Why Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks future is being called into question amid ugly start: ‘Teams are circling’

The Milwaukee Bucks are 1-3. A daunting schedule awaits them over the next 10 days. And that fleeting idea of hope — that it’s too soon to panic in such a young season — doesn’t fit the growing confidence across the NBA that Milwaukee’s star player, if things turn ugly enough, could become available. 

There’s already a lot to worry about if you’re a Bucks fan — more, even, than you can see from their so-far shambolic play.

Doc Rivers, ensconced in the job since January, is now just 20-26 as their coach, including the playoffs. Khris Middleton remains sidelined with an injury. The team’s defense has been bad going back to last season, even under Doc. They’ve already lost this season to the Chicago Bulls and Brooklyn Nets, hardly Eastern Conference heavyweights. 

All of this could lead exactly to the place the Bucks organization most fears: Giannis Antetokounmpo in another team’s jersey.

“Teams are circling — and hopeful,” one Western Conference team executive said. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened by the trade deadline,” said a top executive of a team that could be in the mix. 

An Eastern Conference NBA executive has already heard the places believed to be Giannis’ would-be preferred destinations: “The teams I’ve heard are Miami and New York — the Nets, not the Knicks.”

There are also other teams with the means, in theory, to go after a player of Giannis’ caliber. The Oklahoma City Thunder certainly come to mind, and I asked the Eastern Conference executive about the Thunder potentially making a run if Milwaukee’s big man eventually wants out.

“I haven’t heard them mentioned, but yeah, if you’re Milwaukee you might just go, ‘I don’t give a f— what you want. If you want out, we’re getting the best deal we can.’ And Oklahoma City could definitely offer a good one.”

And yes — yes, yes, yes — it’s early. It is not yet November. But not so early that some rival teams are eying Milwaukee’s struggles with anything other than glee.

There’s also another brewing backstory in Milwaukee that could push Giannis toward an exit. Many people in the NBA have heard that Rivers, known for his in-house political maneuverings, has already won over the owner enough that he’s now the key voice in basketball decisions.

“They tell me it’s up to Doc now, that they’re going to wait 20 games and then see what Doc wants,” said one person familiar with the Bucks’ front-office inner-workings. “It sounds like it’s a mess.”

As for a Giannis trade, he added fuel to this fire himself a few weeks ago when, talking to The Athletic’s Sam Amick, he alluded to the idea of being traded if things go badly this season.

“If we don’t win this year, would you get fired?” the Bucks star asked a staffer, according to Amick’s reporting. “Do you have it in the back of your mind, like, ‘(What) if this year doesn’t go well?’ Yeah, if we don’t win a championship, I might get traded. Yeah, this is the job we live. This is the world we’re living in. It’s everybody.”

All of this drama, on and potentially off the court, could play perfectly into the hands of teams who have been waiting to make a run at Giannis for years. He’s a former MVP and still a top-three NBA player. If at any point you can add “disgruntled” to the list, things could move quickly.

Giannis’ 2021 NBA Championship triumph doused some of those daydreams. So did the three-year, $186 million contract extension he signed a year ago.

That’s why even these early-season struggles — and they could get very pronounced in the next couple of weeks — have the potential for profound repercussions. They could reset what’s possible for teams that covet, or have the assets to trade for, a true superstar.

The Bucks play the Grizzlies on Thursday night, and if Ja Morant is healthy, they could easily wake up Friday at 1-4. So far, their only meager win came against a Sixers team without Joel Embiid and Paul George. The next five games after Memphis go: Cavs, Cavs, Jazz, Knicks, Celtics.

A Doc Rivers doubter might be inclined to close their eyes and picture, come Nov. 11, a 2-8 Bucks team. 

That would be brutal for a Bucks organization reeling after its big, bold gamble went awry last season. The trade for Damian Lillard was not the get-us-to-the-next-level move many expected. The exit of Jrue Holiday in that deal didn’t just undermine the defense and undercut the kind of winner’s alchemy and crunch-time reliability this team now lacks — it ended up bolstering and helping build the Celtics’ still-rising juggernaut. 

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And then there’s Rivers.

He failed to deliver on the massive talent in Los Angeles with the Clippers and those players, like their coach, eventually scattered elsewhere. He went to Philly and that team, too, came up short — and watched many of its pieces move on or become punchlines: James Harden in and then out, Ben Simmons and Tobias Harris traveling to other teams and going from high-priced talent to cautionary tales.

Does Rivers bear any responsibility? Yes. Has he ever shown an ounce of being willing to accept it? History seems to suggest, ah, no. If you’re Giannis, with your 30th birthday around the corner and the league looking more and more daunting each season, are you trusting Doc Rivers to right this ship and ensure your legacy? 

We’ve all seen that when Rivers’ teams come apart at the seams, they tend to stay that way. In Doc’s world, dysfunction can be contagious. Dread can become the norm. And players often want out — or, looking back, wish they had wanted it badly enough.

For the Bucks, this mix in Milwaukee is not ideal in a league in which contracts mean nothing if a star wakes up one morning and wants to be somewhere else.

At head coach they have a politician pretending to be a magician, one whose tricks have long since lost their luster. Lillard is not yet the fit with Giannis we expected. The defense is still bad. The offense has stagnated. The depth is paltry, the team’s third star hurt, again, and the vibes are veering toward horrific. They look as far from a championship-level team as you could imagine given where they thought they’d be one year ago today.

Early days? Too soon? Nothing to see here?

That’s what has-been and what-should-have-been teams always say, just before their superstar announces those three brutal words: “I want out.”