Ever since he was drafted in 2013 by the Milwaukee Bucks, Giannis Antetokounmpo has put on a spectacle of basketball not just for his city, nor the NBA, but for the entire world. Giannis went from a kid playing basketball in the streets of Greece to playing on some of the biggest courts in the world, like in the NBA finals, Eurobasket, and soon to be the Olympics. He has taken home many awards like multiple MVP’s, defensive player of the year, NBA championship trophy, and even NBA Finals MVP. It is easy to see by his size and stature why Giannis is so good at what he does, but statistically what makes him so good? I will be answering this question and more by analyzing Giannis’ stats from his championship season.

Table of contents:

Part 1

There is a reason why Giannis is often referred to as the Greek Freak, but what is that reason? I want to better understand why Giannis is good at what he does because I have been watching him for years. But before I am able to do that, I will first do some analysis on previous basketball legends to see what sticks out in their statistics.

Here is a data set from Kaggle that details the career statistics of NBA legends like Denis Rodman, Karl Malone, and more. This data set holds a wealth of information about the players like average points per season, average rebound, net rating, and more. It also holds other categories of information like their draft year and pick or information about their bodies like height and weight.

Here is some summary statistics on the average points scored per player and the average rebounds per player in a season. I chose these two statistics because that is where Giannis is as his best, scoring and rebounding.

## [1] 8.172775
## [1] 6.7
## [1]  0.0 36.1

These statistics show us that the average amount of average points scored by players in a single season is right around eight per game. This is very surprising to me because I thought that the average would have been higher, so it looks like the game in the NBA has changed a lot over time. The median is right below the average at 6.7. The most interesting summary statistic to me has to be that the highest average points scored in this list is 36.1. This is a very high number that I would assume would go to a current player, and after checking who it was it makes sense that it is James Harden, a very skilled shooter who has been Giannis’ main competition in MVP voting for many seasons. James accomplished this feat in the 2018-2019 season, the season in which Giannis got his first MVP.

## [1] 3.559155
## [1] 3
## [1]  0.0 16.3

Unlike the previous table of summary statistics, this one is not as surprising to me. It would make sense that the average rebounds per season would be a very small number because this takes into account all positions including point guard and shooting guard which are known to be shorter positions. Such players as the 5’3” Muggsy Bogues and the 5’9” Nate Robinson are some prime examples of why this number is so low. The highest average rebounds in a season goes to Danny Fortson in the 2000-2001 season. I am very interested to see how Giannis compares to that.

Data Dictionary:

player_name- Name of the player

team_abb- Abbreviation of the team that player was on at the time

age- Age of player

player_height- Height of player

player_weight- Weight of player

college- College that the player attended

Country- Birth country of player

draft_year- Year in which player joined the NBA

draft_round- Round of draft in which player was selected

draft_number- Pick number in which player was selected in draft

gp- Games played by player in that season

pts- Average points scored by player that year

reb- Average rebounds that the player got that year

ast- Average amount of assists played got that year

net_rating- Rating of player based on points scored by minute

oreb_pct- Offensive rebounding percentage

dreb_pct- Defensive rebounding percentage

usg_pct- Usage percentage

ts_pct- True shooting percentage

ast_pct- Assist percentage

season- NBA season in which stats took place in

Part 2

Summary statistics are great for a getting a basis of that data set, but in order to dive deeper to try and see what really makes a player so legendary, we must do some descriptive analysis of this data. In this analysis I hope uncover some insight that will correlate to Giannis’ stats.

#1

This visualization shows us that most players average around three to six points, while although it is rare, some players average above thirty points. It seems like anywhere above twenty points is a very prestigious number based on how much of a drop off there is between ten and twenty. I decided to analyze this so I could easily see where Giannis compares. I decided to make this graph red because the highest average goes to James Harden when he was on the Houston Rockets.

#2

This visualization shows us that most players average below two and a half rebounds. This is a very small number but it makes sense because rebounds can be at time random and are encouraged for all positions. Averaging over ten rebounds is considered very good based on how few times that it has happened throughout the course of the NBA. I decided to anaylyze this statistic so I can later on analyze where Giannis compares. I decided to make this graph yellow because of Danny Fortson who has the highest average on this list while he was on the Golden State Warriors.

