There’s no way to sugarcoat this: The Milwaukee Bucks are done.
The only important thing to monitor now is whether they trade Giannis Antetokounmpo, and if so, when. Damian Lillard’s Achilles injury was the final blow, the last solid piece of the Good Ship Giannis that was keeping it afloat long after the rest of the rotting ship was overrun with rats.
Let’s start here: You’ll pardon Lillard if some of these plot lines seem familiar, because within the tragedy of his injury lies multiple small ironies.
The first is that this was exactly how his Portland Trail Blazers team ended up rebuilding in 2015, when a March Achilles injury to Wesley Matthews torpedoed a 51-win team. The campaign ended with a first-round defeat to Memphis (as the Grizzlies’ VP of basketball operations at the time, I’m guessing I enjoyed that series more than Lillard did) and with All-Star forward LaMarcus Aldridge leaving in free agency after the season. The Blazers rebuilt from the ashes of that to make the 2019 Western Conference finals.
The second irony is that Lillard’s injury could set up the same situation in Milwaukee that marked the end of his tenure in Portland, with a wait for a trade demand dragging out the endgame of a hopeless roster.
As far as contending for anything important soon, it was already extremely difficult for the Bucks. Now, post-Lillard injury, it’s basically impossible.
They have no good young players and no draft assets, and their annual wrestling match with the collective bargaining agreement’s second-apron threshold results in more losses at the margins every year. The Bucks’ two best players after Antetokounmpo are free agents (Brook Lopez and Bobby Portis). Of the two highest-paid players under contract after Antetokounmpo, one may miss all of next season and be 36 when he returns for 2026-27 (Lillard) and the other isn’t any good (Kyle Kuzma).
Antetokounmpo was, at worst, the third-best player in the NBA in 2024-25, and all that got the Bucks was the fifth seed and a first-round beatdown that was well in progress before Lillard’s injury. Milwaukee’s lineups with its two stars on the court together still had just a plus-4.7 net rating this season, or about what the New York Knicks, Memphis Grizzlies, Houston Rockets and Minnesota Timberwolves did across all 4,000-ish minutes of the season. Even the Bucks’ best pairings weren’t contender-level good.
Thus, all eyes turn to Antetokounmpo, much as all eyes did on Lillard as his situation in Portland grew increasingly hopeless in 2022 and 2023. The Greek Freak is the best player this franchise will have this century, most likely, but he’s also 30 years old and looking at spending the remainder of his prime surrounded by increasingly underwhelming rosters.
The absolute best-case scenario for the next two seasons (when Lillard soaks up gargantuan cap hits of $54.1 and$58.5 million) is that Giannis’ greatness and the Eastern Conference’s sadness combine forces to let him drag Milwaukee to a sixth seed and another first-round mismatch.
After 2027, when Lillard’s deal comes off the books, the Bucks have a cleaner cap, but they still have little to no draft or development pipeline. At that point, Antetokounmpo would be 32 and would also be a free agent if he doesn’t extend his deal again.
Obviously, there’s a short-term incentive for the Bucks to go overboard to keep Antetokounmpo optimistic about their future. To an extent, I understand it: This isn’t New York or L.A. The Bucks are never getting another player like this, so the temptation is to hang on at all costs for as long as he wants to be there.
(The Bucks, it should be noted, have valiantly pushed deep into the luxury tax these last several years despite their small market, all to max out the prime years of a generational talent. Not all the moves worked, but they tried. You’d wish the Denver Nuggets had felt similarly.)
One wild idea, for instance, would be to trade Lillard to Phoenix for Bradley Beal and at least get something from an expensive salary slot next season. Another would be putting a future first-rounder in 2031 or 2032 in play — the only ones they have left to trade — to augment the roster by dumping Kuzma turning Pat Connaughton’s $9.5 million salary into a starting-caliber player.
When I think about this, though, I keep going back to Lillard’s final two years in Portland. The Blazers are still handcuffed by moves made in that span to postpone the inevitable — a boat-anchor contract for Jerami Grant, a protected first for Larry Nance Jr. that blocks them from other first-round pick trades and countless other assorted other win-now moves — all to squeeze out two seasons where they won 27 and 33 games before Lillard finally requested a trade.
It’s also not dissimilar from my own experience in Memphis, when we hung onto the idea of being good in 2017-18 and 2018-19 even though we were … not good. Marc Gasol and Mike Conley weren’t on the level of Giannis or Lillard, but the same principle of hanging on to talent too long when the run had ended applies here. As I’ve written before, the Grizzlies were just fortunate that those two helped up their trade value, and the team was accidentally bad enough to get Jaren Jackson Jr. in 2018.
