GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO SECURED a long rebound and took a few deliberate dribbles down the sidelines, right in front of his team’s bench. As he approached midcourt, he began picking up speed.
It was a message to his team amid the unrelenting chatter about his uncertain future.
With just seven seconds left and the score 110-103, the Milwaukee Bucks had already secured a much-needed victory over the Chicago Bulls on Saturday night, but Antetokounmpo saw an opportunity to make a statement. The Bucks had gone 2-6 in his three-week absence. Noise about him had clouded seemingly every conversation about him and the franchise he has led for more than a decade.
His actions on the court have always been where he has spoken loudest.
The other players had begun walking up the court, anticipating the final buzzer. With nobody behind him, Antetokounmpo took a hard dribble and gathered the ball inside the arc before delivering a windmill dunk to punctuate a 112-103 victory.
The play broke one of basketball’s unwritten rules of modesty, and the Bulls immediately responded.
Chicago center Nikola Vucevic was the first to meet him at the center-court line. He was followed by guard Coby White. Then the Bucks entered the fray to protect their star, with guard Ryan Rollins and forward Bobby Portis quick to separate Antetokounmpo from the scuffle.
Benches cleared and met at center court, but as the shouting and shoving escalated, Antetokounmpo began to walk off the floor. All season, as the noise around him has intensified, he has kept things moving.
The crowd at the United Center serenaded him with a loud chorus of boos as he made his way to the visitors tunnel, and just before he ducked his head underneath, Antetokounmpo threw his hands up to the crowd with two thumbs down.
Tempers continued to flare as both teams exited the floor. One long hallway separates the home and visitors locker rooms at the United Center, and Bucks and Bulls players continued their spirited discussion over basketball decorum.
“Who y’all checking?” Portis screamed down the hall as security staff members from both teams scrambled to keep players separated. “I’m right here.”
Rollins, who has emerged as perhaps the lone bright spot in Milwaukee during a season so far bereft of them, said he loved every part of the Antetokounmpo dunk.
“I’m not mad at it at all,” Rollins said after the game. “I love even after the fact too when [the Bulls] tried to press him, our whole team came out and we backed up Giannis.”
Whatever Antetokounmpo’s intent was, the play temporarily accomplished something else for the Bucks: combined with the win, it lowered the temperature around the franchise, which has been engulfed by the unrelenting chatter around the star’s uncertain future since media day in September.
For a moment, the conversation was about something different — their win. The violation of a nonexistent rule. The return of their superstar. The present.
Antetokounmpo has set the standard in Milwaukee, repeatedly stating his goal to compete for a second ring after leading the Bucks to the 2021 NBA title. But since then, the Bucks have won one playoff series, losing in the first round in the past three seasons.
So with the 13-19 Bucks in 11th place in the Eastern Conference, looking up to teams such as the perennial play-in Bulls, Antetokounmpo did not care about niceties at the end of Saturday’s game.
“I’ve been 13 years in the league,” Antetokounmpo said. “If we keep on losing, brother, probably half of the team is not going to be here. At the end of the day, I just want to be available, be healthy and help my team win. And if [a windmill dunk] is what has to happen for everybody to wake up and understand we’re fighting for our lives and we got to get our hands dirty, so be it.”
The Bucks believe that with more than a month before the Feb. 5 trade deadline, they can climb in the Eastern Conference standings and assess the future then.
But the reality isn’t so simple: With each game, the pressure rises — either for the team to add significant help for Antetokounmpo or for the star to explicitly make a decision about the next stage of his Hall of Fame career.
ANTETOKOUNMPO SCORED 29 points in 25 minutes Saturday amid a playing time restriction after the injury, but his presence lifted the Bucks to just their fourth win in December, which began with a report by ESPN on Dec. 3 that Antetokounmpo and his agent, Alex Saratsis, had reopened conversations about his future.
Antetokounmpo injured a calf hours after that report, and the Bucks’ struggles in his absence exposed the growing chasm between Milwaukee and championship contention.
Since then, Antetokounmpo has largely sidestepped questions about his future when speaking to the media. He has said it’s not his style to sit his teammates down for a full-on meeting about his future. Still, when he spoke prior to a mid-December home loss to Toronto, he said of his teammates, “I think they understand the deal.”
“You’ve just got to give urgency to the team. Like, ‘Guys, this is serious,'” Antetokounmpo said. “Who are we trying to be? We’ve got to turn this around. We have time to turn this around. And you’ve got to have a little bit more urgency. … I’ve been approached by teammates and asked about the [reports] because it also may affect their own life and their own career.
