Giannis Antetokounmpo calls this season his ‘hardest,’ says he doesn’t want to be ‘crying’ to get in MVP race

For Giannis Antetokounmpo, the 2023-24 season has been his most challenging one. The Milwaukee Bucks are 42-24 with a month left in the regular season, but the road there has been “extremely tough,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic’s Sam Amick.

“I feel like for me, this has been the hardest season that I’ve played — not only physically, because I had the procedure done on my left knee in the end of June. And I had to get back to myself,” Antetokounmpo told The Athletic.”I feel like when the season started, I wasn’t [myself]. And the reason was that I hadn’t played basketball until like the second week of training [camp]. I had to get back to being by myself. But emotionally, and mentally, it’s been draining. I’m not going to lie to you.”

Milwaukee acquired Damian Lillard to be Antetokounmpo’s co-star in September, losing Jrue Holiday in the process. Coach Adrian Griffin, hired to replace Mike Budenholzer, lasted just 43 games; in January, the Bucks replaced him with Doc Rivers. This is a lot of change in a short period of time, and Khris Middleton hasn’t played since spraining his ankle on Feb. 6.

“It’s been tough,” Antetkounmpo said. “But at the end of the day, I think when you face adversity in life, that’s when you excel the most. So I’m just trying to, as a leader, as a basketball player, as a person, just trying to do what I do, keep on enjoying the game of basketball, keep on hanging in there, keep on trying to improve my game, doing the right thing. And hopefully, step by step, I get where I want to go and I’m able to help the team get where we want to go.”

The season hasn’t been particularly smooth, but Antetokounmpo is averaging 30.8 points on a career-high 65.4% true shooting, 11.2 rebounds and 6.4 assists in 35 minutes per game. These are MVP-caliber numbers.

This time last year, in an interview with the same reporter, Antetokounmpo said, “The thing that I don’t get about the MVP criteria is it changes.” He also said that he didn’t want to “beg” for MVP consideration and he doesn’t like to look at his own accomplishments because he wants to stay desperate. “Why I’m here is because I’m desperate,” he said then. “I’m not as talented as Steph. I’m not as talented as KD. I’m f—ing desperate. I’m obsessed. I’m scared to lose what God has gave me and the life that I’ve provided for my kids and my brothers and for my mom, you know? I’m scared. So I f—ing work as hard as I can, because I don’t want to lose this shit.”

Similarly, Antetokounmpo said Tuesday, “I’m never going to make myself look like I’m crying for a trophy.” Asked directly if he is being overlooked in the MVP race, he said, “What do you expect me to say?” He then went further than he did last season, interrupting Amick when the reporter described him as self-confident: “No, I’m confident in my work. If I don’t work, I’m not confident in myself. If I don’t put the work in, I’m the most not-confident guy ever. But when I work, when I go after the game and I lift my weights, I’m confident that when I play Philly in two days [on Thursday] I’m confident. I put the work in, and no matter the outcome, I can live with it. That’s how I get my confidence. I am not as talented as Dame [Lillard]. I am not as talented as Malik [Beasley]. I am not as talented as Bobby [Portis]. But I’m confident in the work that I put in, and I can live with the outcome.”

Antetokounmpo said that he’s played at an MVP level since 2018-19, the first of two consecutive seasons in which he won the award. When pressed about how he feels about his MVP candidacy, though, he said, “No, no, no, don’t worry about what I feel. I feel like I’m the worst player in the NBA. I’ll be honest with you. I feel like in a moment this can be taken away from me.”

In a literal sense, Antetokounmpo saying that he feels like he’s the league’s worst player is not honest. Neither is him calling himself less talented than Lillard and especially Beasley and Portis. His point, though, is that he feels like he needs to work as if he were the league’s worst player.

Much like Antetokounmpo’s back-and-forth about failure at the end of last season, these comments are best viewed through the lens of Antetokounmpo’s sports psychology work with Dr. Craig Manning. Generally speaking, the two-time MVP is all about staying in the moment, working extremely hard, incremental improvement and pushing past adversity. He doesn’t lack for confidence, he just believes he has to keep earning it.