Let the broader basketball-discussing world focus its collective attention on the question of what a future without Giannis Antetokounmpo might look like for the Milwaukee Bucks. Doc Rivers and Co. have a more pressing concern on their hands: Figuring out how to better navigate the present without him.
Hours after a fresh (or, at least, reheated) round of reports that Antetokounmpo and his agent have “started conversations” about whether his “best fit is staying or elsewhere” began to circulate, the two-time NBA Most Valuable Player hit the floor in a heap three minutes into the Bucks’ Wednesday meeting with the East-leading Detroit Pistons, and he stayed there. After walking gingerly off the court and back to the locker room, Antetokounmpo wouldn’t return.
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Given the nature of what appeared to be a non-contact injury, many NBA fans who’ve seen too many superstars suffer catastrophic lower-leg injuries of late began fearing for the worst. Thankfully, a follow-up MRI ruled that out: Antetokounmpo suffered a right calf strain, and while the Bucks have yet to provide a timetable for his anticipated return, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported he’s “expected to be sidelined for approximately two to four weeks.”
Compared to the worst-case scenarios pondered during those first heart-stopping moments after Antetokounmpo went down, this diagnosis seems like cause for celebration. Considering how perilous it can be to come back too soon from a strained calf, though, it wouldn’t be shocking for the powers that be in Milwaukee to err on the side of caution in getting Giannis back in action, and for his absence to veer toward the longer end of that projected window.
Giannis Antetokounmpo reacts after an apparent injury against the Detroit Pistons during the first quarter at Fiserv Forum on Dec. 3, 2025.
(Patrick McDermott via Getty Images)
Two weeks away would only cost Antetokounmpo five games, thanks to how the Bucks’ schedule spaces out around the upcoming Emirates NBA Cup knockout rounds. Four weeks would cost him 12 — which, since Antetokounmpo has already missed six games this season, would mean he couldn’t reach the 65-game minimum threshold to retain eligibility for year-end individual awards like Most Valuable Player and Defensive Player of the Year, as well as recognition on the All-NBA and All-Defensive Teams. His exclusion would be massive, and rare: Antetokounmpo has finished in the top four in MVP voting after each of the last seven seasons, and has earned an All-NBA nod every year since 2017, including seven consecutive First Team selections.
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Antetokounmpo was well on his way to cementing his spot at or near the top of those ballots yet again through the opening weeks of the 2025-26 NBA season, turning in arguably the best start of his Hall of Fame career. Heading into Wednesday’s action, Giannis ranked fourth in the NBA in scoring, averaging 30.6 points in 30.8 minutes per game on 63.9% shooting; was ninth in rebounding, hauling in 10.7 boards a night; and 24th in assists, dishing 6.4 helpers per game, right behind reigning MVP point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Playing largely as Milwaukee’s primary ball-handler and half-court initiator, Antetokounmpo has notched the dime on 41.6% of his teammates’ buckets during his time on the court, by far the highest assist rate of his career. The brand of high-usage, high-assist, low-turnover ball he’s been playing belongs in the context of elite offensive engines like LeBron James, Luka Dončić, Trae Young, and the peak versions of Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook and Ja Morant.
Combine that with his customary devastating interior scoring — he leads the NBA with 338 points in the paint in 495 minutes played; the four players immediately after him have all played more than 700 — and the massive value he adds as an interior deterrent, holding opponents by 47.6% shooting at the rim when he’s the nearest defender (the fourth-stingiest mark among 120 players to contest at least 50 up-close shots), and you’ve got one unbelievably valuable player. Depending on how you define your terms, perhaps the most valuable one: The Bucks have outscored opponents by 8.5 points per 100 possessions with Giannis on the floor, according to Cleaning the Glass, and have been outscored by 10.4 points-per-100 with him off it. That 18.9 points-per-100 differential is the third-largest on/off swing in the NBA among players who’ve logged at least 400 minutes, behind only Nikola Jokić and Pascal Siakam, doing yeoman’s work on the injury-ravaged Pacers.
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The Bucks have the point differential of a 60-win team with Giannis on the floor and an 18-win team without him; they’re 8-7 in games he finishes, 1-1 in games he’s left early due to injury, and 1-5 in games he’s missed. They can’t just replace him. So: What can they do?
Well, for starters, they can try to replicate the formula they found on Wednesday — when, BTW, they actually won the game — by leaning more heavily into the shot creation of their guards, and finding out just how significant a workload the combination of rising playmaker Ryan Rollins and the just-returned Kevin Porter Jr. can shoulder.
The Rollins-Porter backcourt combined for 48 points and 15 assists in the win over Detroit — a strong showing for a partnership that, thanks to a left ankle sprain that kept Porter sidelined for more than a month, has really only just begun. The Bucks have outscored opponents by 24 points in the 58 minutes that Rollins and Porter have played together, scoring efficiently and sharing the ball well.
