Just How Far Back Did Giannis Step Back for Dagger Buzzer-Beater Against Knicks?

Giannis shoots the buzzer beater that brings home the W!! #OwnTheFuture https://t.co/UX6ggQqryk
— Milwaukee Bucks (@Bucks) January 5, 2017

Giannis. In a world that offers us so few joys, in a cold and unfeeling universe through which where we are forced to haul our miserable, rocking sacks of flesh, with only the embrace of death to reward us when our weary task is through, there is Giannis. The only thing that makes our task less wearying and more worthwhile is living in the presence of true beauty and joy. Watching a player as pure and beautiful as The Greek Freak—a ray of sun cast through water, manifest into flesh—come into his own at such a young age is truly The Stuff of Life, the fuel that gets someone up in the morning. It is pure radiant happiness, shining through the cloud of life's countless tragedies and tribulations.

There was a time when this outcome was not forgone. Giannis was once so stringy, so clumsy, a knock-kneed baby deer fumbling up and down the court. Those days are over. Giannis is a mighty, robustly behorned Buck now, standing atop the Madison Square Rock Garden, sun to his back, his glory shining down on the myriad creatures of the forest, stepping back from the Shark of Defeat and landing gently in the WarmPillowPile Of Victory, the enemies that seek his defeat left broken and confused, wondering how they lost their very lives on this cold, cruel day.

But I digress. I did not come here to observe the numbing tragedy of Knickerbockerdom. I came to marvel at the very construction of that precarious game winner. Giannis opted for a step-back jumper as his method, and the legs he used to actually step back are so massive that the set up to the shot was an event unto itself. It would be notable even if, by some strange providence, the shot had missed.

Watch forward Lance Thomas, responsible for Giannis on the play, rush to challenge the shot. He is completely unprepared for the distance he needed to travel even to get a cursory hand up. By my count, he takes two steps at first, realizes that he isn't even close, and sort of quickly pitter-patters out three extra steps just to save face as the shot sails into the hoop.

Look at the court, where Giannis's feet are, before and after his move away from his defender. He starts BEHIND the dash line, plants, steps back, and shoots just under the foul circle. The amount of space he manages to create with one step is downright surreal. When I saw it, I decided I would have to approximate the distance and give it some real life context for the reader. And so:

Here is the Knicks court, with two (Neon Green, for visibility) marks approximating the distance between Giannis's plant and step-back move. Doing a little back-of-the-photoshop math, that step represents a whole 7 percent of the entire width of the 94 foot wide court, a stretch of about SIX AND A HALF FEET. To really give you a tactile sense of that obscene distance, here are various manifestations of Six-and-a-half feet, as indicated by the blue tape I have taped across several items in my home, where I live:

Giannis could have backwards-jumped across more than 3/4ths of my enormous, wall-sized bookshelves, filled with my very prodigious collection of hard-to-read books to get space for that shot. Look at all those pages and words that Giannis could have leapt over in pursuit of glorious victory!

Six feet, two inches of handsome sportswriting beef, eminently jump over-able by our hero for this or ANY FUTURE game winner at Madison Square Garden! I could have wandered onto the court and lay my body down right in that spot for a little nap-ski-poo. I could have centered myself with the power of my breath and Giannis still could have—and WOULD HAVE—leapt over me and sunk the gold nugget of victory over my barely moving body.

Giannis stepping back over one toilet tipped on its side might not be impressive. But you know what is objectively impressive!?

Giannis stepping back over TWO AND A HALF TOILETS for a game winning victory! Look, if you're not impressed now, get a load of this visualization:

Could you do that, with your tiny legs and utter lack of will? Of course your couldn't. You would dribble the ball off your foot the second you saw there was a half-toilet on the court. You don't have the size or the iron will to work around that. Giannis does, though. And it's why he is THE NEXT NBA GREAT.

All Hail the New King of Youth and Beauty!