Giannis: No 'Competition' with Damian Lillard on Who'll Have Ball More in Bucks Games

Giannis Antetokounmpo is ready to take an offensive backseat to Damian Lillard in order to reach his championship goals.

The Milwaukee Bucks star said there will be no "competition" between himself and Lillard over who will handle the ball more.

"For me, now, I'm 28. I'm not a kid no more," Antetokounmpo said, per Eric Nehm of The Athletic. "You cannot have—obviously, you have to have friendly competition within your team to try to push one another and to be great and be better prepared for the game—but this is not, in no shape or form, any competition between me and him, who's going to have the ball more. He will have the ball more and I trust, I believe he's going to find me and not just me, he's going to find our teammates and put us in the right position."

The Bucks acquired Lillard last month in a blockbuster designed to maintain Antetokounmpo's long-term happiness. Antetokounmpo had been open about the fact he would consider leaving Milwaukee if he did not feel the organization was as committed to winning championships as he preferred.

Instead, the Bucks cashed all their trade chips in on Lillard, who will be by far the best teammate of Antetokounmpo's career. After spending his first decade in the NBA without an All-NBA teammate, he'll now have a seven-time selection in Lillard next to him.

Antetokounmpo acknowledged the two will have a learning curve finding their chemistry but expressed optimism they can figure it out.

"At the end of the day for me, whenever we have conversation, I'm always listening, I listen to him," Antetokounmpo said. "Like he was talking to me today, like 'Hey, Giannis, we gotta, boom, boom, boom'. Got you. You know, then we were talking some about the pick-and-roll, how would we run this, and I looked at him and I said, 'Whatever way you want it to be run.' And the one thing that I can say, as a leader and as a teammate, you kind of give that power to the guy. Like 'Hey man … you've been here three, four, five days, it doesn't matter. When you get the ball, you put us in a position. We run it the way you want to run it. I feel like it kind of hits you like, 'Oh, OK. OK. This is my s--t. This is mine. I'm going to do it my way.'"So you got to give guys like him freedom, because he's an artist, man. He's got to create art. And hopefully, when you're next to him, you can also create your own art and then you create the art together."

The Bucks enter the season as +380 favorites to win the NBA title at FanDuel Sportsbook, so suffice it to say expectations are high for the two stars to figure it out.