When Giannis Antetokounmpo returned to the visitor’s locker room at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on Jan. 9, he beamed at what he saw waiting for him: a signed purple No. 23 LeBron James jersey.
“Oh s—,” Antetokounmpo said, holding it in the air.
He put the jersey on and flexed.
“Oh yeah,” said Kevin Porter Jr., stopping in the middle of his postgame interview. “That’s a nice one.”
Kyle Kuzma shook his head at Antetokounmpo’s antics from across the room.
“This is greatness,” Antetokounmpo said.
He turned to his longtime teammate Bobby Portis. “The best part,” he told him, “Look in my brother’s locker.” Inside Thanasis Antetokounmpo‘s locker was a signed purple No. 9 jersey from Bronny James, matching the one Giannis got from the younger James last year.
It was a light moment for a Bucks team trying to salvage what has often been a morose season.
“We cannot be comfortable. We can’t be complacent right now,” Antetokounmpo said after the game. “We got to keep on pushing, pushing [the] envelope, put our foot on the pedal and keep on moving forward. We haven’t done anything, right? So, this is the time before the break, in January, that you got to stock up wins.”
Less than a week later, back home in Milwaukee, the locker room was noticeably more somber.
The Bucks had followed up a motivational win at Los Angeles with losses in back-to-back games, including an embarrassing 33-point defeat to a Minnesota Timberwolves team without Anthony Edwards and Rudy Gobert on Tuesday night.
The Bucks’ effort was so uninspiring that their home fans booed as they walked off the floor, trailing 76-45 at the break. Antetokounmpo took it personally. In the third quarter, he responded in kind, booing his home fans back after converting an and-1 and heading to the line.
It was perhaps the most obvious sign of a growing disconnect between the best player in franchise history and the only team he has known — as reports continue to swirl about his long-term future in Milwaukee.
By the time Antetokounmpo walked into the locker room after a postgame lift and a visit with the team’s athletic trainers, only Portis and rarely used reserve Andre Jackson Jr. remained.
Then the two-time MVP spoke again.
“Maybe my voice is just a broken record and guys are tired [of hearing it],” he said. “Guys might tend to do what they want to do. I don’t know, but as a leader, it doesn’t matter. Being a leader is like the same thing as being a dad.
“When I was 15 and my dad was telling me stuff, I didn’t realize what he was talking about until I was like 21, 22. And then you go back and you’re ‘Oh, that’s what he meant.’ But we don’t have seven years.”
For weeks, Antetokounmpo has been publicly and privately emphasizing the need for urgency.
Since Antetokounmpo returned from injury Dec. 27, the Bucks are 5-5, in the midst of a three-game losing streak and stuck in 11th place in the East at 17-24.
“This is not what we planned on,” Rivers told ESPN. “But teams go through stuff. We had injuries. Denver’s going through injuries right now. Oklahoma’s went 6-6 in the last 12 games. It’s a long season. Everybody overreacts outside the team. Nobody inside overreacts.”
Still, despite Rivers’ protestation, the external noise has continued to grow around the league, with teams wondering how far the Bucks have to fall before they reach a breaking point. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported in December that if the Bucks continue to slide, discussions between Antetokounmpo’s representation and the franchise could escalate.
The Bucks have held firm on their stance that Antetokounmpo will not be made available before the deadline, and team sources told ESPN they are scouring the market for an impact player to pair with their superstar.
“We always manage to pull something off,” a team source told ESPN.
But the stakes are rising with each game they fail to make any upward movement in the standings. Milwaukee is facing one of the most critical transaction periods in franchise history, with a chance to either salvage a disappointing season or pivot into an entirely new era.
With three weeks to go before the trade deadline, Giannis’ future remains in flux. Here are four possible ways this deadline could go for the Bucks and their star.
0:21
Doc Rivers: ‘I have to do a better job with this group’
Doc Rivers “I have to do a better job with this group.”
Stand pat and play out the 2025-26 season
Milwaukee crafted a team that was designed to maximize the strengths of their 31-year-old superstar, spreading the floor with 3-point shooting (the Bucks are second in the NBA in 3-point percentage) with a rim-protecting, stretch center to take advantage of Antetokounmpo’s dominance inside the paint.
