The Spanish basketball team has defeated Greece in the second day of the group stage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. And they have done so, in addition to the spectacular game by Santi Aldama, thanks to the fact that the main threat of the Greek team, Giannis Antetokounmpo, has not been able to show his best version.
However, the match left us with a sequence that is now iconic. As usual, ‘Anteto’ used the ten seconds set by the rules to take free throws to the limit, something that no other player does.
This mechanic is often frustrating for both rivals and the public, who have often ended up whistling at the endless wait. But why does Antetokounmpo shoot like this?
At the last Olympic Games, in Tokyo 2020, the Greek explained the reasons why he follows this ritual: “I take eight to nine seconds. At the limit of 10 seconds. When my coaching staff tells me to speed up, I know that I have maybe around 10 seconds.”
“Sometimes the referee will talk to me and say, ‘You need to speed up. ‘ Then I’ll make an effort to take it maybe a second or two seconds faster. But my mindset coming into this game was to go through my routine, do as many dribbles as I can, catch my breath and just shoot my shot,” Antetokounmpo concluded.