When it’s over, it’s over. You can’t fight it in this league. Thus, the existential question in Milwaukee is this: Regardless of whether Antetokounmpo asks for a trade, are the Bucks best served by trading him and starting over?
The answer to this question would be a no-brainer “yes” if the Bucks still had access to their own draft picks, but they are so short on assets that it complicates things. Tanking for a high draft pick isn’t on the table for at least half a decade because of previous trades the Bucks made.
This was the genius of the Brooklyn Nets reacquiring their own picks in the June 2024 Mikal Bridges trade, even if the Nets had to overpay Houston to do it: It gave them free rein to embrace a full-on tank. Milwaukee could pursue a similar plan only by trading with the New Orleans Pelicans to get back their 2026 pick swap and the top-four portion of its 2027 unprotected first. However, the “fifth through 30th” piece has already been sent to Atlanta.
Still, such a move would give the Bucks two bites at the apple on high picks while they waited for their cap situation to clean out. But again, there is only one team they can execute this trade with, and players aren’t exactly jonesing to get to New Orleans. It would almost have to be a sidebar to a primary trade that sent Giannis someplace else; imagine a deal, for instance, where the Bucks get draft picks for Giannis and trade some of them to the Pelicans to regain access to their own picks.
So what do those options look like? We’ll first pause to consider yet another Lillard injury irony: It could possibly force the Bucks to trade Antetokounmpo for the Tyler Herro-Jaime Jaquez Jr.-Duncan Robinson package from Miami. The Heat will always come up as a potential destination, but Miami doesn’t have the pile of draft picks (on draft night this year, it can trade its first-round pick, 20th overall via the Warriors, plus unprotected firsts in 2030 and 2032) or alluring young players to get its foot in the door on a trade of this magnitude.
Instead, the Bucks should be looking to get in the lottery this June as part of any trade, kick-starting things right now.
The most obvious candidate is Houston. The Rockets can offer an electrifying mini-Giannis in Amen Thompson, salivating draft picks in the form of a 2025 lottery pick from the Suns, unprotected Phoenix firsts in 2027 and 2029 (the latter of which is the better of Phoenix’s or Dallas’) and enough salary-matching flotsam to offset Antetokounmpo’s incoming $54.6 million and get a deal to the finish line.
Brooklyn is the other candidate, with enough cap room to swallow other Milwaukee contracts (maybe not Lillard’s, but could the Nets take Connaughton and Kuzma?). The Nets can’t put a talent like Thompson in a trade, but they have four firsts in 2025 (likely pick Nos. 6, 19, 26 and 27), an unprotected Suns swap in 2028, three unprotected future firsts from the Knicks and all of their own future draft picks available in a trade. The combined cap relief and draft capital is a pretty rare package, especially with the Bucks’ recent tax issues.
No other team can match the Nets and Rockets on draft capital unless Oklahoma City decides to get in the game, and I’m skeptical the Thunder would pursue this once the price became clear.
However, two other places the Bucks could look for a partner are San Antonio and Toronto. No, Bucks fans, you’re not getting Victor Wembanyama for Giannis. But you might get Stephon Castle. The Spurs also have two 2025 lottery picks (their own and Atlanta’s), an unprotected 2027 pick from Atlanta and several swaps, plus they can deal their own picks in 2029 and 2031. Keldon Johnson and Harrison Barnes would be the salary ballast. If Antetokounmpo was OK going to any non-glamour market, this is probably the one where the allure is clear (Wemby-Giannis!) and the trade assets make sense.
Finally, there’s Toronto, where team president Masai Ujiri has been rumored to be scheming ways to get Giannis since roughly forever. The trade equation here seems pretty simple: Toronto’s 2025 lottery pick and Scottie Barnes, plus whatever other draft considerations the Bucks would want to level out the deal. (The Raptors have all their future firsts to put in a trade.)
Those four teams are the favorites, but the Bucks will get calls from all 29 if they make Antetokounmpo available. Even without access to their own future picks, the Bucks are in such a bad spot that the only logical move is to bang the gavel on a Giannis bidding war and rebuild with the spoils.
The emotional pull of trying to battle it out with him will be strong, and one thing I know from experience is that pivoting an organization from win-now to full rebuild can be like turning around an ocean liner.
Big picture, however, the takeaway from Lillard’s injury is clear: It’s over. And as Lillard’s experience in Portland showed, ripping off the Band-Aid immediately usually works better than dragging out the inevitable.
(Top photo of Giannis Antetokounmpo: John Fisher / Getty Images)
