In some shape or form, the Milwaukee Bucks have played a basketball version of “Squid Game” with Giannis Antetokounmpo’s present and future for going on eight years.
It’s incredible, really.
Since his emergence as one of the best basketball players on the planet, Antetokounmpo has used that leverage to apply very public pressure on the team to match his commitment to winning. Though the near decade-long discourse and speculation over “does he really want to be in Milwaukee or not” has been exhausting, player and organization had come together on two contract extensions, won a title, recorded the NBA’s best record three times and was the league’s winningest team from 2018-25.
Now it is the organization’s turn: Do they want him or not?
And much like Antetokounmpo did to them for years, the Bucks appear content to let their dance partner twist in the wind while they wait for the beat to drop.
On April 7, Bucks general manager Jon Horst said the team wasn’t sure if they wanted to deal the best player in franchise history.
On May 6, Bucks co-owner Jimmy Haslam reiterated that stance.
“He’s arguably one of the best basketball players in the world and we will do what’s best for Giannis and what’s best for the organization,” Haslam said. “We don’t know whether Giannis will stay with us or not, but we’ll work through that with Giannis in the coming weeks.”
The NBA draft lottery is Sunday, May 10, and the entire league will be convened in Chicago for the draft combine. The first Giannis-related fever probably will spike then. It most likely will be related to his willingness to sign an extension he can’t be offered until Oct. 1 (he said he would consider it when presented the hypothetical on April 12) or if he will pull the final lever he has, which is communicate he will only sign such an extension with preselected teams to try and force the Bucks to trade him (but not a trade request, per se).
The first round of the draft is June 23, when not only 2026 draft picks will be able to be traded, but so will picks out to 2033. Free agency and the new league year open the first week of July.
It would make sense that the organization should have a decision by then, but remember Damian Lillard was acquired by the Bucks on the eve of training camp (September 2023) and New York acquired Karl-Anthony Towns after camp had opened (October 2024).
That seems like a bad way to start Taylor Jenkins’ first season as head coach of the Bucks, though, as the team looks to reset its culture and re-establish an identity.
Jenkins implied as much.
“Because from the coaching lens, I gotta start formulating that, you know, what we’re going to do, not just this offseason, but when we hit the ground running, you know, at the start a training camp,” he said.
Also, building a roster around Antetokounmpo would be wildly different from one without him. How long can you operate with two sets of plans before it becomes untenable?
It’s why the draft makes sense as an artificial deadline. And the Bucks appear content to let everyone, including Antetokounmpo, wait to find out which direction they’re going to pick.
That’s their right, though.
Most basketball observers would say having an open bidding war for a top-five player in the world is the correct way to go about it, particularly in the context of the closed-loop flop of a trade between Dallas and the Los Angeles Lakers for Luka Dončić at the 2025 deadline.
Haslam and Horst have maintained that after fielding offers maybe the Bucks won’t trade Antetokounmpo, but once you’ve publicly said you’re willing to do it, it’s kind of hard to come back to your partner after others cut in.
The signal, inherently, is you no longer want to continue to dance.
The fact it’s the organization waffling now is a key difference from the many years in which Antetokounmpo’s musings dictated the news cycle.
For all his arm twisting over the last eight years, Antetokounmpo never really held any power in whether he was a Buck or not. Even if he or his proxies communicated a desire to be elsewhere at any point, he was never dealt because the Bucks didn’t feel like it suited them.
Now, it could.
So, they might send him away.
Which is why it’s not a stretch to see why Antetokounmpo used the end of this season as a corollary to all of this. He hyperextended his left knee March 15, but there was no real interest in trying to make the play-in or having him reinjured to a degree they couldn’t trade him this summer. So, they ruled him out for the season.
“I did what I was supposed to do,” Antetokounmpo said April 12 after the regular season ended. “I wasn’t able to come on the court now. Who has that say? It probably comes from above. It probably comes from maybe the front office or the owners. So I thought I had control, kind of like, ‘If I’m healthy, I’m going to play,’ but this shows me that we, not just me, just players in general, don’t have no control. We’ve gotta do what we’ve been told.
“So, to answer your question, no, I didn’t feel like I had control at all.”
But, after hyperextending his left knee to a far worse degree in the 2021 Eastern Conference finals, he came back in seven days to help the team win a championship. Did it matter that he could have reinjured himself to the point he couldn’t play the next year? Probably not. It was of great interest to the team to win the NBA Finals.
It’s cold hypocrisy, but it’s pro sports.
Both parties inherently know this.
The organization will carry on far longer than any player, so the player will try to exert as much influence and extract as much money as possible in the window they can. Organizations willingly allow for that – to a point.
The Bucks have done that for nearly a decade.
And though Antetokounmpo and the Bucks’ power brokers have not ruled out reconciliation, by projecting such uncertainty, have they already crossed the point of no return?
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Now it’s the Bucks’ turn to waffle on Giannis Antetokounmpo’s future | Analysis
Reporting by Jim Owczarski, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
