Giannis Antetokounmpo missed almost all of December with a calf strain and came back like he hadn’t skipped a beat, well ahead of schedule. While he looks as dominant as ever, the Bucks will keep him on a pitch count to ease him back into competition, over a period Giannis said would last around five to 10 games.
Antetokounmpo’s superhuman play, his current minutes restriction, and the two games he left early with injuries have conspired to anoint him atop a list at once enviable and suboptimal. Per Statmuse ahead of New Year’s Eve’s slate, among players to average under 30 minutes per night, Giannis led the league in scoring by a mile.
Most PPG in under 30 MPG this season:
28.7 — Giannis
22.6 — Embiid
22.3 — Zion
22.1 — Sharpe pic.twitter.com/pN2hGZajzU— StatMuse (@statmuse) December 31, 2025
As if Bucks fans needed one, it’s a reminder of just how much force he crams into a single night on the floor. It’s hard to wait for him to get back to 100% so that his minutes go up and his volume catches up to his efficiency.
The Bucks, needless to say, while preserving him for the entire season, need Giannis on the court as much as humanly possible.
Even sub-100, Giannis’ dominance knows no bounds
After 33 points in 28 minutes against the Wizards, in a one-point loss where having a fully re-conditioned Giannis could have proved the difference, his season scoring average only went up. To go with 28.9 PPG on 63.9% shooting, he is also averaging 10 rebounds and 5.8 assists. He is, for all intents and purposes, an offense unto himself.
And that’s to say nothing of his defense as a formidable rim protector. That end of the floor, more so than offensively, is where Giannis may need to get his feet back beneath him.
It is a rare thing to average more points than minutes played, and it’s only possible to do so granted remarkable efficiency. His 66.9 true shooting percentage in 20 games would be a career-high, which is saying something given that he lives in the 60s.
Giannis himself has never averaged more points than minutes in his career. The closest player to doing so on the NBA scoring leaderboard this season is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, at 32.1 points in 33.2 minutes. In Embiid’s 2023-24 MVP campaign, he averaged 34.7 points in 33.6 minutes. It does not happen often. Since then, Embiid hasn’t been able to stay any kind of healthy.
Despite being banged up more often over the past several seasons, including this one, Giannis is still relatively durable in year 13. When active, he is perhaps the most ferocious player in the game. No one needed to be reminded just what a cheat code he is, but the Statmuse leaderboard does just that. The next step is disqualifying himself from that chart altogether by exceeding the minutes threshold. The Herculean production, Bucks fans can trust, will keep pace.
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