The Unlikeliest Immortal in NBA History

Looking back at the NBA Finals 4 days after Giannis Antetokounmpo’s masterful game 6 closeout performance, the historical implications seem pretty clear. Chris Paul fell short in his best chance to win a title, while Giannis proved wrong anyone who ever doubted the Bucks. But more than simply proving the doubters wrong, Giannis delivered one of the most unique leaps to greatness in NBA history, fundamentally changing his ceiling as a player. He went from being a great player to someone who exuded greatness in the way that only 15-20 people ever have in the history of the NBA, already making him one of the true immortals of the sport.

Typically, there is a pretty linear path to reaching immortal status in the NBA. Think of the NBA like a video game, where players slowly pass certain marks that we expect of them and climb up the ladder, before finally reaching the very final level, the one reserved for the best of the best. It is hard to explain exactly what this entails, but the easiest way may be to simply say that you know it when you see it. It comes when you exude greatness from every ounce of your being and become a player whose name is synonymous with the league. The path to immortality is typically charted early on in a player’s career as they slowly start to pass certain benchmarks that we expect of great players, on their way to finally reaching the final level of NBA greatness. The player continues to rack up signature performances deeper and deeper in the playoffs before they do something in an NBA Finals that is so incredible that everyone will remember exactly where they were when it happened- something that only a few players could ever have dreamed of doing. Think about a player like Michael Jordan, who took a more typical path to the top. He put up 63 in the Boston Garden in the first round in 1986 before becoming an MVP and scoring champ, then hit the shot on Craig Ehlo and carried the Bulls to the 1989 conference Final, before finally breaking through in the Finals two years later. A current player who seems to be taking that linear path is Luka Dončić. He is one of the three or four best 22-year-old basketball players ever, having already dominated for two straight first rounds, including putting up 46-14-7 in a Game 7. If the Mavs (or someone else) can get him a little help, those performances should start coming deeper and deeper in the playoffs, and four or five years from now there is a very good chance that he will be taking over an NBA Finals.

What makes Giannis so unique is that he seemingly skipped the earlier levels before conquering the final one. He never had early signature performances. In fact, we had been waiting for him to make his stamp on the playoffs in any fashion. All of a sudden, he was playing like he was finally reaching the mountaintop, culminating the end of a long journey to true immortality, even though it had really only just begun. Even when a player has reached that level, there still is generally time between getting there and winning a title. Michael Jordan announced himself as one of those players in 1989 but didn’t win a title until 1991, while LeBron’s arrival to the club came during the 48 special in the 2007 Eastern Conference Finals against the Pistons, which came a full five years before his first title. And while Giannis still has a ways to go to reach the level of those two particular names, his journey to becoming a top 20 player of all-time took him all of four weeks.

While most people are focusing on the rarity of Giannis’ status as a recipient of the MVP, Finals MVP, and Defensive Player of the Year Awards, to me the list that truly shows the company Giannis has joined is that of players who won both a regular-season MVP and a title in a three-year span while doing at least one in all three years. That list goes as follows: Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan (2x), Shaq, Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry, and Giannis. Being on this list means that you are one of the few players in the history of the league who was at one point the undeniable face of the league, the person that everyone had to go through. It simply means that you reached a level to which very few players NBA players have gotten. And yet even among these players, Giannis’ run to reach this list has been unique. Typically, a player's three years on this list represents the time in which they exuded the greatness that we talked about earlier, and when those three years are up, they slowly transition to a different point in their career. While you can’t necessarily call it their prime because those players essentially spent their entire careers in their primes, it was the period that was most responsible for their names carrying their current weight in the basketball world. Think about a player like Kobe Bryant, who in 2008 finally recognized what it meant to play with others as the best guy on a title team, winning his first MVP before winning back-to-back titles in 2009-2010. After the 2010 season he was still a great player, but he never quite returned to the heights that he did over those few years. Giannis joined that list as a player who only figured out what it meant to be great at the end of his three-year run. What's even more striking is that Giannis was never considered the best guy in the league at any point during that run, taking a backseat to the likes of LeBron, Durant, and Kawhi. Rather than being emblematic of his time at the summit, Giannis' time on that list seems like it was the climb. That’s a thought that should scintillate the deer district, and terrify the rest of the league.

Giannis’ sudden burst of greatness is not only extraordinary but is perhaps the unlikeliest leap in NBA history. Typically players of that caliber are on the path to immortality early on in their career, and the collective NBA world plays a waiting game, hoping for them to get to that point. Everyone knows what their ceiling is, and we simply hope that they reach it. For Giannis that was not the case. You see, more than simply winning the title, the way in which Giannis did it mattered the most to his resume. If you had asked me two weeks ago what Giannis’ ceiling was I would have said that it was around the level of a player like Rick Barry or Dwyane Wade, guys who were great players for a long time, and who eventually had everything fall into place in order for them to win a title. However, there was always going to be an invisible line that it didn’t seem like he would ever cross because there was no notion that he was even close to being able to average 35-13 for a Finals while scoring 50 points in a closeout game. Yes, he was an MVP, but so were a lot of guys in the NBA. Being the best player in the league during the regular season and not only winning a title but dominating every aspect of an NBA Finals are two entirely different animals. The former is something that maybe 50 players could have done but only some did. There is a much smaller list of people who could have done what Giannis just did, one which maybe goes 20 deep at most. In one series, Giannis passed that invisible line, sitting at number 18 all-time on my list, sandwiched ahead of Kevin Garnett and behind Dirk Nowitzki. All of a sudden it seems like he could very well end his career mentioned in the same category as Tim Duncan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson. Beyond apologizing to the Bucks for doubting them, it’s time the NBA community collectively recalibrates the way we think of Giannis’ ceiling because rather than staring greatness in the face, for the first time in the history of the league someone is trying to sneak up on us as a member of the NBA pantheon.