The Milwaukee Bucks should trade Giannis Antetokounmpo. Come on. We’ve known that since May. They’ve spent the last eight months with their fingers in their ears shouting “lalalala we can’t hear you, Giannis hasn’t asked for a trade, we’d never move him, we can’t hear you!” Denial is the first stage of grief, after all.
They ignored the problem when Damian Lillard got hurt, instead making the extremely shortsighted decision to waive and stretch him to sign Myles Turner to a contract that now looks bloated. They ignored the problem when Antetokounmpo’s camp reportedly made it known the New York Knicks would be a team he’d be interested in playing for, only engaging the Knicks and ultimately not making a deal or even looping in other suitors to generate a bidding war.
They played this farce out into the season, and to no one’s surprise except their own, they’re 18-26 and not even a top-10 team in the weak Eastern Conference. By all accounts, they’d planned to be buyers at the trade deadline regardless. Call me crazy, but I’m not sure Zach LaVine or Jerami Grant was going to salvage a season this far gone. Now, it’s probably off of the table entirely.
Antetokounmpo suffered a calf strain in Friday’s loss to a Denver Nuggets team missing five of its six best players. He is now expected to miss between four and six weeks. From any sort of rational perspective, this doesn’t change much. The Bucks weren’t going to factor into the championship picture before and they won’t factor into the championship picture now. Their best move was to trade Giannis before and their best move is to trade Giannis now. They’ll get way less than they would have if they’d moved last summer as the whole world suggested. They’ll get less than they would have if they’d moved two weeks ago when Antetokounmpo was healthy. But they’ll get more than they would if they wait until the offseason, when he almost certainly declines to sign a contract extension and effectively announces to the world that his time in Milwaukee is over.
But the Bucks aren’t rational actors right now. Whether it’s possible or advisable, they have tunnel vision. They’re only thinking about ways to maximize their meager odds of securing an extension. In fairness, the Bucks do this every time Antetokounmpo creeps up to free agency. In 2020 they traded for Jrue Holiday, got the extension and won a title. In 2023 they traded for Damian Lillard, got the extension, and kickstarted their decline into the mess we’re watching now. Jon Horst has always been able to pull a rabbit out of the hat in the past. Maybe he can again.
Which brings us back to the injury. Even if the Bucks refuse to trade him, there is no reason whatsoever for Antetokounmpo to return this season. Milwaukee is 3-11 without him this season and they already trail the 10th-place Hawks by four games in the win column. By the time he gets back, they’ll be so far back that even reaching the Play-In Tournament won’t be feasible. At that point, there’s nothing to be gained by bringing Antetokounmpo back. But there’s plenty to be gained by sitting him out.
The Bucks don’t control their first-round pick again until 2031. However, their 2026 draft situation is still reasonably promising. They currently owe swap rights to the Pelicans from the Holiday trade, which the Pelicans then traded to the Hawks for Derik Queen. That means the Bucks only lose their pick if it’s higher than wherever the Pelicans land. As of right now, the Pelicans have the second-worst record in the NBA. The Bucks have the eighth-worst record. In all likelihood, that means the Bucks will keep their pick. If they don’t, their consolation prize will be picking wherever the Pelicans were meant to. One way or another, if they tank, they’re probably walking away with a top-10 pick.
And if the Bucks really are determined to play this out until the end? That top-10 pick, along with their tradable unprotected picks in 2031 and 2033, would give them a pretty compelling base of assets to make win-now trades with over the summer. They’re the tools with which Horst can attempt to work his miracle.
Is this a good idea? No. It pretty emphatically isn’t. The Bucks are not one blockbuster trade away from fixing this. They’re not a star short. The sort of big-name players that might be glitzy enough to change Antetokounmpo’s mind are actually the opposite of what they need. Milwaukee is tied for second in the NBA in effective field goal percentage. The Bucks don’t struggle to generate and make shots. They struggle at everything else. They rank 21st in defense, 26th in free-throw rate, 29th in rebounding and lose the turnover battle most nights. That isn’t a single-trade fix. That’s the sort of roster overhaul that typically takes several transaction cycles.
Investing the sort of assets it would take to address all of these problems would be downright irresponsible. Either you do so and Antetokounmpo leaves anyway, at which point you’ve only extended your long-term misery, or you do so and he surprisingly choices to stay, at which point you’re fully invested in the prime of a suddenly injury-prone 31-year-old whose playing style does not figure to age especially well. Giannis is good enough for a lot of teams to justify that sort of investment. If you’re close, he can push you over the top. The Bucks are not close. How long can Antetokounmpo afford to wait for them to get there?
Really, the benefit of tanking the rest of the season is setting yourself up for what comes after Antetokounmpo, because right now, the next era of Bucks basketball looks pretty bleak. A 2026 lottery pick could become a pillar of that next era. And even if the Bucks can’t admit that to themselves right now, if it takes pretending they’re setting up for a home run swing over the summer to get there, it’s the right ultimate outcome. This season is over. The 2025-26 Milwaukee Bucks have nothing left to play for but their future. As badly as they hope Giannis Antetokounmpo is part of that future, it’s time to accept the very real possibility that he won’t be and act accordingly.
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