There is winning and there is misery and now there is Giannis

Uncomfortable questions about Milwaukee's future go far beyond "failure" and "success"

Pat Riley famously said it years ago and, because of all his success, I have generally accepted it as NBA gospel.

In #thisleague, as Riles unforgettably distilled things down, there is winning and there is misery.

With nothing in between.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, Giannis Antetokounmpo provided us with another viewpoint to ponder. He had just proven unable to prevent his top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks from an embarrassingly meek five-game flameout to Jimmy Butler's (and Riley's) Miami Heat, then offered a highly un-Riley-esque perspective when asked by The Athletic's Eric Nehm if he viewed the Bucks' stunningly hasty departure from the 2022-23 playoffs as a failure.

Instinct tells me that, if you're an NBA reader, you've already seen the viral video of Giannis' comments. If you haven't, click here to take it all in.

I found myself watching the clip over and over before finally catching some sleep following Wednesday night's four absorbing games because Antetokounmpo's response was so earnest and passionate in his attempts to reject the notion of sports failure. If he can really maintain such a healthy outlook after one of the NBA's few true championship-or-bust teams fell so far short of a title run, it's a superpower that ranks up there with the many athletic gifts that have fueled his Disney-movie-worthy rise from project draftee out of Greece with the 15th overall pick in 2013 to NBA champion and perennial MVP candidate.

The reality, though, is that the last two games of the Miami series were an undeniably epic fail on numerous levels. The team — Milwaukee’s Bucks — most certainly failed. Even Giannis himself, in the same interview that won so much support from fellow players and sympathetic fans who would prefer not to view NBA winning and losing through such a binary prism, conceded that "this has to be the worst postseason" he has ever experienced given that the mighty Bucks managed only one victory this spring when needing 16 to win a championship.