#3

This visualization shows us the relationship between average points and average rebounds. There isn’t anything very surprising on this graph because it would make sense that the great rebounders are not always the best shooters and vice versa. However, the points closer to the top right corner of the graph seem to be very prestigious seasons where players were great in both of the categories. I decided to show this comparison becuase later on I will be doing the same comparision but with Giannis’ stats. I chose the color purple for this graph because of the Sacramento Kings, a team who to many are the joke of the league but I think deserve some more respect.

#4

This graph shows us the relationship between average points and net rating. This graph is very interesting because it has a clear pattern, the more points you have, the closer you are to a net rating of zero. Net rating is how well your team does while you are in the game, which is also known as someone’s plus/minus. This means that because someone is scoring so much, they are playing a lot of minutes which can lower their net rating based on how well they are at defense. I wanted to show this comparison to see how much of an indicator net rating is of the skill of the player. I decided to make this graph light blue because of the Memphis Grizzlies. I really like the colors of Memphis.

#5

This visualization details the distribution of player’s ages. I wanted to include this to see how spread out the ages of these players are because players used to be let in straight out of high school and then play until however long they feel or are signed for. Giannis was drafted in 2013 and is currently twenty-eight years old. I decided to make this one black because of the Brooklyn Nets, a team that Giannis might as well own.

Part 3

Now that we have some insight into what made previous NBA legends so good, I will dive deep into Giannis’ statistics from the 2020-2021 Season. In this season Giannis took home the championship to Milwaukee for this first time in 50 years with the help of his teammates like Khris Middleton, Jrue Holiday, Bobby Portis, and PJ Tucker.

For my analysis I will use a dataset that I scraped from the ESPN website. This details all of Giannis’ key stats from that season from the pre-season to the NBA finals.

First I will compare the summary statistics of the two data sets to see how well Giannis generally compares with NBA legends.

## [1] 28.64706
## [1] 29
## [1]  1 50

These summary statistics show us that Giannis had a very good average points scored. It is around eight points lower than the James Harden season previously mentioned, but we have to account for the difference in positions. Harden is one of the greatest three point shooters to ever play the game while Giannis plays his game more in the post, so there is a huge difference there. The median points scored is twenty-nine, which is higher than his average showing us that his average is weighed down by a few low scoring games. Finally his range of points scored is very interesting because it has a minimum of one and a maximum of fifty. The game where he scored one point was in a tough loss to the Houston Rockets, however he only played one minute that game meaning he average one point a minute. That is an impressive stat. His maximum of fifty is hard to forget because it came in game six of the NBA Finals where Giannis put the team on his back and knocked the Phoenix Suns out of the championship.

## [1] 11.42353
## [1] 12
## [1]  0 19

These rebounding stats are very impressive, especially when compared to the rebound statistics of the previous data set. The average of average rebounds in a season was right around three and a half, while Giannis’ average for this season was eleven point four. Just like his points, his median rebounds was higher than his average rebounds, which is very interesting. Finally the range of these points is very wide with a minimum of zero and a maximum of 19. The game in which he did not have a rebound was the same game against the Houston Rockets where he only had one minute and one point. The game where he has 19 rebounds was in a great win against the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he was just two assists away from having a triple-double.

This graph shows us the relationship between Giannis’ two best stats, points and rebounds.This graph takes on a similar pattern as the previous graph which showed the same relationship but between all of the players in the NBA data set. The difference between Giannis’ relationship and the other data set’s relationship is that Giannis’ is clearly higher in both categories. The Greek Freak does not usually sacrifice points for rebounds or vice versa, instead he puts his all into both categories.

Conclusion:

It is easy to see that Giannis is one of, if not the best player in the NBA by watching him play, but I wanted to see if the stats would show that as well. Giannis’ average points for his championship season is well above the league average which shows how prolific of a scorer he is. Giannis’ average rebounds was not only higher than the league average, but it is also higher than the maximum in the data set I used. Giannis is an all-star rebounder and it shows. The relationship between his points and rebounds was so great that season that the visualization is more impressive than the one with the rest of the league. And Giannis is doing all of this while older than the league average. So back to the question of, what made Giannis so good in his championship season? Well, my analysis shows that it is a mixture of points and rebounds, but beyond that it is his work ethic, his determination, and his love for the game. Since the championship season Giannis has improved his game and shows no signs of stopping.