There was a bit of a scare on Bucks Twitter Tuesday morning. Giannis Antetokounmpo has seemingly removed all references to the team from his Instagram. He is now simply listed as “athlete.” Fears were somewhat allayed when fans realized he more or less wiped his entire account. Only 13 posts remain on the entire account, and the most recent is an ad. Of course, if Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had done something similar, Thunder fans might not have even noticed. They have no reason to be jittery about their star’s allegiances. But Bucks fans? They’re understandably on edge.
Milwaukee fell to 9-13 on Monday after a loss to the lowly Washington Wizards. They’ve now lost eight of their past nine games, and have been stuck in the No. 11 seed in the Eastern Conference for almost two weeks now. They’ve done all of this against the NBA’s eighth-easiest schedule to date, and even though they’re winning the minutes Antetokounmpo plays comfortably, they’re getting absolutely decimated whenever he rests or sits due to injury. That’s hardly a formula for convincing someone they should keep playing for you.
And, as has been beaten into the ground over the last several months (or, as Bucks fans would argue, 13 years) those are the stakes here. When he professed his commitment to the Bucks in October, he felt the need to toss in that “if in six, seven months I change my mind, I think that’s human, too.” He’s been open about wanting to win a second ring more than he wants to retire as a Buck. With extension-eligibility looming, the Bucks are on a ticking clock here. If they can’t convince him that they can get him his second championship ring by next summer, they almost have to trade him for fear that he might leave for nothing in free agency in 2027.
A 9-13 start is hardly unsalvageable. The Pacers were below .500 in January before their Finals run a year ago. The Celtics were too ahead of their 2022 trip to the Finals. But a loss to the Wizards, specifically, is pretty troubling. Milwaukee’s schedule is backloaded, and the Bucks need to start stacking wins as quickly as possible. While the next few weeks offer some fairly difficult opponents (including two clashes with the conference-leading Pistons), the Bucks have a golden opportunity to right the ship coming shortly.
Just look at the schedule between Dec. 23 and Jan. 4: Pacers, Grizzlies, Bulls, Hornets, Wizards, Hornets and Kings. Most of those games are on the road, but a team with any sort of postseason ambition needs to win five or six of those games. The Bucks absolutely need to because of what comes after: road dates with the Warriors, Lakers and Nuggets, a quick trip home to host the Timberwolves, and then back on the road for the Spurs and Hawks before hosting the Thunder and Nuggets. Beating the Wizards matters because there’s little you can do when those January stretches come up. The Bucks are going to lose a bunch of games when the schedule gets harder. That’s why you it’s so important to pad your record when the schedule allows it.
That tough January stretch ends a bit less than two weeks before the trade deadline. It would probably be impractical for Antetokounmpo to ask for a trade in the middle of the season. Matching money is far easier in July than February. The sort of contenders he’d want to play for will have more clarity on their own standing and asset pool. The Rockets may be too excited about what they have going to trade for Antetokounmpo in the middle of the season. Maybe a playoff burnout changes that. The Lakers have one first-round pick to trade today, but that figure jumps to three in the offseason. His seemingly preferred destination, the Knicks, are pressed up against a second-apron hard cap with less than $150,000 in room right now. That’s easier to navigate over the summer.
But these things tend to move quickly once a player knows what he wants. Antetokounmpo wouldn’t be the first player to fast track a trade request. The easiest analogue here would be Anthony Davis, who dropped the bomb on the Pelicans in late January. One might even argue that the Bucks would be better off making a trade in January or February, provided a good one is available, because of the Pelicans. Milwaukee may not control its own first-round pick this season, but they’ll get the worse of their own pick and New Orleans’. The Pelicans are 3-18, so tanking ahead of them may not be possible, but if the Bucks do wind up tanking, the second-best of those two picks would still be pretty valuable.
These aren’t conversations the Bucks want to be having right now, and that begs the question of whether or not they’d aggressively seek out a win-now trade ahead of that easy December stretch in an effort to avert a potential crisis altogether. Trade season unofficially begins on Dec. 15, when most 2025 free agents can be traded, and Milwaukee still has either its 2031 or 2032 pick available to be dealt. Improvement from Ryan Rollins and Kevin Porter Jr. has seemingly addressed the back court for the time being, but another big wing would go a long way toward addressing their No. 22-ranked defense.
The notion of surrendering another future first-round pick should make Bucks fans queasy, but that’s what it takes to swim in the superstar pool. The Bucks, as presently constructed, are not good enough to win Antetokounmpo his second ring. A loss to the Wizards alone doesn’t exactly prove that, but it underlines problems that have persisted all season. Eventually, the Bucks are going to have to do something if they plan to make this roster competitive even in a weak Eastern Conference, and with the schedule set up the way it is, they’re going to have to act soon. The time to save this season, and perhaps this era, is now. The longer the Bucks wait, the scarier those social media signals are going to get.
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