Nets should dare Giannis Antetokounmpo to keep shooting 3s
NY Post
Let’s say you’re Mike Trout, the best everyday baseball player on the planet, and you walk into the Angels’ clubhouse one day and see you’re going to be the closer for that night’s game with the Mariners. Crazy, right? Trout isn’t his teammate, Shoehei Ohtani. You’re one or the other. There have been 20,021 players in MLB history. Almost all picked one or the other.
Let’s say you’re Patrick Mahomes, the best football player on the planet, and you walk into the Chiefs’ locker room for that afternoon’s tilt with the Chargers and Andy Reid sidles up next you and says, “I think I’m going to use you as the long-snapper today.” Crazy, right? Chuck Bednarik has been retired since 1962, dead since 2015. You do what you do well. If you watched Game 3 of the Bucks-Nets series, you know where this is going, because Giannis Antetokounmpo is one of the three or four best basketball players in the world right now. He is 6-foot-11 and 245 pounds, built like a brick wall, graceful and powerful at the same time, a deadeye in the paint, not bad up to 15 feet out.It was only a three-second glimpse, but Matt Rempe, finally, showcased offensive strides. The ones he started talking about in the preseason — after a summer’s worth of work — and kept doubling down on, even when he fluctuated in and out of the Rangers lineup and shuttled back and forth to AHL Hartford.
In a different time, in a season to come, we may be inclined to wax poetic about the way this one played out. In a different time, in a season to come, the Nets will be seeking to stack wins and not losses, will be fighting for playoff seeding and not for a few extra ping-pong balls in the draft lottery this spring.
The NBA has an All-Star Game problem. Despite Adam Silver’s efforts to inject juice into the February showcase — including a format alteration to the 2025 game that is too confusing to attempt to understand before it’s inevitably changed again — there’s little interest in watching teams eschew defense for a series of layup line highlights. That also means the most entertaining part of the NBA All-Star Game is just like the Pro Bowl — debating over who should get a spot.