With Antetokounmpo in the lineup, the Bucks are 14-13, a .518 winning percentage that would bump them up to eighth in the East.
So, it was no surprise to Rivers that they won four of their first five games following his return.
“Well yeah, Giannis is back,” Rivers said. “We’re starting to run our stuff better. Guys are understanding their roles better.”
The Bucks have leaned on their positive record with Antetokounmpo and the fact that Porter Jr. missed 18 games after getting injured during the first quarter on opening night as reasons for their continued optimism. Porter Jr. has been inconsistent since his return, averaging 18.0 points and 7.7 assists on 45% on the season but with 3.4 turnovers. He’s been one of the least efficient players in isolation all season, shooting 18.5% on isolation plays, which is seventh worst among qualified players.
But the two have played well together. Going into Thursday’s game at San Antonio, in 273 minutes with both on the floor this season, the team has a net rating of plus-20, the seventh-best rating of any two-man combo in the league with at least 250 minutes played.
Overall, the Bucks still soar with Antetokounmpo on the court. Going into Thursday, they were scoring 125.9 points per 100 possessions with Antetokounmpo on the floor, which would be the best offensive rating in the league. Defensively, they are giving up 116.4 points per 100 possessions with the former Defensive Player of the Year, virtually the same as their 116.2 mark this season that ranks 20th in the league.
It lends credence to the vision Bucks general manager Jon Horst laid out during a meeting over the summer in Greece with Antetokounmpo and his representatives. The architect of the 2021 NBA championship expressed confidence in the roster he built, surrounding the nine-time All-Star with shooting, space and a more switchable, versatile defense.
“We’re more in our position for the team to be the most successful,” guard Ryan Rollins said last week. “The more we play in those [roles] and in those situations, those lineups, the better we are … just playing around Giannis and situations like that.”
Upgrade on the margins
Bucks executives watched closely as Atlanta shipped Trae Young to Washington last week in a deal that did not include any pick swaps.
One of Milwaukee’s biggest assets this trade season is its financial flexibility; the Bucks are not in the tax for the first time since the 2019-20 season and not hard capped at either apron, putting them in position to acquire a player with multiple years remaining on his contract.
It’s where rival executives see the biggest chance for opportunity in Milwaukee. The Bucks can accept a larger contract with multiple years beyond this season that an opposing team might be trying to get out from under, such as Miami‘s Andrew Wiggins, who owns a $30 million player option for next season, or Charlotte‘s Miles Bridges, who will make $22.8 million in the 2026-27 season, team and league sources told ESPN.
ESPN also reported last month some of the players the Bucks have discussed who could fit this direction, including Sacramento‘s Zach LaVine and Malik Monk as well as Portland‘s Jerami Grant.
Milwaukee is looking to address its biggest issue all season: It is a disaster whenever Antetokounmpo is not on the court. Sunday is a prime example, as the Bucks lost 108-104 in Denver to a frisky Nuggets team missing its superstar, Nikola Jokic.
Milwaukee outscored Denver by 16 points in the 33 minutes with Antetokounmpo on the floor. The Bucks were outscored by 20 in the 15 minutes with their superstar on the bench.
“Why should we always be playing from behind? Why?” Antetokounmpo asked as he assessed the team’s struggles when he sat. “And when we have a lead, why do we always have to give it up? We got to be able to be mature, get the right shot, don’t be comfortable with any lead that we get and understand how we got to play.”
They are 3-11 without Antetokounmpo in the lineup this season. Their offensive efficiency drops to 107.6 without their star player, which would be the worst mark in the NBA. Their defense gets only slightly worse, giving up 118.7 points per 100 possessions, but that would be one of the five-worst marks in the league.
Several team sources have emphasized to ESPN that the Bucks have been aggressive on the trade market, trying to find a potential upgrade to their roster now and avoid wasting a year of Antetokounmpo’s prime.
However, the Bucks have limited resources available to pull off even the smallest move. They have 11 players making between $2.2 million and $5.1 million and their three largest tradeable contracts — Myles Turner ($25.3 million, but in the first year of a four-year contract), Bobby Portis ($13.5 million with a player option in 2028) and Kyle Kuzma ($21.8 million next season) — are key members of an already thin rotation.