“I’m straight with them, whatever that answer might be.”
Antetokounmpo has had chances to reaffirm his commitment to the Bucks this season but has often walked the line between reiterating his present with the only franchise he has ever known and the possibility that it would be “human to change his mind” down the line.
After saying in the locker room postgame Saturday that “half the team could be traded if they keep losing,” Antetokounmpo wasn’t interested in expounding which half he’d fall under.
“I’m here. I’m here. I’m here,” he said. “Don’t ask me that question. I’m here. It’s disrespectful towards myself and my teammates. I wear that jersey every single day. It’s disrespectful towards the organization, my coaching staff, myself and all the people that work hard for me to come out here and say, ‘I don’t want to be here.’
“I’m here. I’m putting on the jersey. And as long as I’m here, I’m going to give everything I have, even in the last second of the game.”
Just the same, team sources told ESPN that the Bucks still have a high belief in the roster they constructed around their two-time MVP. With 50 games left, the Bucks believe they have time to dig out of the hole they’ve created for themselves despite what the numbers say. ESPN’s Basketball Power Index gives the Bucks a 12.9% chance to make the playoffs and a 2.2% chance to make the second round.
When the NBA’s unofficial trade season began Dec. 15, the Bucks weren’t engaging with teams on possibly moving Antetokounmpo. They were, instead, scouring the market as buyers, looking once again for any potential upgrades to their roster, sources told ESPN.
Either way, a resolution to Antetokounmpo’s situation is expected in the coming weeks, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. If the Bucks keep losing, and Antetokounmpo wants out, league sources told ESPN, it will require a more forceful request.
“The question is who is going to get made uncomfortable,” a league source told ESPN. “There’s a difference between saying it out loud and innuendos. [The Bucks] know Giannis doesn’t want to be the villain.”
DOC RIVERS LET out an exasperated sigh. He knew the question was coming and was ready to pour cold water on the subject.
“Here we go again,” Rivers said during his news conference prior to the Dec. 3 game against the Pistons.
“I want to make it clear,” he continued. “Giannis has never asked to be traded. Ever. I can’t make that more clear.”
Even though Antetokounmpo has acknowledged his own wandering eye, which led him to consider the idea of joining the New York Knicks over the summer, he has never directly demanded a trade from Milwaukee.
The Bucks have remained steadfast in their refusal to engage in serious trade talks with teams around the league about Antetokounmpo. Rival executives believe that until the two-time MVP makes it abundantly clear he wants out of Milwaukee, the Bucks are not going to give up looking for ways to salvage his tenure.
“Our intent is to build this team and continue to add, not subtract,” a team source told ESPN.
Antetokounmpo has spent his entire 13-year career in Milwaukee and has signed a pair of maximum extensions without prior warning. But on those previous occasions, Bucks general manager Jon Horst had pulled off roster-changing transactions to entice Antetokounmpo to stay.
In 2020, he swung a deal to acquire Jrue Holiday from New Orleans. In 2023, he grabbed Damian Lillard as he was forcing his way out of Portland. The Bucks thought they could fortify their team again this summer by waiving an injured Lillard to create salary cap space to sign Myles Turner, but the impact of their new center has been limited — Turner is averaging 12.3 points, his lowest total since the 2019-20 season.
Bucks executives and coaches insist they like their roster, believing they built a team that can play to Antetokounmpo’s strengths as long as it stays healthy. However, even with Antetokounmpo playing this season, Milwaukee is just 10-8.
“We have time,” Rivers said before Saturday’s game. “We have a chance to make a run here, but it’s not going to happen overnight. And we need more than just Giannis coming back. We all have to play better, coach better, run better, rebound better.
“We have to do a lot of things better for us to turn the corner. … And obviously, having Giannis back helps a lot.”
In the meantime, multiple team and league sources say the team has been active in pursuing the trade market, engaging in internal conversations about, among others, Sacramento’s Zach LaVine, whom they have had interest in and chances to acquire in the past, and Malik Monk, as well as Portland’s Jerami Grant.
However, Horst finds himself with fewer resources to execute another blockbuster than ever before.
The Bucks have only one first-round pick, in either 2031 or 2032, available to trade. The Bucks have not made that pick available in trade discussions for the past year, and team and league sources do not believe they would do so now unless it was for a significant star.