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Both Rollins (a team-high 12.5 drives per game) and Porter (11.3) can get downhill and put pressure on the rim, which could prove valuable for a Bucks team that, even with Giannis’ metronomic marauding, ranks just 14th in the share of its shots that come inside the restricted area — a rate that, as you’d expect, plunges to near-bottom-of-the-league levels without him on the floor. And if those forays to the paint can produce kickout passes to waiting shooters, so much the better: No player has assisted on more 3-pointers per 100 possessions than Antetokounmpo, according to PBP Stats, and shooters like AJ Green (a scorching 49.7% from deep on just under seven attempts per game, with the bulk of the helpers coming from Giannis) will need someone else to set ’em up so they can knock ’em down.
Generating as many of those sorts of setups as possible will likely be vital to Milwaukee’s chances of staying afloat offensively in Antetokounmpo’s absence. The Bucks made only 13 3-pointers against Detroit on Wednesday, but they launched 44, tied for their third-highest total of the season. Their second-highest total, 46, came Oct. 30 against the Warriors — another game Giannis missed, and that saw Rollins author a breakout performance against his former club in a 120-110 win.
Without a floor-tilting offensive centerpiece like Antetokounmpo, Rivers’ best bet might be encouraging Rollins, Porter, Green and Gary Trent Jr., as well as pick-and-pop targets Myles Turner and Bobby Portis, to fire away as early as often as possible. Cranking up the 3-point volume and, with it, the offensive variance in the game could improve the chances of a Bucks team that has allowed 118.6 points-per-100 with Antetokounmpo off the floor this season — a figure that goes up to an even 120 points-per-100 when Giannis sits and Kyle Kuzma is on the floor. (A 120 defensive rating, for context, would put the Bucks shoulder-to-shoulder with the 6-16 Charlotte Hornets for 20th in the NBA over the course of the full season.)
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Kuzma started the last five games for which the big fella has been unavailable. (The quintet of Turner, Kuzma, Green, Porter and Rollins has played just two minutes together this season.) He’s looked more comfortable and been more productive as a reserve, though. With Taurean Prince sidelined after surgery to repair a herniated disc in his neck, and with the prospect of extending Portis’ minutes too much unlikely to serve as a salve for Milwaukee on either end, you wonder whether Rivers will decide to ride with what worked Wednesday and take a longer look at little-used reserve big man Jericho Sims, who seized the opportunity after Giannis’ surprise exit by chipping in a stunning 15 points and 14 rebounds in 30 minutes off the bench.
An über-athletic, offensive board-crashing rim runner whose minutes and opportunities waxed and waned under Tom Thibodeau in New York, Sims would offer a different element for Milwaukee, which has tended to operate with stretch-5s and eschew the offensive glass in favor of getting back in transition defense (long a staple of Rivers’ teams). He might not offer quite enough polish and versatility on either end of the floor to cement himself as a rotation piece for a Bucks team that has its sights set on trying to compete for titles … but for a squad looking to just batten down the hatches and weather the storm while its superstar is unavailable, every option with potential upside merits an examination.
That, however faint, is the silver lining of the gray cloud that settled over the Bucks on Wednesday, first in the form of the renewed reporting over Giannis’ prospective exit and then in the much more tangible form of his actual departure due to injury. Rivers, general manager Jon Horst, the rest of Milwaukee’s braintrust and the remainder of the players in the Bucks locker room now have several weeks with which to renew the exploration of what they’re capable of in a Giannis-less context. To see just how much of the offense Porter Jr. and Rollins can commandeer, and how effectively they can do it; whether the likes of Green, Kuzma and even Sims can step comfortably into larger roles; and whether Rivers, who has come under fire during this underwhelming start to the season, can push the right buttons to steady the ship while Antetokounmpo’s on the shelf.
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“The reason that this [reporting on Antetokounmpo’s future] is out is because we’re not playing well,” Rivers told reporters before Wednesday’s game. “So, let’s just call a spade a spade. We’re not playing well. We had a tough loss the other night, and so now this is the subject matter. We feel very good about this team, but we have to play better. We have to win games. And until we start winning games, this is going to be out here. We rip off 10 in a row, [and] my guess is this is magically going to disappear.”
The Bucks’ next 10 games include home meetings with the 76ers, Celtics and Raptors, visits to Detroit and Brooklyn, and a five-game road trip that will take them from Minnesota to Indiana, Memphis and Chicago before wrapping up in Charlotte. It’s not the most unforgiving slate you’ve ever seen; it also features a number of teams that have been playing better than the Bucks have of late, especially without Antetokounmpo in the lineup.
Stay afloat over these next few weeks, with Rollins and/or Porter Jr. showing enough shot-creation/playmaking upside to introduce the possibility that there’s a second breakout star on the roster, and maybe the impending “resolution” on the reported discussions leans toward the warm and familiar embrace of inertia: Giannis deciding this is a team worth sticking around for, particularly if the Bucks are willing to pony up that four-year, $275 million maximum-salaried contract extension come next October. Fall apart like they did in losing four straight when he was sidelined by the adductor strain — the losing streak that kicked up all that nasty “was it actually a trade request or not?” chatter — and maybe Antetokounmpo finds himself actually plainly reading aloud that purported writing on the wall.
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“We’ll rally behind him, he’ll rally for us,” Green told reporters after Wednesday’s win. “Just gotta get healthy and try to hold it down as long as we can.”
