Of all the storylines lingering over the 2025-26 season, perhaps none carries more intrigue than what lies in front of the Milwaukee Bucks: Do they trade Giannis Antetokounmpo or not?
By almost all accounts, Antetokounmpo represents one of the three-best players in the NBA. He ranks third best in the Estimated Plus-Minus prediction metric, behind only reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and three-time MVP Nikola Jokić.
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SGA plays for the defending champion and title favorite Thunder. Jokićâ€s Nuggets are close behind them. Antetokounmpoâ€s team, on the other hand, is … closer to the bottom. His supporting cast is among the worst in the sport. According to BetMGM, the Bucks†win total sits at 42.5 for the 2025-26 season, a pitiful mark for an Eastern Conference team with an MVP candidate in his prime. Itâ€s the least-confident betting forecast for a Giannis-manned squad since 2016-17, when the Bucks, coached by Jason Kidd, were expected to win just 36.5 games.
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The Bucks are understandably reluctant to part with the all-time great whom they drafted in 2013. According to ESPN reports on Tuesday, the Knicks werenâ€t able to get traction in Giannis talks this summer. But itâ€s time for Milwaukee to pull the plug and seek a trade package in which a team throws the kitchen sink at it: multiple first-round picks and players who can step in right away.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, kitchen-sink deals work out more often for the seller than the buyer. The past three NBA champions (OKC, Boston and Denver) were built in large part due to unloading superstars at the right time.
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In order to get back to title contention, itâ€s time for the Bucks to trade Giannis to the highest bidder.
(Stefan Milic/Yahoo Sports Illustration)
OKC is the model
In the summer of 2019, Thunder president of basketball operations Sam Presti faced a similar situation as the one in front of Bucks general manager Jon Horst. Then, when the Los Angeles Clippers came calling about Paul George, Presti took a pragmatic look at the franchise. Like Antetokounmpo, George finished third in the MVP race that season. But Presti saw an opportunity to build through the draft and traded him for a kingâ€s ransom, the package including a boatload of picks and Gilgeous-Alexander, the future MVP and Finals MVP.
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And Presti didnâ€t stop there. Less than a week later, he traded the teamâ€s other version of Antetokounmpo, OKCâ€s face of the franchise, Russell Westbrook, whom it also drafted and developed into an MVP. It would be easy to think the Thunder could have tried to convince Westbrook they could still contend for a title, but the franchise did right by Westbrook, emotional ties and all. The Thunder moved him to Houston for Chris Paul, two first-round picks and two first-round swaps.
“We recently had conversations with Russell about the team, his career, and how he sees the future,†Presti said in a statement after the trade. “Through those conversations we came to the understanding that looking at some alternative situations would be something that made sense for him. As a result, and due to his history with the Thunder, we worked together to accommodate this.â€
Six years later, itâ€s the Thunder who are the reigning champs — not Georgeâ€s Clippers or Westbrookâ€s Rockets. In fact, neither George nor Westbrook — the stars in the OKC trades — is still with his respective team. Meanwhile, OKC is the envy of the league, landing at No. 1 in ESPNâ€s Future Power Rankings and the heavy favorite to win the 2025-26 championship.
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The team currently with the next-rosiest future, the Rockets, finds itself there because it followed Prestiâ€s playbook and also decided to pivot and sell its superstars to the highest bidders. Westbrook lasted just one season in Houston before he was traded to Washington for John Wall and a protected first-round pick. A few months later, the Rockets unloaded their franchise cornerstone, James Harden, and sent him to Brooklyn for another kitchen-sink deal. Now, with a young core of Amen Thompson, Alperen Åžengün and Jabari Smith Jr., theyâ€ve built a growing powerhouse in the Western Conference.
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Not every superstar seller can climb to title contention so quickly. Utah and Brooklyn are still pulling themselves out of the league cellar after each hit the reset button in 2022 and 2023, respectively. But the team with the darkest timeline of them all, the Suns, is the cautionary tale of being on the other side of a kitchen-sink deal.
