All is not well in Milwaukee.
In 2021, the Bucks won a world championship and Giannis Antetokounmpo looked set to dominate the NBA for the next five years.
Fast-forward to 2024 and there are murmurings of trade rumors after the out of sorts Bucks slipped to 1-4 to start the season.
The latest nadir came on Thursday after being blown out by the Memphis Grizzlies, 122-99, making it three straight losses in their first four games.
“Losing, it is frustrating,” said Giannis afterwards. “My dad used to say why whine if you are not going to give up. I am not going to give up.”
‘The Greek Freak’ may not have given up on his teammates just yet, but his faith in the organization appears to be on the wane.
That hasn’t gone unnoticed around The Association. According to reports, “teams are circling — and hopeful,” of landing the seemingly disgruntled two-time MVP.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened by the trade deadline,” a top executive of a team told CBS.
Giannis and the Bucks agreed on a three-year, $186 million contract extension only last year.
The extension starts with the 2025-26 season, meaning Antetokounmpo is under contract for at least four more years — and a fifth if he’s so inclined.
The 29-year-old has continuously professed his loyalty to the team that drafted him in 2013, but only under one condition — they remain competitive.
However, the Bucks no longer feel like true contenders in the resurgent Eastern Conference.
Milwaukee failed to defend their title at the end of the 2021-22 season after falling to the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals.
A year later they were eliminated in five games against the Miami Heat in the first round of the postseason.
Last season, Giannis suffered a calf injury and missed the remainder of the regular season, as well as the entirety of the 2024 NBA playoffs, as the Bucks crashed out to the Indiana Pacers in Round 1.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown’s Celtics have filled the power vacuum in the Eastern Conference amid the Bucks’ regression.
Elsewhere, the Knicks, Magic, and Cavaliers have all improved, meaning the East is no longer the cakewalk it once was.
Coaching changes haven’t helped the Bucks.
Adrian Griffin was sensationally let go amid locker room issues despite the team sitting in second in the Eastern Conference with a 30-13 record.
His replacement? Doc Rivers, a coach who hasn’t won since 2008 and is more famous for becoming the first coach in NBA history to fumble three 3-1 leads in his career.
Milwaukee is now 20-27 since Rivers took over from Griffin and their offense looks as stale and unimaginative as ever.
The decision to appoint Darvin Ham — a man largely ridiculed for his time with the Lakers, where he managed to alienate almost every player, including LeBron James— as their top assistant coach looks more baffling with every abject defeat.
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
The Bucks’s big 2023 offseason splash, All-NBA guard Damian Lillard, is yet to work out.
On paper, ‘Dame Time’ has a championship caliber fit with Giannis, but the Antetokounmpo-Lillard axis is yet to find its groove.
They still have time to make it work, of course, but that doesn’t solve the other glaring roster issues hamstringing the current iteration of this team.
Getting rid of Jrue Holiday was a big mistake.
The Bucks’ perimeter defense is non-existent and Holiday is one of the best perimeter defenders in the business. To make matters worse, the Bucks traded him to the Celtics, strengthening a rival while weakening themselves in one fell swoop.
Holiday being an integral cog in the Celtics’ championship winning machine last season only compounded the error in judgement.
Age is the other elephant in the room. In a league filled with ascending stars, the Bucks are just flat out old.
Lillard is 34. Brook Lopez is 36.
Khris Middleton, an important member of their championship winning team, is 33 and yet to play this year due to injury.
Pat Connaughton is 31 and Bobby Portis Jr is 29.
The Bucks are a ‘win now’ team lacking the ability to win now.
The future look pretty bleak, too, largely due to the fact there’s a dearth of exciting young players coming through and Bucks general manager Jon Horst has continuously traded away their draft picks.
His strike rate in the draft doesn’t make for great reading either.
Since Horst took over as GM in 2017, he’s drafted six players in the top 40, the pick of which being Donte DiVincenzo in 2018, who is now with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
All of this adds up to Giannis’ championship window rapidly closing.
All of the issues, on and even off the court, look like they’re perfectly fitting into the hands of teams who have long been waiting to make a run at Giannis.
Per CBS: “An Eastern Conference NBA executive has already heard the places believed to be Giannis’ would-be preferred destinations: ‘The teams I’ve heard are Miami and New York — the Nets, not the Knicks.’
They’re not the only ones.
According to NBA insiders Zach Lowe and Ramona Shelburne, the New Orleans Pelicans, Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks and Golden State Warriors “will be watching this situation closely”.
Along with the Nets and Knicks, “each of those teams have a combination of intriguing young players and valuable draft picks available that could be packaged in the kind of trade it would theoretically take to land Antetokounmpo.”
For neutrals, the Warriors move is by far the most tantalizing. The prospect of Giannis teaming up with Golden State great Steph Curry is the stuff of fantasy hoops.
One would think the way the Greek star drives with the ball would compliment Curry’s style of play and off-the-ball movement to devastating effect.
The Finals MVPs have also fostered a bromance of sorts down the years, which would surely help facilitate a prospective trade.
It also makes sense given that at 36, Curry isn’t getting any younger, and the Warriors front office may decide to go all in on getting the Splash Brother one last superstar running mate — and ring — before he calls time on his Hall of Fame career.
There will certainly be no shortage of suitors if Giannis wants out of Milwaukee.
An all-world talent, who is one of only three players in history with an MVP, a Finals MVP and a Defensive Player of the Year award, becoming available while still in his prime doesn’t come around often.
Giannis himself has kept his cards close to his chest. However, before the season started, he gave the first real indication that a trade was on his mind, even if it was jokingly.
“If we don’t win this year, would you get fired?” he said while talking to The Athletic‘s Sam Amick.
“Do you have it in the back of your mind, like, ‘(What) if this year doesn’t go well?’ Yeah, if we don’t win a championship, I might get traded. Yeah, this is the job we live. This is the world we’re living in. It’s everybody.”
What may have been a tongue in cheek comment is starting to look like a reality — one that that the entire NBA appears to be on red alert over.
