


He was a decent shooter with a good looking shot that seemed promising for an NBA team to draft and develop his shot. He was a good ball handler, was mobile, promising defender, and athletic to finish around or above the rim. Giannis was drafted because of his unusual skill set as a “big man”. He also was measured with a hand length of 9.85 inches and hand span of 12 inches. Which has since shrunk as he is now 6’11 (2 inches longer) with the same wingspan. When Giannis was drafted he was 6’9 with a 7’3 wingspan (Giannis Wingspan). It’s common to have longer arms than your height for a player in the league, but that’s an astounding gap. Giannis was drafted in the 2013 NBA draft with the 15th overall pick by the Milwaukee Bucks in the Eastern Conference. What is Giannis Antetokounmpo´s Wingspan? A truly special talent that Milwaukee has been blessed to have since he was drafted in 2013. From his skill set, to his improvement, to his body transformation, and his personality. Giannis is 6'11" without shoes, he would have been listed at 7'0" or 7'1" in shoes if he were coming out of a US college, nobody in 1989 in the US is letting that much size handle the ball as much as he does.Giannis Antetokounmpo (Giannis Ugo Adetokunbo) is a UNICORN! A once in a lifetime type of basketball player that is so unique in his own way. There simply is no contemporary for this. Look I get it, you always try to find past examples of players to compare to today, but there is literally nobody like Giannis in terms of how he plays, especially when you take into account how tall he is. Kenon would most likely be a 3 today, and he's tiny compared to Giannis. Sampson was still a big man, he wanted to play SF but coaches back then wouldn't allow it and he still played like a big.

Sellers didn't play like a wing, he was your typical 1980s PF that shot the mid-range jumper off Jordan kick outs, he wasn't dribbling the ball in from the 3 point line. They definitely aren't as tall as they used to be. Ralph Sampson was 7'2 and he didn't play at center for example.Īlso, Russell is over 80 years old. It's possible that Giannis would be a center, but not all 6'10+ guys were centers in that era. Larry Kenon was very poor version of Giannis, he didn't play like a bigman either. If he went into college 30 years ago, he would have no doubt been a big, especially coming from Europe, they would have redshirt him like Houston did Hakeem, 1989 was pre-HS guys coming out.īrad Sellers was weak player, but he definitely played like a wing. Look at the picture above of Giannis with Bill an Kareem, he would have been a center 30 years ago, we didn't really see 6'11+ guys coming out with these perimeter games until the HS guys started getting drafted and their frames weren't ready to bang in the post so they were very perimeter oriented early on. J & Pippen mixed in with some big man moves and developing 3 point shot, there are no real direct comparisons between him and guys from the past because his game is an amalgamation of all the people who came before him. Giannis is for all intents and purposes a gigantic version of Dr. They didn't play like perimeter players, they had flashes here and there of plays where they could do things, but they weren't playing like wings do today. Maybe more like young KG with far worse shot but better inside game? He's more talented offensive player and he's not as strong as Zo. Giannis is talented enough to be good in any role, but I'm not sure if he'd ever be similar to Mourning in terma of style of play. We still had guys like Larry Kenon, Ralph Sampson or Brad Sellers who played like perimeter players even though they were big.Īssumption that all bigs before 2000 played like Shaq is dangerous, it always depended on players and coaches. I think that it all depends on who would have coached him in college. 70sFan wrote:It's possible, we'll never know.
