Συντονιστής: Captains
Και πουλεναρα Gary Trent που καθαρισε την μπουγαδαSteveNashidis έγραψε: ↑Τετ Ιαν 01, 2025 2:31 amΜεγάλη εμφάνιση από Γιάννη. Δικαιωματικά θα μπορούσε να είναι και στην κούρσα για MVP.
Από την άλλη κακός συνεχίζει ο Χαλιμπερτον
Ίσως έχει θέμα με κάποιον μικρό τραυματισμό.
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Following the devastation of seeing Damian Lillard go down with a torn Achilles in Sunday’s Game 4, the Milwaukee Bucks’ home locker room at Fiserv Forum quickly cleared out. Veterans such as Pat Connaughton and Bobby Portis stuck around to talk to reporters about Lillard, one of their favorite teammates, and how the team would attempt to win Tuesday’s Game 5 of their first-round series against the Indiana Pacers without him. Eventually, Giannis Antetokounmpo was the last player left in the room.
Directly in front of the former MVP’s stall sat a white board with only one thing written on it: 15. Four seasons ago, on the way to winning the franchise’s first NBA championship in 50 seasons, the Bucks had developed a cherished tradition after postseason wins — impact players taking a marker and scrawling how many victories they still needed to get to the requisite 16 to hoist the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It was a visual reminder that their championship aspirations were within reach.
On Sunday, that number was a sign of how far away this group would remain.Two days later, the Bucks dropped Game 5 in Indianapolis in heartbreaking fashion, their third-straight first-round exit after making at least the conference semifinals in four consecutive years from 2019 to 2022. They now enter another offseason wondering how to build around one of the best players in the sport.
Since the start of this season, Antetokounmpo had been making one thing clear: He was done with first-round flops.
At media day last September, Antetokounmpo was asked whether he believed the team’s latest additions could help the Bucks return to the Eastern Conference finals, or even the NBA Finals.
A smile came across his face.
“First of all, conference finals or finals?” Antetokounmpo responded. “We gotta get out of the first round. Let’s start with that.”
Antetokounmpo is a playful personality who sometimes reveals his most honest reflections with a dose of humor, but good jokes tend to contain harsh truths. And while this was a lighthearted comment that underscored the Bucks’ playoff struggles, with Antetokounmpo hopeful that the Bucks could finally contend in the East again after enjoying their first full offseason with coach Doc Rivers and co-star Lillard, it was their sobering reality, too. As he would say in no uncertain terms a few days later during training camp, anything less than a deep playoff run was unacceptable.
“This year, a challenge for me is to be healthy,” he told The Athletic then. “A challenge for me is to play in the playoffs, to get out of the f—ing first round. Assert myself even more.
“Every year for me is important because one day, I’m going to be 35 or 36 or 38 and I’m going to be like, ‘Oh, my prime just went, and I wasn’t able to do something.’ So dominate.”
Yet seven months later, here they are — again.
By falling to Indiana 119-118 in overtime in Game 5 on Tuesday, the once-mighty Bucks sparked a summer of speculation about what’s next for the two-time MVP.
Add in the devastating news about Lillard, whose left Achilles’ tendon tear in Game 4 will likely cost him most of next season while making their road ahead that much more challenging, and the gravity of Antetokounmpo’s training camp message is surely being felt within the Bucks’ walls.
The reasons for falling short are many, from ill-timed injuries in the past four postseasons to roster decisions that simply didn’t pan out, but the results are the results. Since winning 16 playoff games in 2021 to capture Milwaukee’s first NBA championship since 1971, and second in franchise history, the Bucks have won a combined 11 playoff games over the last four seasons and made the East semifinals once.
The question now, one that recently extended general manager Jon Horst must answer, is what the Bucks might look like when they return.
In the hallway outside the locker room assigned to the Bucks at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena, Andre Jackson Jr. conferred with Rajon Rondo about what the team’s coaching consultant was seeing on the floor in the first half of the Dec. 17 NBA Cup Final. Jackson had the task of defending Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and was handling the assignment well, given that the Thunder’s MVP candidate had made just four of his 13 first-half field goal attempts.
With a little extra guidance from Rondo, Jackson led the Bucks’ defensive effort that held Gilgeous-Alexander to 21 points on 8-of-24 shooting and the Thunder to only 81 points in a Milwaukee victory. The Thunder, who would end the regular season with an NBA-best 68-14 record, scored fewer than 100 points in only three games this year. Their lowest-scoring effort in any other game was 98 points.