The Gut Tax
It was a little over two years ago when then-new Suns owner Mat Ishbia traded for Kevin Durant in February 2023. The KD trade wasnâ€t a cannonball leap into a pool; this was a meteor hitting an ocean.
Ishbia and his front office decided to go all-in for Durant, giving up not one but four unprotected first-round picks, Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder and a 2028 first-round pick swap in order to add the 34-year-old who was sidelined with a knee injury at the time.
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How risky was the deal? In the wake of the trade, Ishbia told Sports Illustrated, “I think there is no risk. I donâ€t look at it as a risk at all.â€
Gulp. In ESPNâ€s annual Future Power Rankings, the Suns now rank dead-last among all 30 teams. After paying a league-high $152 million in luxury tax payments and missing the playoffs in Durantâ€s third season with the club, the Suns pulled the plug and traded Durant to Houston in July. The Suns now have a middling, mishmash roster and still almost no draft assets. They have the worst of both worlds, with little hope now or down the line.
Thereâ€s no such thing as a risk-free trade no matter what your exuberant new owner might claim. Kitchen-sink deals have the potential to doom the star-chasing franchise for a cocktail of reasons, but primarily because of a very obvious, yet overlooked reason:
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You have to give up a lot to get said star. Call it the Gut Tax.
The nice thing about free agency is that teams donâ€t have to pay the Gut Tax to get their star. The Warriors didnâ€t have to trade Klay Thompson and Draymond Green in order to land Durant in the summer of 2016. They took advantage of a cap spike that summer and added him to an existing championship core.
What would the Knicks have looked like if they had waited for Carmelo Anthony in free agency instead of trading the farm for him? In 2011, the Knicks gutted their team by sending Danilo Gallinari, Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton and Timofey Mozgov to Denver along with two first-round picks. As luck would have it, Denver posted a better record than the Knicks during their Melo era. Making matters worse, in 2016, Denver used one of those Knicks first-round picks to select Jamal Murray, the teamâ€s second-best player on the 2023 title team. With Anthony, the Knicks never got past the second round.
Looking at recent champions is a study in how teams benefited by selling their stars at the right time. OKC moved off Westbrook and George in 2019 and won a title in six years. The Boston Celtics drafted their championship-winning duo, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, thanks to the infamous 2013 Nets trade that netted the Celtics four future first-round picks for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
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Another big reason why the blockbuster deal doesnâ€t always pan out for the higher-profile star: star veterans are injury-riddled more than ever. In win-now situations, Durantâ€s recent superteams struggled to stay healthy. It was the same for the Antetokounmpo/Damian Lillard/Khris Middleton Bucks.
Khris Middleton, Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo didn’t win a playoff series together. (Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)
(Cole Burston via Getty Images)
This is not to say that teams havenâ€t won it all after trading for a big fish. The Los Angeles Lakers won the 2020 championship in the first season following the Anthony Davis trade with New Orleans. Other teams seemed to follow their lead, with mixed results.
In a span beginning with the summer of 2019, when Davis and George were traded from their small-market clubs, to 2023, weâ€ve seen 11 kitchen-sink deals, which Iâ€m defining as trades involving multiple first-round picks and at least one player.
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The 11 Superstar “Kitchen Sink†Trades, 2019-23
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2023 POR trades Damian Lillard to MIL
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2023 BRK trades Kevin Durant to PHX
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2022 BRK trades James Harden to PHI
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2022 UTA trades Donovan Mitchell to CLE
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2022 UTA trades Rudy Gobert to MIN
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2022 SAS trades Dejounte Murray to ATL
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2021 HOU trades James Harden to BRK
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2020 NOP trades Jrue Holiday to MIL
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2019 OKC trades Russell Westbrook to HOU
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2019 OKC trades Paul George to LAC
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2019 NOP trades Anthony Davis to LAL
While the superstar-acquiring teams have had dynastic dreams, none of those 11 blockbuster deals has resulted in more than one championship. Only two — Milwaukee trading for Jrue Holiday and the Lakers getting Davis — resulted in even one title banner. The nine other deals havenâ€t even resulted in a Finals appearance at any point for the teams that acquired new superstars. Cleveland with Donovan Mitchell and Minnesota with Rudy Gobert would like to change that.
