Giannis Antetokounmpo slowly and surely became the dominant force everyone expected, and now there is no stopping him

Most impressively, Antetokounmpo hit 5-of-8 three-pointers, showing the missing element in his game is now a weapon to be feared.
Antetokounmpo has become the complete player the NBA world has been hoping for, and through one-third of the season, he looks like the MVP favorite and perhaps best player in the world.
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Some in the NBA world saw Giannis Antetokounmpo's performance in a 111-104 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday as a passing-of-the-torch moment.

Facing LeBron James (and Anthony Davis), Antetokounmpo dropped 34 points on 11-of-19 shooting, 11 rebounds, and 7 assists to help the Milwaukee Bucks, the best team in the Eastern Conference, beat the best team in the West.

The final stat line doesn't show it, but the Lakers did a commendable job containing Antetokounmpo. They crowded him in the back-court and collapsed on him when he got in the paint, forcing him to make his way through tangles of arms and bodies. Antetokounmpo was 5-for-10 on shots in the paint. He shoots 66.8% in the paint this season, per Second Spectrum.

So, what did Antetokounmpo do to counter? He drained 5-of-8 three-point attempts on the night, often taking advantage of a Lakers defense that was granting him space.

After a pull-up three in transition, Antetokounmpo ran back toward the Bucks bench, putting an imaginary crown on his head. He is the new King.

There is no answer for this. After six seasons of Antetokounmpo slowly adding to his game and getting stronger, he has added the one missing ingredient: a reliable jump shot.

Antetokounmpo is up to 33.8% from three on five attempts per game. That is a perfectly acceptable number for the best paint finisher in the league, and Antetokounmpo can get to the rim at will. He's gotten better at finishing there every year. This year, he's shooting 79.5% from 0-3 feet, according to Basketball-Reference . Last year, during his MVP season, he shot 76.9%. The year before that, 75.6%. It's gone up every year of his career as he's gotten stronger and defter in his finishing ability.

His finishes are more than just reaching over and through people for dunks and contested layups. Antetokounmpo is now a master at utilizing his body to create space and mixing up the timing of his moves to throw off defenders.

This is the complete package that observers had been hoping. Former NBA coach and GM Stan Van Gundy told Business Insider before the season: "If that guy could ever shoot the ball consistently, let's just throw in the towel, everybody else, and head home, because it's over."

giannis antetokounmpo 2 Brandon Dill/AP

Ben Sullivan, a Bucks assistant coach who works closely with Antetokounmpo, told Business Insider before the season that he was confident that Antetokounmpo's shooting would come around.

"I know it's a popular narrative 'Giannis' shooting, Giannis' shooting' and the reality of it is, to me, is that he was just the MVP last year and he was one of, if not the most dominant player in the NBA," Sullivan said.

"He's going to continue to add pieces to his game, continue to add elements to his game, continue to add a pull-up jump shot, a pull-up two, a pull-up three, face-up jumper in the post, all that stuff. He's continued to work on those things, and they're going to keep creeping out in the game when he's out on the floor I can't put an exact timeline on when that's going to happen, or what exactly it's going to look like, or what it is. But I can tell you he definitely works on all of those things."

Antetokounmpo still has to sustain this deep shooting, of course. His current three-point field goal percentage is still below-average, but it's a respectable number that will allow him to make defenses pay when they lay off of him on the perimeter. Given his dominance in the paint, that may be all he needs.

But if it holds up, the overall picture is one of the clear favorites to repeat as MVP and perhaps as the new best player in the world.

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