With the 6-foot-6 Jackson taking on the toughest assignments each night and full-court pressing the league’s top perimeter scorers, the Bucks had found a way to ugly up games with their defense and beat the league’s best. Milwaukee believed it had found its groove after a 2-8 stumble out of the gates and an identity it could use the rest of the season.
“We just kept talking about our size,” Rivers said after the game. “And the slower the game gets, the bigger we get.”
From Nov. 16 to Feb. 12, the final game before the All-Star break, Jackson started in all 40 games he played, serving as the Bucks’ defensive tone-setter on the perimeter. But following the break, and with new addition Kyle Kuzma to work in, Rivers excised Jackson from his rotation because of the team’s poor offensive numbers when he shared the floor with Antetokounmpo. In the Bucks’ first-round loss to Indiana, Jackson did not play outside of garbage time, despite the Bucks’ inability to find perimeter defenders who could consistently keep the Pacers out of the lane.
Playing Jackson would not have saved Milwaukee, but his season is an example of the Bucks’ inability to build meaningful regular-season habits that could help the team make a deep postseason run.
Those examples were everywhere as the team seemed to make a relatively aimless pass through the regular season.
Before the season began, the Bucks knew that their big three of Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Khris Middleton would be key to competing with the best teams in the Eastern Conference come playoff time.
But the Bucks tried a starting lineup featuring that trio for only three games, which happened to be three games in which Antetokounmpo and Lillard struggled to score as they returned from an illness, before deciding that the offensive rhythm was off with all three on the floor. Across 18 games from Middleton, who missed the first 21 games of the season after offseason surgeries on both ankles, the big three outscored opponents by 7.4 points per 100 possessions, but only played 197 minutes together before Middleton was traded to the Washington Wizards for Kuzma.
The whole idea behind acquiring Lillard on the eve of last season was to become an elite offensive team. In the playoffs, the Bucks had not been able to score enough as teams loaded up on Antetokounmpo, while Middleton and Jrue Holiday were asked to take on a larger scoring load. With Lillard, Milwaukee was going to change its formula and become an elite offense team while playing enough defense to win playoff games.
But the Bucks never found a way to become elite offensively, despite getting career seasons from their two players who had been named to the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.
Antetokounmpo averaged 30.4 points, 11.9 rebounds and 6.5 assists per game while shooting 60.1 percent from the field. Lillard added 24.9 points and 7.1 assists per game while posting the fourth-highest effective field-goal percentage (54.7) of his 13-year career. Milwaukee ended the season with the NBA’s top 3-point shooting percentage (38.7). And yet, the Bucks finished the season 10th in offensive rating and were 15th in the category before Lillard missed the final 14 games of the regular season.
As the Bucks cycled through ideas and players during the regular season, they never found a formula for elite play. Whether it was the front office’s fault for not finding the right players or the coaching staff’s inability to put them in the right positions remains an open question.
It does not seem to have publicly shaken the most important person’s faith in leadership. Despite the struggles to maximize talent over the last two seasons, Antetokounmpo was effusive when asked about Rivers after Tuesday’s game.
“I love Doc,” Antetokounmpo said. “I think he’s a great human being. Great dude, knows how to uplift your spirit, knows always the right thing to say at the right moment. You guys have been around him, he’s been in the NBA for 50 years …
“I just love him. Not only as a coach, as a person. I think he’s a great person. If you’re not a good person and a good coach, you can’t be around for this long. I love working with him.”
Everything changed when Lillard went for that offensive rebound in the first quarter of Game 4 on Sunday.
The Bucks’ offseason focus shifted from finding better systemized solutions and potentially retooling the roster around Antetokounmpo to trying to figure out if the decade-long push to use every available asset to contend for championships during Antetokounmpo’s prime had finally reached its breaking point.
Building a contender with Lillard sidelined as he recovers from a torn left Achilles’ tendon will be, barring a miracle, nearly impossible next season. His $54.1 million contract will take up roughly 35 percent of next season’s projected $154.6 million salary cap. And while league sources say Lillard is optimistic about a speedy recovery, the Bucks cannot plan for the future expecting the nine-time All-Star, who turns 35 in July, to fully return to his pre-injury form next season.
