The Bucks’ Playoff Defeat Has Caused Giannis To Massively Think

This week's evidence suggests that Giannis Antetokounmpo has had too much time at home to mull his premature playoff boot. I get it. This is not how he envisioned his spring going. Still, it's better to keep the dropship-mindset talk stashed away until the weather gets a little warmer.

Antetokounmpo carried the Milwaukee Bucks through a 16-game winning streak to the top seed in the East, earned a third-place MVP finish for his toils, and looked ready for a genuine title hunt. Then 11 minutes into Game 1, he took a hard fall and missed Games 2 and 3. A level-99 Playoff Jimmy appeared, and the Bucks' postseason ended before Grayson Allen's final Eurostep did. Fresh off that five-game series loss, Antetokounmpo delivered that press-conference lecture: wounded, didactic, charming, and so widely shared that my dad even texted it to me within a 48-hour window. Head coach Mike Budenholzer was out the door a few days later.

In his previous four postseasons, Antetokounmpo played 15, 9, 21, and 12 games. He's not used to twiddling his thumbs after just three. Back on what I imagine to be a rather capacious and wonderful sofa, with the NBA playoffs raging onward, he did what the rest of us do: post. This was him on Tuesday:

One issue here is the timing. Giannis should look to LeBron for guidance. Ideally you want to start the gritty Dangerfield routine in the summer with clips where you're going berserk in the gym, then you ramp up in the fall with some bespoke grievance hashtags. The perceived haters and doubters need some time off to cook; we're still watching multiple playoff games a night, man.

Another issue is treating a playoff loss like a bad bet on cartoon bonobo JPEGs. On Wednesday, he posted a video worthy of a lobotomized grindset inspo account. This is what 56 points of Jimmy Butler does to a man, or at least to his social media manager:

I suspect that the late Kobe Bryant would have considered losing a 1-vs-8 series a failure, and that he'd have spent this free time fuming, driving Jrue Holiday to the practice facility at 4 a.m., and taking prospective coaches to stressful sushi dinners. When you post like this, you wind up with Brian Windhorst on ESPN saying that the New York Knicks are monitoring your availability closely. It's early May, sir. This isn't where you want to be.

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