Four years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks won their first NBA championship since 1971. Since then, the Bucks have acquired a Hall-of-Famer in Damian Lillard, had its own Hall-of-Famer Giannis Antetokounmpo enter his prime years, and yet counterintuitively fallen near the bottom of the NBA.
The Bucks are 12th by win/loss record, but they might be outright last in vibes, and that shadow has been percolating for a while. Over the offseason, the Bucks moved around the end of their bench. Thanasis Antetokounmpo, Robin Lopez, Jae Crowder, Patrick Beverley and Danilo Gallinari were all allowed to leave, aged veterans who were struggling to play replacement-level ball who nevertheless combined for 294 minutes in six playoff games.
In their stead came Delon Wright, Taurean Prince and Gary Trent Jr, all a slightly younger flavor of veterans intended to improve the legs of an old roster. Yet, nothing has improved.
The pace is down, the defense continues to get worse under head coach Doc Rivers, and the offense is no better. Moreover, the Bucks do not have many options for changing that.The Lillard trade left the Bucks with few assets to try and change their roster. They are moribund, lackluster, expensive, disjointed, capped-out, asset-deprived team that is not very good.
There is, though, one potential massive trade asset on the table. What if they were to trade Giannis?
Moving Giannis is an unequivocal admission that the contending window is over. There is no path to getting back to the top without him in it. If the Bucks decide to finally end their partnership after 12 years together, so is any dream of contention, and given how sparse the draft capital cupboard is, it will be a very long road back. That said, every game the Bucks fall further from .500, the unthinkable becomes more thinkable.
It is entirely fair to conclude that Antetokounmpo will only be traded when the day comes that he asks to be. Yet, it is fair to conclude that if the struggles continue, that day comes ever closer. Turning 30 in December, Antetokounmpo is entering the back nine of his career, and his individual greatness has probably peaked.
In regards to the question of which teams around the league would be interested in him; the simple answer is, all of them. As for which teams could possibly put together sufficiently enticing trade packages, that list is far shorter. There follows a look at some potential landing destinations for Antetokounmpo, should the worst keep coming.
Oklahoma City Thunder
By virtue of their plethora of assets – not least of which is their substantial bank of draft capital – the Thunder find themselves in a unique position among the league’s contending teams. Put simply, by already being one of the league’s best teams, having youth on their side, freedom under the salary aprons and a ton of picks available to share, they can win any bidding war they choose to enter.
Indeed, the most difficult aspect of any trade might be finding enough salary. The Thunder have good flexibility in their salary picture, with only the contracts of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander ($35,859,950) and Isaiah Hartenstein ($30,000,000) earning more than $16.5 million.
By contrast, Giannis will earn $48,787,676 in the 2024-25 season; to match that amount in trade, the Thunder will have to either wait until Hartenstein is trade-eligible (December 15), or package together other players such as Luguentz Dort, Isaiah Joe and Aaron Wiggins to meet the required matching salary. Nevertheless, with all due respect to quality players such as Hartenstein and Dort, it should not be a problem to include them in a trade for Antetokounmpo.
If the Thunder decide that they are already good enough to go for it, even when their core is so young, then it will surely be harder to find a better trade target than Giannis. After all, if you cannot justify trading the excess of picks for him, what are they for? The potential gear-change hypothesized above for the Oklahoma City Thunder already happened some time ago in Houston.
Houston Rockets
After picking in the top five of the draft three times between 2021 and 2023, the Rockets made a conscious directional shift two o ag by targeting veterans such as Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks in free agency, the Rockets were able to get lucky in the lottery and acquire another Top 3 pick in 2024 (selecting Reed Sheppard). As a result, they now have both the young core and the veteran support.
VanVleet, Brooks and deadline trade acquisition Steven Adams flank Sheppard, Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, Jabari Smith, Amen Thompson, Tari Eason and Cam Whitmore; with a 12-6 record thus far in 2024-25, the Rockets are quite a good team, hoping to grow into a great one. With the potential infusion of the Greek Freak, they could well be that.
If Milwaukee were to prioritize quality young veterans in a Giannis package, Houston would be well-positioned in the bidding war. The dismantling of the previous James Harden-based competitive Rockets team has also left the team in an asset-positive position when it comes to draft picks, with almost all of their first-round debts either paid off or relinquished. The Rockets, then, could put together a good package based around Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr, Tari Eason and something approaching the “full package” of firsts that has become the norm in trades for superstars.
If they do so, and come away with a line-up of VanVleet, Brooks, Thompson, Antetokounmpo and Sengun, their journey to the top of the West could speed up.
Brooklyn Nets
Whatever else we can say of the Nets franchise since its move from New Jersey to Brooklyn, we can all agree that they take chances. They took a chance with the Paul Pierce/Kevin Garnett deal of the Mikhail Prokhorov days, they took a chance assembling the Kevin Durant/Kyrie Irving/James Harden trio, and they took a chance blowing it up and venturing into the darkness. Perhaps, then, it is in their nature to take one more.
Additionally, we can surely all agree that the massive expiring salary of Ben Simmons exists mostly as a trade facilitator. Any team looking to shed salary – which a capped-out, tax-burdened Bucks without Giannis would definitely be – should place a call to Brooklyn for that, particularly if they can find some use for the much-diminished-yet-useful Simmons on the court for a few months.
It will, however, take much more than just salary relief to acquire a Top 5 player in the world. Brooklyn has plenty of draft capital to work with, their cupboard restocked by the Mikal Bridges trade to the Knicks, and has a good card to play in the form of Milwaukee’s own 2025 pick, which they own. In terms of incumbent talents on their roster, everyone – including the Cams (Johnson and Thomas), Nic Claxton, Dennis Schroeder, and whoever else is so desired – should be considered available, while several players have penciled-in places in the team’s future, no one has become a foundational piece at this time. Indeed, that fluidity might be what counts against Brooklyn in these hypothetical negotiations.
As of right now, fueled by Simmons’ contract, they are positioning themselves for cap room in the summer of 2025, to the point that Thomas did not get an extension last summer.. Far from joining a contender, Giannis would be joining a team with 14 spots to play for. This might not be an improvement on his current situation.
Miami Heat
Every season, when the name of a superstar gets floated, you can expect to see the Miami Heat’s name attached. You can set a particularly slow watch to it. Pat Riley’s Heat pursue stars over rebuilds, and always have. And if Riley’s conversion rate is low, it is only because they are always playing the game. Giannis will be no different. If there is any fire at the base of the (admittedly currently artificial) smoke, we can expect to see Riley pouring a can of gasoline on it. It is a strategy that sometimes lands them Terry Rozier and Victor Oladipo types more than the true superstars.