Had Lillard remained healthy, and had the Bucks still fallen in the first round, league sources say there would have been discussions about whether Lillard wanted to remain in Milwaukee. The relationship between Antetokounmpo and Lillard is strong, as is the respect level, but the imperfections of their on-court pairing remained in their second season together. And with the group’s collective limitations growing more evident by the month, a conversation was looming about whether Lillard and the Bucks might be better off parting ways.
Depending on his trade market, that potential pathway could have provided the Bucks with a new plan — one that revived the roster with depth while putting the ball back in Antetokounmpo’s hands even more than before, something he is known to welcome. Lillard, who earned his ninth All-Star berth in February, had still shown an ability to be elite. If the right deal was there to be had, it could have been a win-win for both sides. But the injury renders that option nearly impossible.
Kuzma makes roughly $7 million less than Middleton, so swapping them at the deadline helped the Bucks get under the second apron and provided more options in the offseason. One such tool is a trade exception worth roughly $7.2 million, which would allow the Bucks to take in a player with a salary of that size or smaller. Avoiding the second apron means the team’s future first-round pick isn’t frozen, so it can trade either its 2031 or 2032 first-round picks and it will now have access to the $14.1 million non-taxpayer midlevel exception, which can be split among multiple players.
But while swapping Middleton for Kuzma gave the Bucks more options this offseason, Horst and the Bucks still have few avenues available to upgrade talent this offseason. And that’s before considering the players who might end up leaving.
Antetokounmpo, Lillard, Kuzma and Tyler Smith are the only players with fully guaranteed contracts. Bobby Portis, Pat Connaughton and Kevin Porter Jr. have player options for next season. AJ Green, Jackson and Chris Livingston have non-guaranteed contracts that the Bucks will have the option to guarantee after the initial free-agency frenzy in July. Ryan Rollins is a restricted free agent, but the rest of the roster, including significant contributors such as Brook Lopez, Gary Trent Jr., and Taurean Prince will be unrestricted free agents.
The Bucks have various rights that give them the ability to retain some of the players already on the roster, but tough decisions will need to be made. And regardless of what comes next, the prospect of the Bucks being any better than a low-level playoff team, or perhaps even a Play-In team, seems unlikely — even with Antetokounmpo’s brilliance.
So that leaves one massive question, one the Bucks and everyone else in the Association want to know: What might that mean about how Antetokounmpo sees his situation?
For the last seven years, Horst and the Bucks have delivered a roster that seemed to satisfy Antetokounmpo’s primary desire: to be in a position to compete for a championship. At the start of the run, the Bucks weren’t just competing for titles, they were posting the Eastern Conference’s best record and entering the postseason among the betting favorites to win the title.
For the last two seasons, they have been closer to the fringe of contention. With two Top 75 talents on the roster, there was still a belief that the Bucks could get it done if they stayed healthy enough to get a chance in the postseason.
Along the way, Antetokounmpo made his commitment to the Bucks clear by signing max extensions in 2020 and 2023 while raising occasional concern with public comments about his future.
“This is my team, and it’s going to forever be my team,” he told The New York Times in August 2023, less than two months before the Lillard trade. “I don’t forget people that were there for me and allowed me to be great and to showcase who I am to the world and gave me the platform. But we have to win another one. …Winning a championship comes first. I don’t want to be 20 years on the same team and don’t win another championship.”
With Lillard expected to miss most of the 2025-26 season, the Bucks’ standing in the NBA world comes into question for the first time since they first arrived among the NBA’s elites in 2018. That means they will need to hear what Antetokounmpo thinks.
The organization’s recent re-commitment to Horst means Antetokounmpo will have a familiar and trusted partner to discuss such sensitive matters. While some rival executives were surprised that the Bucks would extend Horst amid all this uncertainty and underwhelming play, the ownership group opted for stability. Horst, who league sources say was in consideration for front office positions in Phoenix and New Orleans before doing this deal, has worked with Antetokounmpo since he arrived from Greece in 2013, and the two remain close all these years later.
