’s the way we approach the locker room. It’s what we say at halftime. What we say in the huddles. How we watch film. Be able to take accountability. Like, watch film and can put like, in the film session, all my clips that are out on myself. Like, so it can start from somewhere. Because if the leader if usually take it then everybody gotta. Nobody can say much, right? Then when we step on the court it can translate.

“But right now we do the right thing, we talk about the right thing, we talk about playing together and all that but sometimes when we step on the court and things don’t go well we go to ‘me’ mode. It’s my turn, your turn, my turn, your turn. Yeah, if I don’t complain and I don’t yell and flail and do this and ask for the ball every single possession I don’t think anybody can do that, you know? And that’s what I try to do. But, it doesn’t translate to the game. We haven’t won. So, it doesn’t translate.”

Q: Doc Rivers had said it’s a sign of emotional immaturity, to fall back into bad habits. As a leader, can you break the team of it? Can it be taught?

Antetokounmpo: “This is the thing: Do I think emotional maturity will handle like a losing season or handle like a tough loss, I think yes. Over my career in the NBA, what 800-plus games probably, over a 1,000 games, so I can deal with a bad loss. Sometimes it’s just hard, like as I said, try to do the right thing and you get discouraged because people don’t follow.

“And then the other thing that happens is that; at the end of the day, I have a very hard job to do right? Whenever I put on my jersey and go out there, like my job is not easy. And if it was easy, I think a lot of people in the league would do it. But, some people don’t and some people can’t. So you have to control what you can control. I can control my attitude, I can control my effort, I can control how I approach the game, I can control my preparation.

"Once I go out there, there’s some things I can’t control. Sometimes that's frustrating. But, I’m mature enough to understand that’s part of the game. If it was a one-on-one game, if it as tennis, I lose, I go take a shower, I go talk to my coach what I did wrong, what I did well, come back and try to do it again. But it’s not like (that). You gotta pick up 15 spirits.

“So, again, you gotta keep on reminding the team that we are OK. We can get out of this because it’s going to be an incredible story. If we come back, think about the story, how it’s going to look when we come back. I want to say it’s going to be uncomfortable. People have to understand that in order for you to come back it’s not going to be oh, we’re just gonna win and all that. We gotta get dirty. It’s gonna be uncomfortable. We’re gonna be tired. We’re gonna go back home and we’re gonna be sore. We’re gonna wake up the next day and probably don’t want to practice. But this is what it’s gonna take for us to be able to turn this season around.

“And if people are willing to do it, great. And if we are not willing to do it, can’t control it. I can control what I can control.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Giannis Antetokounmpo outlined changes for Bucks to start winning

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