3. Balance of the roster
When James or Jordan was at their absolute best and winning championships, it is no coincidence that the rosters around them were built to complement their incredible skill sets. The thinking has always been that if you put shooters around James, then he is going to excel in penetrating and either finishing or else finding an open teammate. Jordan was similar.
You can add Antetokounmpo to that list, and the roster the Milwaukee Bucks have assembled is one that suits his style of play brilliantly. For instance, Antetokounmpo has already won a Defensive Player of the Year award, yet on some nights, Brook Lopez is able to bang for 20 minutes with an opponent’s imposing big. It’s not that Giannis can’t or doesn’t want to, it just saves his body so that he can do everything else.
In Khris Middleton, the Milwaukee Bucks also have the perfect co-star who never complains or asks for more in his role. He is an excellent creator, an underrated shooter, and defensively capable of holding his own as well. To compare him to Scottie Pippen would be lazy and try to shoehorn the MJ narrative too much here, but Middleton does for Antetokounmpo a lot of what Pippen did for Jordan.
Around them exist excellent shooters like Pat Connaughton (39.5 percent from deep last season), Grayson Allen (an overlooked physical player who doesn’t mind getting dirty and shot 40.9 percent from 3-point range last year), and the superb Jrue Holiday. Having a third All-Star level player, at the point guard position no less, in Holiday was the final piece in the Bucks’ winning it all.
He is still among the best defensive guards in the league, and like everybody else here, he has no problem deferring to Antetokounmpo. So, while James is stuck with a disjointed roster in Los Angeles, and Durant wants off his own team, the Bucks just keep on doing what they are doing around Antetokounmpo. It has worked before, and it will get them back to the finals again.