Giannis Antetokounmpo is having a bad time. Tuesday night he opened the second half of a home game against the Minnesota Timberwolves with a baseline spin into a tough contested layup over Julius Randle, and finished the play on the ground. Antetokounmpo, seated beneath the basket, formed up the double-thumbs-down gesture, raised it up over his head, and booed loudly. He was not booing the referees, who'd whistled Randle for a foul on the play; he was booing the fans. After Giannis was helped to his feet, he continued to boo his team's fans. He felt it was only fair: Those same Milwaukee unfaithful, after all, had booed the Bucks only minutes earlier.
"Whenever I get booed, I boo back," Antetokounmpo explained after the game. "It won't change home or away."
It is either sweet or sort of shameful that there was anyone around in the second half for Antetokounmpo to boo. After his and-one basket, the home team was down on the scoreboard by 29 points to a Timberwolves squad playing without both Rudy Gobert and Anthony Edwards, who'd sat out the game due to a suspension and an injury, respectively. There are surely other, better things to do on a Tuesday night in Milwaukee than watch these sour, demoralized Bucks trudge through 24 game-minutes of garbage time against someone's starless B-team. It was certainly this very realization which inspired the Milwaukee crowd to boo the team as they walked off the court at halftime, down 31 points, tied for the team's largest halftime deficit of what is shaping up to be a frustrating, dismal season. The Bucks scored just 45 points in the first half, committed nine turnovers, and allowed the visitors to shoot a terrible 67 percent from the floor, with 13 made three-pointers.
Sometimes an opponent just gets hot and goes crazy. By Antetokounmpo's own reckoning, that is not what happened Tuesday night. "I think we didn't play hard. I think we didn't do the right things. We didn't play as a team," he admitted. "The effort was low, you cannot have that. You cannot have that." Head coach Doc Rivers, at this point exactly the wrong person to be leading this or really any other NBA team, attempted to blame the juiceless performance on tired legs, noting that the Bucks recently returned home from a four-game road trip through the Western Conference. Antetokounmpo refused even this. "I don't think it's dead legs," he said. "Were we tired? Yeah, a little bit. We had a day off yesterday. I don't see the reason. It's not dead legs."
Someone should set the words you are not playing hard, you are not doing the right things, you are not playing as a team, and it is not dead legs to a simple and widely recognizable pop tune, so that crowds of spectators can join together and more politely and comprehensibly communicate Antetokounmpo's exact set of observations, when appropriate. In the meantime, this is precisely what booing is for. Unfortunately, Giannis views this as inappropriate. "I've never been a part of something like that before and I don't think it's fair. I don't. But everybody has their opinion to do what they want to do," he said, acknowledging that his opinion probably will not influence fan behavior too much. But Bucks fans should know that he enjoys the same freedom of expression, if not by right than by stature. "I don't think anybody has the right to tell me how I should act on [a] basketball court after I've been here 13 years. And I'm basically the all-time leader in everything."
I for one am becoming exhausted by Antetokounmpo, as the strain of propping up Milwaukee's sagging basketball operation saps all the evident joy out of his public persona and he is reduced to this weirdly corporatized, preachy, self-help-ish figure. I feel bad for him that the Bucks are crud, because he extremely is not: Health aside, Antetokounmpo might be having the best individual season of his career, and he would surely be considered a frontrunner for the MVP were his team not such an unhappy disappointment. They've been better lately, but that's not saying a ton: Their last six wins have come against the Pacers, the Bulls, the Hornets (twice), the Kings, and the hobbled and fake-good Lakers. They are presently 11th in the shitty East, six games below .500; Cleaning The Glass figures they are a bottom-10 outfit in both offensive and defensive efficiency. The local paper reported Saturday that the team's front office is interested in trading for Ja Morant of the Memphis Grizzlies or Zach LaVine of the Sacramento Kings. Morant has far and away the worst personal vibes of any active NBA player; LaVine, for all his dazzling talent, is a walking LOSE button. These are desperate times.
So Giannis did not handle the booing of Milwaukee's home crowd super great, in what was eventually a 33-point loss, his team's worst home performance of the season and the fourth-biggest home blowout they've suffered with Antetokounmpo in the lineup during his 13-year career. With definite premeditation, he decided to throw the crowd's behavior back in its face, and then after the fact he was haughty about what is due to him as a franchise legend. Those concerned about Giannis's long-term future in Milwaukee might be interested to know that contempt and defensiveness are considered by researchers John and Julie Gottman to be two of the four horsemen of relationship apocalypse. The other two horsemen are Ja Morant and Zach LaVine. Antetokounmpo is a goner.