And the Bucks don’t have players outside of Antetokounmpo with much trade value around the league. The team’s largest tradable contracts outside of Antetokounmpo and Turner belong to Portis (three years, $44 million) and Kyle Kuzma (two years, $40.7 million). Rival executives have also suggested that teams might be waiting to make other moves until they have certainty about Antetokounmpo’s future in Milwaukee.
“Give Jon credit for reinventing the wheel multiple times over the years,” a league source told ESPN. “At some point the levy [is] going to break, it’s just about when.”
Antetokounmpo, who turned 31 this month, is still putting up some of the best numbers of his career: 28.9 points, 10.0 rebounds and 5.8 assists, joining Nikola Jokic as the only players averaging 25-10-5. Antetokounmpo has a legitimate shot to average 30-10-5 for the fourth straight season — only Wilt Chamberlain and Oscar Robertson have done so twice in NBA history, according to ESPN Research.
The Bucks have Antetokounmpo signed to a guaranteed contract through the 2026-27 season with a player option for 2027-28, which will give him significant leverage in the future, especially if he indicates he does not intend to sign an extension this summer with Milwaukee.
If no deal emerges before the trade deadline, the Bucks’ tradable assets will increase significantly at the draft, when they could have as many as three first-round picks available, in 2026, 2031 and 2033. But not making a move in the meantime risks wasting another year of Antetokounmpo’s prime.
With the team treading water in a competitive but wide-open East, yet another question emerges: Can the Bucks persuade Antetokounmpo to hold tight until they are more capable of reloading the roster again?
“There’s a puncher’s chance they can bring in another piece,” a league source told ESPN. “And kick this thing down the road again.”
THE BUCKS GATHERED for a team dinner following Saturday’s victory in downtown Chicago at Maple & Ash with a menu curated by a two-time Michelin-star chef.
They took the moment to savor the victory, staying overnight in Chicago before heading to Charlotte on Sunday. In the lead-up to the game against the Bulls, Bucks players acknowledged the energy around the team was palpable — and different.
“Any team when you get your best player back, it gives you kind of a different life,” Portis said.
“Confidence,” Rivers said. “When the team is making a run and you have [Antetokounmpo] on the floor, you feel like you’re going to get a bucket or get a good shot. When you don’t have him on the floor, you can go on those droughts. You don’t go on a long drought when Giannis is on the floor.”
“These guys, they bring confidence to everybody.”
For weeks, the Bucks had been floundering to stay afloat in Antetokounmpo’s absence. He has missed 14 games this season, and the Bucks are 3-11 without him. The crowds at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee have been smaller and quieter over the past few weeks. And the rest of the team has been left answering questions after the game about Antetokounmpo’s future.
“There’s a lot of noise,” Bucks guard Kevin Porter Jr said earlier this month. “But our job is to block it out and stay together.”
Some of the veterans who spoke to ESPN acknowledged questions about Antetokounmpo came with the territory of playing with a superstar in the NBA.
The Bucks hosted a team meeting in the morning after shootaround Dec. 3. They talked about playing together, going harder and being more connected — clichés that haven’t produced results. Hours later, Rivers gave his stern denial about Antetokounmpo’s desires, and then it was all upended with yet another injury.
“There’s frustration, but only because everybody knows they should be winning more,” a team source told ESPN.
And while Antetokounmpo said he didn’t directly address the team during the meeting, he acknowledged that one of his younger teammates asked him about something he saw online — a meme that went viral about how the superstar had cleared the Bucks off his Instagram, except for his post about the 2021 NBA championship.
Sources close to Antetokounmpo said that in reality he had cleared his social media weeks earlier to reduce his online presence. He did so to be more private and protect his family, but he was clear that he did not want the Bucks to focus on such trivial things.
“The younger generation, they just pay attention to so much,” Antetokounmpo told reporters earlier this month during a meandering 24-minute news conference about his future. “Like, what does that mean? Deleting the Bucks stuff from social media platform. We give so much attention to that. I told him my intention was not to … first of all, all the moments that mean something are there.”
It’s a window once again into Antetokounmpo’s mind and how competing for a second championship, above all else, is what drives him.
And again, with one dunk at the end of the game Saturday, Antetokounmpo once more sent a message of urgency.
“Right now, our character [as a team] is being tested,” Antetokounmpo said. “Me personally, I don’t want to be the guy worrying about [reports]. My legacy is on the line. This is how I feel every single day when I walk in here.”