What’s different about Giannis Antetokounmpo situation this offseason?
What’s different about the Giannis Antetokounmpo situation this offseason? Jim Owczarski discusses next moves for the Milwaukee Bucks.
- ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith’s comments about Giannis Antetokounmpo drew the ire of colleague Jay Williams on “First Take.”
- Jay Williams, a former college basketball star at Duke, said Smith’s take that Antetokounmpo is an underachiever if he doesn’t win more NBA titles is a “horrible” position to take.
- Smith didn’t back down from his position and compared it to former Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ career of winning one Super Bowl.
Jay Williams wasn’t going to let Stephen A. Smith off the hook.
Not for what he viewed as Smith’s “asinine” comment about Giannis Antetokounmpo last week.
If you remember, the ESPN personality, who has a megaphone every day on “First Take,” said if Antetokounmpo doesn’t win another NBA championship and ends his career with the one title he won with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2021, he’ll be an “underachiever.”
Williams, a former NBA player and college basketball star, wasn’t at the debate desk on June 12 when Smith made the claim. But Williams, an NBA analyst for ESPN, heard it and set the stage for his takedown of Smith’s take when he first posted to X over the weekend, laying out a sample of Antetokounmpo’s most notable career accomplishments.
The MVPs, the 50-point performance to clinch the Bucks’ first NBA championship in 50 years, being the face of the franchise for the Bucks and an international icon.
“Wild how humility + loyalty gets rebranded as a flaw,” Williams wrote.
Then came June 16 when Williams joined Smith on “First Take.”
“That was one of your worst takes I’ve heard in a long time, man,” Williams told Smith. “That was horrible. … I think we really need to do a better job of reframing some of these conversations.”
Williams said it’s reasonable to say the Bucks have not reached their full potential.
The Milwaukee Bucks were the No. 1 seed in 2019 and 2020 but were upset in the playoffs prior to the NBA Finals. Then after reaching the mountaintop in winning the NBA title in 2021 with Antetokounmpo delivering one masterful performance after another, Milwaukee has not advanced past the second round of the playoffs since, including first-round exits the last three seasons.
“If you were to say the franchise the Milwaukee Bucks have underachieved or are the biggest underachievers with the talent of Giannis, fair,” Williams said.
But downplaying one championship with the term “underachiever” around Antetokounmpo is absurd, Williams says.
“A guy who has a 50-point closeout game, a guy who’s never chased any of these dream-team scenarios, a guy who is a Finals MVP, a guy who’s a multi-time All-Star, All-NBA, all-everything, global face of the game,” Williams said. “The fact that he brought an NBA championship to Milwaukee, to Milwaukee in the midst of the fire that he did, to call him an underachiever is just an asinine comment.
“Do you know how hard it is to win a championship?” Williams added. “It’s one of the hardest …”
Williams was a two-time national player of the year at Duke in college leading the Blue Devils to an NCAA championship in 2001. His freshman and junior seasons ended short of the title.
“OK, my college career, I’m an underachiever because my freshman and junior year we lost to Florida in the Sweet 16 and we lost to Indiana in the Sweet 16 and both then went on to lose in the national championship game, but I got one my sophomore year so I’m an underachiever because I should have more,” Williams pondered to Smith, using his logic.
Williams also wondered then if Smith is calling the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett and Bucks legend Oscar Robertson underachievers since they “only” have one championship.
“Because they all got one championship and because their talent is so great that in your mind if they don’t win more than one in their career, just one championship, which sounds crazy to say, that that would have negative connotation in it,” Williams said.
He went on to say that “there’s no way in hell anybody who watches basketball who knows the level of greatness that comes along the way with Giannis would say he’s an underachiever.”
Stephen A. Smith stands by his take on Giannis, compares it to Aaron Rodgers
But that’s what Smith’s take was and continues to be.
Sure, he acknowledged last week that Antetokounmpo is one of the greatest players ever. But Smith, never one to back down from his positions, stands by what he said.
In fact, he called Williams’ rebuttal “asinine” and that his position was worse because he was “ill informed.”
“I specifically stated Giannis is one of the greatest players to have ever lived, Giannis is phenomenal, Giannis will go down as one of the all-time greats,” Smith said, before adding “but when you’re that great people and have one championship on your résumé, people are not going to look at you the same.”
He then compared his position around Antetokounmpo to former Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who also has one championship in his eventual Hall of Fame career. It came 15 years ago. But a difference is that Antetokounmpo is still just 30 years old and in the prime of his career. Rodgers, 41, likely could be playing his last season now after signing a one-year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers earlier this month.
“Aaron Rodgers won one Super Bowl and has appeared in one Super Bowl and hasn’t been to the Super Bowl since 2010 and look at how people are talking about him,” Smith said.
Giannis Antetokounmpo career with the Bucks
Check out our best action photos of Giannis Antetokounmpo in his 12 years in Milwaukee. The Bucks selected Antetokounmpo with the 15th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft out of Greece.
