Giannis Antetokounmpo is an NBA superstar that plays for the Milwaukee Bucks. He has accomplished many things throughout his 9-year career in the league. At the age of 27, some already believe he could be the best player of all time. He may even surpass greats like Michael Jordan and Lebron James for the G.O.A.T status. He is on a better pace than the other all-time greats at his age to become the best ever. 

To start with, Antetokounmpo has averaged 21.8 points, 9.4 Rebounds, and 4.6 assists throughout his career. He has also totaled 14,321 points which are 167th of all time. Keep in mind that there have been over 4,600 NBA players ever! He has also been top 5 in points per game multiple times in his career. This means that he has been one of the most elite scorers in the league over the past few seasons. He has also averaged over ten rebounds per game five times in his career, which ranks 170th all-time. 

Stats are not all that determines how good a player is though. A major part of determining the G.O.A.T is their accolades and the awards they have won. Below is a list of some of his best and most impressive accomplishments through his first nine seasons.

• 2021 NBA Champion + Finals MVP 
• MVP (2x) 
• Defensive Player of the Year (1x) (2019-20) 
• All NBA Team (6x) 
• All-Defensive Team (5x) 
• All-Star (6x) 
• 2021 All-Star Game MVP 
• Member of the 75th Anniversary Team (Consists of 75 Best Players Ever) 

This is a very impressive list of things that he has done in his career. To compare, Michael Jordan at this age (who has retired now) had just won his first NBA Championship and only had 1 MVP. Antetokounmpo also has 1 more All-NBA appearance than Jordan, a team made up of the best players in the league at the end of every season. Now, remember, most people consider Michael Jordan the G.O.A.T so if you base it on what they have accomplished at the age of 27, Antetokounmpo has done more than the retired Michael Jordan. Below are the career averages for both Michael Jordan and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Jordan –                            Antetokounmpo – 

21.8 Pts                             30.1 Pts 

9.4 Reb                              6.2 Reb 

4.6 Ast                               5.3 Ast

1.2 Stls                              2.3 Stls

1.3 Blocks                          0.8 Blocks

Looking at their career totals, Jordan played for 15 years while Antetokounmpo has only played 9. This is not a perfect example of how good they are at both things, but it is good enough to prove a point that  Antetokounmpo has been better in several categories and is super close in multiple others.  He is quite a ways behind in points per game, but is super close on all the others. Antetokounmpo beats him in rebounds a game by about 3 rebounds. He trails Jordan by about 1 per game in both assists and steals and he leads Jordan in blocks by 0.5. 

Another very important piece of being known as the GOAT is being able to play the best when it matters most. Antetokounmpo did perform his best during the 2021 NBA Finals against the Phoenix Suns. During the 6-game series, he averaged 35.2 points, 13.2 rebounds, and 5.0 assists. In Game 6 he played one of the most historic games ever in the NBA Finals, with a stat line of 50 points, 14 rebounds, and 5 blocks. One of those blocks that he came up with was one of the most important plays of the series against Suns center Deandre Ayton. Without this play, there is a chance that they don’t end up winning Game 5 of the Finals, which would have led to the Suns going up in the series 3-2. 

Finally, even Antetokounmpos’s opponents believe that he could be the G.O.A.T one day. He has received support from NBA players both current and former. For example, one of the best players over the past 10 years, Kevin Durant, said this when talking about Antetokounmpo, “he could end up being the best player to ever play if he really wanted to. That’s pretty scary to think about.” Durant has played against Giannis Antetokounmpo plenty of times over the past decade. It is really important that Durant feels this way about Antetokounmpo because there is no one better who would know how good he really is. He has played with/against him just as much as anyone else.                  

Giannis Antetokounmpo is on a very good pace to become the G.O.A.T one day. He has been the best player in the league for a few years and should be the face of the league for around another decade. Antetokounmpo is doing things at a much faster pace than many NBA legends have before him, with his potential extremely high. One day he will fully reach it.