Hot Take: The Greek Freak Isn’t Skilled, He’s Just Tall
- Antetokounmpo
- Harden
- NBA
No, that wasn’t Colin Cowherd. No, it wasn’t Skip Bayless either. None of your favorite contrarian talking heads dropped this shocking take. While it would seem asinine to most NBA fans to suggest that Giannis Antetokounmpo attained MVP status in the NBA merely by being a 7-footer, that seems to be what James Harden declared on ESPN’s The Jump with Rachel Nichols. Harden’s slander of Antetokounmpo seems to be a reaction to Giannis’s drafting Kemba Walker to his All-Star team over Harden. Then Antetokounmpo put some salt in that wound saying in his presser after the All-Star game, “Offensively, we were just trying to find whoever James Harden was guarding.”
Harden dissed the league’s incumbent MVP by telling Nichols, “When it’s all said and done people will appreciate it more. But I wish I could just run, be 7 feet & dunk. That takes no skill at all. I gotta actually learn how to play basketball & have skill.” (Full Video).
Harden’s comments beg the question, why aren’t all of the NBA’s 7-footers averaging 30 ppg? The Bucks are 50-8 this season. Giannis seems to be on pace for a second MVP award. Plenty of big men can run and dunk, but Giannis is mobile in a way that those guys can only dream of. Giannis out-performs highly-fluid NBA bigs like Embiid, Jokic, and KAT and makes them look like lumbering oafs. That’s why the other big men aren’t All-NBA Defensive players and league MVPs like the Greek Freak; his ability to use his athleticism to his advantage is unmatched. Kareem and Wilt notwithstanding. But GA might be better than them, too.
What kind of crack is this man James Harden smoking? Even fans with hard-ons for Harden are finding it tough to defend this take. Justifiably, the Twittersphere is going crazy over this one. That said, bring on the Harden/Giannis beef.
Saying Giannis isn't skilled is quite the take. In all of NBA history, the list of 7fters who can do what Giannis does is……………..Giannis.
— Beyonce has an uncle named Larry Beyince. Bruh…. (@DragonflyJonez) February 29, 2020
Wobvestigation: Harden vs. Giannis Cold War
…how we got here.https://t.co/0SqCVwNZuB pic.twitter.com/bXQwUyDDdl
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) February 28, 2020
How Giannis looking at Harden pic.twitter.com/uvc5E2eWiu
— Josiah Johnson (@KingJosiah54) February 28, 2020
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