Patrick Williams knows it’s a daunting assignment to guard two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Williams is four inches shorter, 30 pounds lighter and seven years younger than the Milwaukee Bucks star. He never has played in an NBA postseason and barely played in the Chicago Bulls regular season because of a wrist injury.

But if he’s going to slow one of the best players in the league, the Bulls forward can’t let any doubt creep in.

“I feel like a lot of people in this league are scared or nervous to guard guys like that,” Williams said Wednesday ahead of Game 2. “Obviously (Antetokounmpo) is good. He’s a two-time MVP. But he puts his pants on the same way I do. He is good, but he’s not God.”

Despite his youth, Williams is a textbook fit to guard Antetokounmpo. Williams is lengthy enough to alter Antetokounmpo’s shot around the rim and quick enough to disrupt Antetokounmpo’s straight-line drives to the rim. But no player expects to slow Antetokounmpo one-on-one.

Bulls coach Billy Donovan said the defensive game plan to shut down Antetokounmpo relies on a holistic approach from all five players on the court.

“Giannis is a hard guy to guard. He’s the best player in the world,” Donovan said. “When you’re going against the great players, one of the best players in the world, you’re not going to do it by yourself. You’ve got to do it with your team.”

Williams’ main focus is to keep the ball out of Antetokounmpo’s hands, then to put a body on the Bucks star the moment he touches the ball. He can’t let Antetokounmpo make straight-line drives — especially from the arc to the rim — which allow Antetokounmpo to build momentum. Once Williams makes contact, he tries to guide Antetokounmpo away from his primary shooting spots and toward a teammate for support.

Williams said help is especially necessary when Antetokounmpo bodies up to him and attempts to muscle him down in a one-on-one.

“When he gets you on the hip, if you don’t have the help of your teammates, you’re pretty much done for,” Williams said.

Although he scored 27 points, Antetokounmpo’s statistics weren’t all that eye-popping in Game 1: 10-for-19 shooting, 1-for-4 from 3-point range, three assists and five turnovers.

Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan said Williams’ teammates were impressed by his defensive effort in Game 1: “He did a hell of a job.”

But all of that focus on defense left Williams out of sync on offense. He took only three shots in Game 1, a frustrating return to the timidity that plagued him upon his return in the regular season.

“We need him to be aggressive,” Donovan said. “We’ve always talked about that.”

Williams averaged 6.6 field-goal attempts in the 12 games after he returned from his five-month injury layoff. He seemed to shake that trend in the season finale against the Minnesota Timberwolves, scoring 35 points on 10-for-25 shooting as most of the Bulls starters rested. But he fell right back into a passive offensive style in Game 1.

After watching game film, Williams said he noticed plenty of moments in which he passed up clear opportunities to shoot or drive.

“There were opportunities for him to go and he’s got to be able to do that,” Donovan said. “For him, whether it’s taking a 3 or driving to take a pull-up or trying to get to the rim, he’s just got to attack it sometimes.”

Some hesitancy was to be expected from a player experiencing his first postseason game. Williams found everything in the playoffs to be heightened — the energy of the sellout crowd, the opposing team’s physicality, even his own emotions.

Williams said that intensity can be replicated in the final minutes of a close regular-season game, but in the playoffs it’s protracted from the opening tip.

“That’s how it feels the whole game,” he said. “It’s something that I’ve seen before throughout the season, but it was just in two-, three-, four-minute spurts. Now the whole 48 minutes feels like that.”

Donovan doesn’t want to go easy on Williams, but he thinks it’s important to keep perspective when coaching the young forward through difficult assignments. Williams was the youngest player in the NBA when he was drafted at 19 in 2021. He played 17 games in his second season after suffering the first serious injury of his career and didn’t find his groove until the final week.

Those aren’t excuses for Williams to remain timid the rest of the series. The Bulls need him too much — particularly his court vision, efficient shooting and second-chance presence around the rim — to let this series pass as a growth opportunity. Donovan believes his youngest player just needs the right push from coaches and teammates.

“He didn’t even start on his college team and now we’re throwing him out there against the best players in the world,” Donovan said. “And people are saying, ‘Oh, be aggressive.’ But it’s going to be a process. He’s got to learn and we’ve got to keep pushing him and thrust him into these situations as much as we can.”

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