Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 62.4% is the best FG mark ever by a 25-point scorer

MIAMI — Oct. 14, 2026 — Giannis Antetokounmpo arrives for his first season with the Miami Heat carrying a shooting mark no high-volume scorer has ever matched. In 2025-26, his last season in Milwaukee, he averaged 27.6 points on 62.4 percent shooting from the field over 36 games. StatMuse ranks that as the highest field-goal percentage in NBA history for a player averaging at least 25 points per game.

The 62.4 percent was a career high for the two-time MVP. It comes with an honest footnote: injuries limited him to 36 games, so the record rests on less than half a season. Miami gets its first look at him in a Heat uniform on Wednesday, Oct. 21, when it opens the 2026-27 regular season at home against the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Giannis Antetokounmpo’s 2025-26 stats:

27.6 PPG
9.8 RPG
5.4 APG
62.4% FG (career-high)

The highest FG% by a player averaging 25+ PPG in NBA history…

Just 1 week away from seeing what Giannis has in store for his first year in South Beach. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/ljTsYn87ni

— Hot Hot Hoops (@hothothoops) October 14, 2026

Inside the 62.4 percent

Basketball-Reference has the same line: 373 made field goals on 598 attempts, with 27.6 points, 9.8 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game. He also did it in fewer minutes than usual. Antetokounmpo played 28.9 minutes a night, down from 34.2 the season before, and still made 10.4 shots per game on 16.6 attempts.

Almost all of it came inside the arc. He shot 64.7 percent on two-pointers and attempted only 45 threes all season, making 15. The weak spot was the free-throw line again: he went 232-of-357 there, or 65.0 percent, and took 9.9 free throws a game.

How the leaderboard stacks up

The top of StatMuse’s list of 25-point seasons is mostly Antetokounmpo. He holds first place and a share of second, and he shows up again at No. 6 with his 60.1 percent at 30.4 points per game in 2024-25.

• Giannis Antetokounmpo, 2025-26 Bucks: 62.4 percent, 27.6 points, 36 games
• Giannis Antetokounmpo, 2023-24 Bucks: 61.1 percent, 30.4 points, 73 games
• Zion Williamson, 2020-21 Pelicans: 61.1 percent, 27.0 points, 61 games
• Kevin McHale, 1986-87 Celtics: 60.4 percent, 26.1 points, 77 games
• Charles Barkley, 1989-90 76ers: 60.0 percent, 25.2 points, 79 games

Further down the list are some of the great interior scorers in league history. Shaquille O’Neal shot 59.9 percent while averaging 29.3 points for Orlando in 1993-94, and Nikola Jokić made 58.3 percent of his shots at 27.1 points a game for Denver in 2021-22. Both of those seasons were close to complete, at 81 and 74 games. That is the fair way to read the new No. 1: no 25-point scorer has finished a season more efficiently, but the 2023-24 version of Antetokounmpo came within 1.3 percentage points of that mark over twice as many games while scoring nearly three more points a night.

What it means for Miami

Antetokounmpo turns 32 in December, and over the last three seasons he has shot 61.1, 60.1 and 62.4 percent. For a Heat team building around him and Bam Adebayo, the efficiency is not the question. The question is how many games he can play. If he gets close to a full season, Miami will have a scorer who has made about three of every five shots for three straight years.

The Timberwolves come to Miami on Oct. 21 for a 7:30 p.m. ET tip on ESPN, and that night starts the first test of whether the record efficiency moves with him from Milwaukee to South Beach.