Giannis Antetokounmpo gets honest on 'wanting to elbow somebody' in Bucks practice

Apparently, Griffin has been letting his boys battle it out during training camp. It’s not as if he’s pitting players against each other in a boxing ring, but as Giannis Antetokounmpo himself revealed, the new head coach has been very welcoming in terms of the intense physicality and competitiveness between his players during practice.

“I love it so far, I’m not even gonna lie,” Antetokounmpo began, via Jim Owzcarsky of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I feel like our physicality is on another level. Guys are extremely competitive. Every game we play, it’s a competitive game from start to finish. Everything is competitive. Every drill, we participate, we do, as I said, it’s competitive. We go at one another.

“(Oct. 6) was the first time in like six, seven years that I saw guys going at it. They were head-to-head, talking crap in their face and like, ‘No this is mine. This is my team’ ‘No, that’s my teammate, don’t hit my teammate. I’m going to check you.’ You know what I’m saying? Like, ‘Don’t you do that again.’ And like, ‘No, get out of here’ and I don’t want to say exactly what they said, but they were just going back and forth, and I love it.”

This is a massive statement to hear from the Bucks star. Griffin clearly brings something new to the table, and the fact that Giannis has bought in to it completely speaks volumes of how this team has been on the same page from the get-go.

For what it’s worth, former head coach Mike Budenholzer’s five-year tenure with the team ended this summer when the front office decided to part ways with the NBA champion coach. As Giannis said, he’s seen a certain spark on his squad that he never witnessed throughout coach Bud’s time at the helm.

The Adrian Griffin Effect

Antetokounmpo went on to sing Griffin’s praises. The former NBA MVP appreciates how the new coach allows each and every player to be himself — even if this includes Giannis elbowing his own teammates:

“I feel like Coach ‘Griff,’ allows us to be us. You know, he allows Bobby to be Bobby, allows Malik Beasley to be Malik, allows Jae Crowder to be Jae Crowder, and allows Giannis, if Giannis wants to elbow somebody, you can do it, and he’s not even gonna step to it. He’s going to let us do that. We’re big boys, we’re mature, we’re men, you know. We know how to play this game and he’s gonna let us play this game. And if sometimes, it’s gonna get chippy, he’s gonna let us do that, but he wants us to compete.”

If this is the type of intensity the Bucks play with during practice, you can only imagine the type of fire they will have once they start playing in the regular season.