Finding hope in NBA’s most disappointing start to 2024-25 | News, results, highlights, stats and rumours

Silver lining: Giannis Antetokounmpo is flat hooping.

Fresh off dropping a 59-point boomstick on the Detroit Pistons in an overtime victory that gave the Milwaukee Bucks their first back-to-back wins this season, Giannis Antetokounmpo is now averaging a league-leading 33.3 points to go along with 12 .1 rebounds, 5.5 assists. and 1.4 blocks.

His shot diet contains more long twos than last year, but that’s at least partially a function of Khris Middleton’s absence. They haven’t come at the expense of rim testing either, and oh yeah, he knocks them into one 50 percent cut.

Even by his own intergalactic standards, those numbers are ugly. If the Bucks were less sad, Giannis would (potentially) challenge Nikola Jokić for the pole position in the early season MVP ladder.

Admittedly, the 29-year-old is not having a perfect campaign. Free-throw shooting remains an issue, and he’s not blameless in Milwaukee’s off-again, on-again, but mostly-off relationship on the defensive side of the floor.

Still, there’s a visible shift in the intensity with which he’s playing the past few games — the kind that puts (some) trade talk to bed and, more importantly, gives the Bucks immediate hope as they (presumably) get healthier.