Of course, several sports media personalities have already decided that Antetokounmpo will be playing for a new team next season. Before the postseason even began, former NBA player Marcus Morris went on an ESPN morning show and picked Antetokounmpo’s next team for him (Miami). On Tuesday morning, 10 hours before the Bucks tipped Game 5 in Indianapolis, another ex-player, Carlos Boozer, declared on the same network that the Bucks’ all-time leading scorer had played his final game for the Bucks (he picked the Lakers as his next spot). In the wake of the Bucks’ loss to the Pacers, and with the myriad logistical issues outlined above, The Athletic’s John Hollinger argued that the Bucks’ best move here is to trade Antetokounmpo.
But what those people say and think does not matter here. Nor does it matter if an opposing team has made Antetokounmpo its Plan A, B and C for the upcoming offseason. It’s the opinion of one person and one organization that matters this offseason.
In a vacuum, Giannis’ Game 5 performance against the Pacers was indicative of his overall dilemma. He had 30 points, 20 rebounds, 13 assists, two blocks and two steals — a stat line that had never been accomplished in league history — yet his team still lost. Antetokounmpo is known to be at his most comfortable with the ball in his hands, a point he made with an analogy to a cookie jar during the Bucks’ eight-game win streak to close out the regular season and again after Tuesday’s loss.
“I always felt like that would be my last phase,” he said. “As a guy that can play-make and can set up the team and be like a legit point forward out there … I’ve seen one of the greatest players, LeBron James, being the best at it.
“You see a lot of people that can handle the ball and put their teammates in the right place and play-make and make the team better. It’s something I enjoy to do. If I have the opportunity to come back next year and be able to do that, I would love it. I think I can be good. I can help the team in that way.”
As he considers his future, Antetokounmpo will have to decide if he would enjoy the challenge of performing the Sisyphean task of dragging a shorthanded team to wins on a nightly basis without a strong chance of contending for a title.
Antetokounmpo has two more guaranteed years on his deal and a player option for the 2027-28 season, so he is under team control. The Bucks would not have to move him, but if he decided to demand a trade, Milwaukee would be forced to consider the prospect of a future without its beloved franchise and community centerpiece.
As the Bucks’ season neared an end, league sources told The Athletic that Antetokounmpo hadn’t focused on anything beyond this season because, true to his ultra-competitive form, he was doing everything in his power to help the Bucks advance. As Antetokounmpo made clear after Game 5, the discussion about what might come next was for another day.
“Look, I’m not gonna do this,” Antetokounmpo said Tuesday when asked if he believed he could win another championship in Milwaukee. “I’m not gonna do this. I know how this is gonna work. Whatever I say, I know how it’s going to translate.
“I don’t know, man, I wish I was still playing. I wish I was still competing and going back to Milwaukee (for Game 6). I don’t know.”
Καιρός ήταν και όχι, δεν πρέπει να μείνει.mixalisgate7 έγραψε: ↑Δευ Μάιος 12, 2025 3:48 pmΟ Γιάννης για πρώτη φορά στην καριέρα του σκέφτεται για το αν πρέπει να μείνει στους Μπακς.
Ωραίο ποστ
Νομίζω έχω εντελώς διαφορετική γνώμη για το μέλλον των Μπακς δυστυχώς 
Νομίζω έχουν ένα μόνο first rounder για το 2032 (;), κανένα second rounder, τα συμβόλαια τους είναι είτε minimums είτε τίποτα αχρείαστα (βλ. Kuzma), άρα imo είναι πολύ πολύ δύσκολο να καταφέρουν να φέρουν κάτι καλό. ). Πάντως είτε μείνει είτε φύγει ο Γιάννης οι Μπακς έχουν μεγάλη ανηφόρα εκτός αν με κάποιο (επίσης σκληρό) τρόπο τον στείλουν σε ομάδα που θα είναι κακή όσο ο Γιάννης θα είναι εκεί (σχεδόν αδύνατο το βρίσκω).
We’ve seen this movie before.
Giannis Antetokounmpo gets antsy, sending signals that he’s not so sure about his future with the Milwaukee Bucks. Longtime general manager Jon Horst gets aggressive, shocking the NBA world with the kind of major move that few, if any, saw coming. Antetokounmpo recommits and leaves all those rival teams that were chasing the two-time MVP crestfallen.
The Bucks, which plan to waive future Hall of Famer Damian Lillard so that they can add former Indiana Pacers big man Myles Turner on a four-year, $107 million deal, are betting on that familiar final scene unfolding again with Antetokounmpo onboard.
