By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Retired NBA veteran Charles Oakley doesn’t believe the Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the superstars of our age, would be anything special when he was playing. Quite the take.
“He wouldn’t have been a force back in the day,” Oakley said to SLAM’s “No Pump Fakes” podcast. on the Milwaukee Bucks forward. “He would have struggled because they would make him shoot jump shots. He wasn’t gonna be doing these Eurosteps to the basket like he’s doing… Eurostep to the basket and just get a layup. No, somebody’s gonna knock his head off.”
Oakley, a former All-Star in his playing days, thinks that Antetokounmpo would likely not even have starter status. “He may be coming off the bench back in the day.”
Antetokounmpo has arguably been the most dominant player in the NBA through the last couple of years and it’s a bit weird and maybe even short-sighted to think that he would be reduced to something average in the NBA of the mid-80s to 00s when Oakley was playing. It’s not just the numerous accolades he has gathered, particularly the back-to-back MVP of 2019 and 2020 and the Finals of MVP of 2021. It’s that he has continuously demonstrated on the floor how much of an unstoppable dynamo he is while showing the best version of himself in the most important games.
Last season, Antetokoumpo delivered one of the best performances of his career in Game 6 of the Finals when he scored 50 points, grabbed 14 rebounds and blocked the ball five times to hand Bucks the win for the 4-2 and championship title.