Four years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks won their first NBA championship since 1971. Since then, they have acquired a Hall-of-Famer in Damian Lillard, had their other 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 (which was last year’s Achilles heel and led to the in-season firing of Adrian Griffin) is worse, and the offense is far worse.
Moreover, the Bucks do not have many options for changing that. Precisely because of the Lillard trade – which saw them fire off their last few bullets in the trade market – the Bucks have incredibly few assets with which to try and change their roster. They are moribund, lackluster, expensive, disjointed, capped-out, asset-deprived and 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, for each extra game they move under .500 after 18 months of discontent, 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 also entirely fair to conclude that, if the struggles continue, that day comes ever closer. Turning 30 in December, Giannis 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 answer, to varying degrees, 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 to the worst.