As star player sagas go, the league has rarely, if ever, seen something as drastic and daring as this. The Bucks, well aware they’re on the knife’s edge here when it comes to Antetokounmpo’s long-term plans, decided to cut ties with Lillard, a 34-year-old nine-time All-Star and seven-time All-NBA team member whose Achilles’ tendon tear in late April derailed their plans.
Never mind that they still owe him a combined $112 million that will now be stretched across their salary-cap books for the next five seasons (and paid to Lillard in the next two).
That amount is not only unprecedented as the largest contract ever to be “stretched,” but it is also nearly three times larger than the previous leader (the Knicks waived and stretched Joakim Noah when he had $37.8 million remaining on his deal in 2018). Historically speaking, gambles don’t get any bigger than this.
And the Bucks did it all to land Turner, the 29-year-old who so many believed would re-sign with the Pacers after their surprising NBA Finals run and who might be able to help the Bucks return to relevance in the up-for-grabs Eastern Conference.
Their future with the greatest Bucks player of all time depends on it.
The question now is whether Antetokounmpo, who has made it so clear that he wants to win more titles during these prime years, sees this latest stunner as the kind of calculated risk that’s worth co-signing. He did just that when Horst landed Jrue Holiday in 2020 (en route to the 2021 title) and again with the Lillard trade in 2023.
It’s yet unclear how the Turner move might change the perspective of Antetokounmpo, who opted not to shut down rumors about his future by dodging the question in his news conference following the Bucks’ postseason elimination at the hands of the Pacers on April 29.
Antetokounmpo has three seasons remaining on his current deal, which includes a player option (worth $62.7 million) for the 2027-28 campaign. And while he hasn’t done any public posturing that would indicate he wants out of Milwaukee, his choice to stay quiet while the league-wide speculation swirls has been widely seen as a sign of uncertainty.
Yet even before the Turner addition, Horst had pulled off a dizzying set of transactions during the first 36 hours of free agency, intending to restore Antetokounmpo’s faith in what might lie ahead.
Super sixth-man Bobby Portis agreed to re-sign on a team-friendly deal (three years, $44 million), which paled in comparison to some of his market comps (Minnesota’s Naz Reid got a five-year, $125 million deal). They managed to hold onto Kevin Porter Jr., Gary Trent Jr., Taurean Prince and Jericho Sims, reaching two-year deals with all four. The loss of beloved big man Brook Lopez to the Clippers was, eventually, mitigated by Turner’s arrival.
Amid all those concerns that the Bucks roster would be bare by the time Antetokounmpo took a long look at the Milwaukee landscape, there is reason to believe this team could contend. Especially given what’s happened elsewhere in the East.
With the Pacers already devastated by Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles tear, and the Bucks making matters worse for Indiana by luring a pivotal piece of its core in Turner, the reigning East champs have already taken a serious step back.
The Boston Celtics have also been decimated, with Jayson Tatum suffering an Achilles tear during their title defense and the team subsequently conducting a mini-teardown. From Cleveland to New York, Orlando, Atlanta, Detroit and beyond, there is no clear-cut favorite. The hope from Milwaukee’s standpoint is quite clear: Antetokounmpo squints hard enough to see some light at the end of this Bucks tunnel.
With the stakes of this situation so high, and Antetokounmpo working through all of Tuesday’s initial confusion while contemplating what comes next, the Bucks’ latest make-or-break move was nothing if not audacious. Again.
And now it’s Turner’s turn to play the part of pivotal Bucks newcomer.
That he was available at all was a monumental surprise.
Turner, who was drafted 11th by Indiana in 2015, was the longest-tenured player on a team that was some 41 minutes away from winning it all less than two weeks ago. Heading into the summer as an unrestricted free agent, Turner indicated his intention was always to return to Indiana, and Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said after the finals that re-signing him was the team’s top priority.
However, Indiana was already facing the likelihood next season of playing without Haliburton, who tore his Achilles about seven minutes into Game 7 of the finals, and decided it didn’t want to “overpay” for Turner now, a team source said. The Pacers had signaled a willingness to pay the luxury tax as the offseason neared, but changed that stance in the wake of Haliburton’s injury. A league source said the Pacers’ offer to Turner topped out at around $23 million per year, short of what he got from Milwaukee.