Create a bigger shake-up
Rivers offered an explanation for why his team was drubbed by a short-handed Minnesota team this week. It was the team’s first contest following a four-game, eight-day West Coast road trip and the only home game before they left for the road again Thursday. Rivers believed the team was suffering from dead legs.
His star player rejected the excuse and pointed out what he saw as the gap between the Bucks and the teams near the top of the standings.
“Playing hard. Playing the right way. Playing selfless basketball, which we don’t,” Antetokounmpo said. “Those three things are important. I know they’re important for you to win, but right now, there’s so many things that we can do better.
“But let’s just start by … can we just play harder? Can we just play the right way? Can we create [an] advantage for the next player? Can we just play for our teammates, play for the team, play for ourselves? Let’s start with that. And I think everything else will follow.”
Following Milwaukee’s championship in 2021, Horst has been unafraid of making significant shake-ups over the past few seasons while trying to get the most out of the team around Antetokounmpo.
The Bucks fired Mike Budenholzer after losing in the first round in the 2023 playoffs. Horst acquired Damian Lillard days before training camp in the 2023-24 season but waived him in July, months after he suffered a torn Achilles. It allowed the Bucks to sign Turner this summer. And perhaps his most bold move came in January 2024, when despite a 30-13 record, a Bucks team with championship aspirations fired coach Adrian Griffin.
They turned to Rivers, a coach with a championship, who was known for his experience managing stars. However, the Rivers era in Milwaukee has been a massive disappointment. In three seasons heading into Thursday, the team is 82-76 (.519 winning percentage) with a pair of first-round exits. And the Bucks don’t have many realistic avenues to dramatically alter their roster to pair Antetokounmpo with another star player.
In addition to their financial flexibility, the Bucks have one first-round draft pick available to trade, in either 2031 or 2032. They have been wary in recent trade discussions of making that pick available, and rival executives told ESPN they believe the Bucks will only do so to acquire a star. But no clear target has emerged for Milwaukee, and it’s unclear if any player of that magnitude will be moved next month.
“We’re looking for the next guy,” a team source told ESPN.
The Bucks will also be better positioned to make a major acquisition this summer. On draft night, they could have as many as three tradeable first-round picks available in 2026, 2031 and 2033.
“At some point, you’re just digging deeper and deeper,” an Eastern Conference executive said. “There might not be light at the end of the tunnel. It might just be a hole.”
1:11
Wemby, Spurs blow out Giannis and the Bucks
Victor Wembanyama records a 22-point double-double as the Spurs blow out the Bucks.
Trade Giannis … and launch into a full rebuild
The most extreme option on the table, trading Antetokounmpo, is one Bucks executives have shown no indication of entertaining.
“A trade like this usually takes more than three weeks to build,” an Eastern Conference executive said.
On top of the complexity of a possible trade, the market, even for a player of Antetokounmpo’s caliber, has cooled this season with former All-Star Trae Young being dealt for Corey Kispert and guard CJ McCollum.
“I’m just not sure who the team is that would be willing to go all-in right now for him,” an East scout said. “Teams are looking to hold onto their cards until the summer.”
But this season’s reality might force their hands. The Bucks thought they would ascend when Antetokounmpo returned, but instead they’ve stagnated. Milwaukee still hasn’t recorded a three-game winning streak this season, one of only six teams (Indiana Pacers, Charlotte Hornets, Sacramento Kings, Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz) to fail to do so. And as a result, the Bucks haven’t made up any ground in the Eastern Conference.
They are Hornets at No. 12 than they are of the No. 8-seeded Miami Heat (four games back) — far from the championship standard Antetokounmpo has set for the team and for what he wants for the remainder of his career.
League sources have told ESPN they believe Antetokounmpo will have to put significant pressure on the Bucks to force a trade. However, as a league source reiterated to ESPN, Antetokounmpo values his standing in Milwaukee and doesn’t want to alienate the fan base by requesting to leave.
Still, when asked about his future, Antetokounmpo has repeatedly confirmed his commitment to the Bucks. But he’s also repeatedly left himself an out — giving himself the opportunity to change his mind, and the Bucks’ future with it.