Turner’s struggles late in the postseason figured into the equation. He had a difficult time against both the New York Knicks in the conference finals and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the finals, averaging around 12 points and 3.5 rebounds in those two series, shooting 47 percent from the field (25 percent from 3-point range).
“It’s not really all that stunning when you think about it,” said the Pacers source, who added that the team doesn’t plan to tank next year with Haliburton sidelined. “It’s a bigger deal because it’s Milwaukee — if Myles had gone to Denver or the Clippers, it would be (perceived) totally different as far as (the Pacers) are concerned.”
Turner played in 642 regular-season games for the Pacers, averaging 14.1 points, 6.8 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game. He’s the team’s franchise leader in blocks, is sixth in games played and eighth in minutes played.
In the short term, the move is a significant blow to a Central Division rival and one that strengthens the Bucks.
In essentially swapping Lopez for Turner, Milwaukee gains a center who is eight years younger and impacts games in a similar manner. He’s a shot-blocking, 3-point-shooting big man, one with even more mobility than Lopez could muster at his late stage.
For Lillard, this is a welcome ending to his time in Milwaukee. As The Athletic reported in early May, Lillard and the Bucks were likely going to discuss whether he wanted to remain with the team after last season if he had remained healthy.
From the frustrations that came with the on-court fit to Lillard struggling at times while being so far from his children in Portland, Ore., it was no secret that he wasn’t long for Milwaukee. However, his injury changed everything, leaving the Bucks, who had few draft assets and no cap room, with seemingly no way out when it came to putting impact players alongside Antetokounmpo. According to league sources, the Bucks informed Lillard of this potential win-win plan on Sunday.
League sources say Lillard is elated with the Bucks’ decision, as it puts him in the kind of basketball-first position that few All-Star-level players, if any, have experienced in league history. In short, he’ll be able to join the contending team of his choosing, either sometime soon or perhaps next summer, without the financial aspect of the decision playing a significant part.
With Lillard owed $54.1 million for this coming season and $58.4 million in the 2026-27 campaign, there is a salary offset for any team that acquires him during those two years. And while the Bucks would surely prefer that Lillard sign for a significant salary as a way to alleviate some of their financial burden, the reality is that he could sign for a minimum-salary deal and still be paid the same amount. That’s a powerful place to be when you’re a future Hall of Famer in your mid-30s who has never won a championship.
Not surprisingly, league sources say Lillard received calls from several contending teams quickly after the news of his Bucks’ ending broke. League sources say the Golden State Warriors, Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are known to be among the many teams that would have interest in doing a deal sooner rather than later. The question is whether he wants to sign with a team now and rehabilitate while under their care or wait until next summer to reassess the situation. The Bucks, who will have to operate with Lillard’s money clogging their books for the next five seasons, are banking on this latest roll of the dice paying off.
As the salary cap increases in the coming years, the percentage of the cap that dead money takes up will decrease and become less painful for the Bucks, but it’s not going anywhere. It is a reality that Horst, who was given a contract extension shortly after this past regular season, was willing to accept the challenge once again to put the Bucks in the conversation with the other teams vying for the East’s top spot.
But the possibility of peril has never been greater.
With the previous trades for Holiday and then Lillard, the Bucks stripped away nearly all of their draft assets to put themselves in the conversation for the last seven seasons. Now, Horst has taken it a step further. Not only do the Bucks have limited draft capital moving forward, but they also have $22.5 million less in cap space than they could have had in each of the next five seasons. They’ll be paying for Lillard in the 2029-30 season, one or even two years after Turner has completed the contract he will soon sign to join the Bucks.
Even with the dangers laid bare for all to see, Horst has decided to once again take a huge chance in trying to persuade Antetokounmpo to remain in Milwaukee and finish out his career as one of the NBA’s rarest breeds: a one-team superstar.
When the Bucks put together the East’s best record for the second consecutive season in 2020 behind Antetokounmpo’s second NBA MVP, but disappointingly fell to the Miami Heat in the second round, Horst made an aggressive move. He traded starting point guard Eric Bledsoe, along with five first-round picks, to acquire Holiday in an attempt to persuade Antetokounmpo to sign a five-year supermax contract.
It worked. Antetokounmpo signed the largest contract in NBA history one month after the trade and then led the Bucks to an NBA championship in 2021, the franchise’s first since 1971.
When the Bucks put together the league’s best record but got upset by the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in the first round in 2023, Horst made an aggressive move again to assure Antetokounmpo the organization was still committed to competing for championships. He traded Holiday, the Bucks’ starting point guard and a hero of the 2021 championship run, and three first-round picks for Lillard, one of the top 75 players in NBA history.
It worked. Antetokounmpo signed an extension one month later, adding two more guaranteed years to his deal and a player option that could keep him in Milwaukee through the 2027-28 season, which would be his 15th season with the team. However, the Bucks did not experience the same on-court success as they did in 2021, being eliminated in the first round each of the last three seasons, including the last two with Lillard, while dealing with injuries to their key contributors.
After a bitter ending to the Bucks’ 2024-25 campaign made Antetokounmpo’s future in Milwaukee appear more precarious than ever, Horst has doubled down on the Antetokounmpo era yet again.
With the entire league hoping Antetokounmpo would ask out, and rival teams making decisions in real time this offseason with the goal of landing him in mind, Horst did what he has always done: He took extreme measures to persuade Antetokounmpo to stay in the only NBA home he has ever known.
Will it work once again?
Γενικά νομίζω πως οι Μπακς έχουν καταλάβει πως παίκτη στο επίπεδο του Γιάννη δεν πρόκειται να βρουν για πάρα πολλά χρόνια, οπότε κάνουν πραγματικά ότι μπορούν για να τον κρατήσουν.nikolas_asteri έγραψε: ↑Πέμ Ιούλ 03, 2025 11:46 amΩραίο ποστ
Γενικά πιστεύω πως η απόφαση των Bucks να κάνουν waive και stretch τα $113εκ του Lillard για να υπογράψουν τον Turner είναι μια ψιλοκοντόφθαλμη κίνηση απελπισίας που τους αποδυναμώνει και τώρα αλλά και για το άμεσο μέλλον (5 χρόνια μίνιμουμ θεωρώ).
Το waive αυτό καθ'αυτό δεν είναι κακή κίνηση (αν και είναι αρκετά "σκληρή" ομολογώ αλλά τι κάνεις; Business). O Lillard θα επιστρέψει στα 36 του και η ιστορία δείχνει πως δεν θα είναι ο ίδιος παίκτης. Άρα έπρεπε να παρθούν γενναίες αποφάσεις. Όμως ομάδα με Γιάννη, Myles Turner, Kyle Kuzma, Gary Trent, Kevin Porter, Bobby Portis, Gary Harris κλπ είναι το πολύ για δεύτερο γύρο ακόμα και στην αδύναμη Ανατολή. Με κάποιο έχουν καταφέρει να μην έχουν ούτε βάθος ούτε τρομερό ταλέντο
Γιατί όμως πιστεύω ότι είναι και "καταδικασμένοι" για το άμεσο μέλλον; Φυσικά έχουμε τα $22εκ τον χρόνο που πετάνε στο τζάκι. Έχουμε και το συμβόλαιο του Turner με το οποίο πλέον δεν έχουν πρόσβαση στο non-taxpayer MLE και έχουν μόνο τα $3.3εκ του MLE και minimum συμβόλαια. Τι μπορούν να κάνουν trade; Τίποτα
Ακόμα και να φύγει ο Γιάννης btw, τι θα πάρουν πίσω; Πικς που λογικά θα είναι πολύ χαμηλά. Υποθήκευσαν το μέλλον τους στο trade του Λίλαρντ, ατύχησαν, και δυστυχώς τώρα είναι πάρα πολύ δύσκολο να χτίσουν μέσα στα επόμενα 5-7 χρόνια. Όταν δεν ελέγχεις τα πικς σου γίνεται πολύ δύσκολη η κατάσταση.
Αν υποθέσουμε ότι ο Γιάννης θέλει να κερδίσει πρωτάθλημα πρέπει οπωσδήποτε να φύγει. Έχει ακόμα 2-3 χρόνια που μπορεί να είναι first all NBA παίκτης, είναι κρίμα να τα πετάξει σε μία ομάδα που φανερά δεν μπορεί να πρωταγωνιστήσει. Από την άλλη είναι απολύτως δεκτό να θέλει να κάτσει στο Μιλγουόκι μια (αγωνιστική) ζωή (αμφιβάλλω ότι κάποιος μένει εκεί και μετά