Perhaps even more troubling is that many of these star acquisitions have ended up being little more than a rental. The Durant era in Phoenix didnâ€t even last three full seasons. Was there even a Harden era in Brooklyn? Or Philly? Youâ€d be forgiven if you didnâ€t remember Dejounte Murray making the playoffs in Atlanta during any of his two seasons. All in all, six of the 11 star tenures lasted fewer than three seasons with the acquiring team. The majority of them had little staying power.
On the other side of the ledger, the rebuilding teams may have to wait longer to win their titles, but itâ€s hard to say theyâ€re definitively worse off. Both of Prestiâ€s kitchen-sink deals in moving off of Westbrook and George helped them build the 2025 Finals team; Gilgeous-Alexander, 2025 All-NBA member Jalen Williams and Aaron Wiggins were directly or indirectly acquired in those trades.
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Houston learned the hard way that superteams arenâ€t all theyâ€re cracked up to be, and its homegrown talent was essential to demonstrate leverage in this summerâ€s Durant trade talks with Phoenix. The Rockets gave up just one first-round pick, locked at No. 10 in a down draft, to get KD. Sure, Houston may end up trading for Giannis this season, but thereâ€s no indication the Rockets have chased him at all up to this point. As is, they project to be title contenders for years to come.
What will Milwaukee do? First, it has to look in the mirror.
Where Milwaukee goes from here
The Bucks should heed the lesson of the Suns and how doubling down can doom their franchise. But one thing Phoenix did manage to do was trade Durant while he was still healthy. Antetokounmpo, who is turning 31 in December, has missed 14 games on average over the last five seasons and battled injuries in postseasons†past. Moving a healthy Antetokounmpo sooner than later could help them extract maximum value.
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Injuries are a variable that Milwaukee has struggled to control. Part of the overall cynicism around the Bucks is a result of the blockbuster trade for Lillard that went awry. In the summer of 2023, the Bucks traded Holiday, a 2029 unprotected first-round pick and two swaps (2028 and 2030) to the Trail Blazers only to waive him less than two years later following a devastating Achilles tear.
The irony of the Blazers-Bucks deal is that a player of Lillardâ€s offensively tilted skill set would be perfectly paired with a defensive-minded guard like Holiday. As it happens, Holiday and Lillard are now on Portlandâ€s roster, not Milwaukeeâ€s, this upcoming season.
Not only did the Bucks give up a key player from their 2021 championship squad, they also gave up their opportunity to pivot. By giving up tons of draft capital, the Bucks pushed themselves into a corner with almost nowhere to go.
Like Durant and the Suns, the Bucks never reached the heights they envisioned when they gave up the farm for the superstar. Lillard was supposed to be the missing piece, but the Bucks failed to get out of the first round in each of Lillardâ€s two seasons due to injuries to both Lillard and Antetokounmpo (and Middleton).
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Unlike Durant and the Suns, the Bucks had little recourse but to waive-and-stretch Lillardâ€s deal once he suffered a career-altering injury and eat the dead money left on his contract for the next five seasons. If Lillard were healthy, they could have pivoted more easily if Antetokounmpo asked out. Instructively, the Suns traded Durant for much less than they got him for, but they did net Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks and the No. 10 pick (Khaman Maluach) in this yearâ€s draft.
The Bucks donâ€t have a proper co-pilot for Antetokounmpo. The team wants Myles Turner to be that guy after he played in the NBA Finals, but the former Pacers center averaged a measly 13.8 points and 4.8 rebounds in the teamâ€s Cinderella run to the Finals. Without Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakamâ€s heroics in late-game situations, would we think of Turner the same way?
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Because of the weak supporting cast, Antetokounmpo may have been wise to wait for any sort of trade demand. If the Bucks do sputter out of the gate, heâ€ll have more justification for asking out. In addition, as ESPN reported Tuesday, his monster $200-million-plus extension can be signed up until October 1, 2026, only if his team has employed him for at least six months. Teams will be motivated to acquire him ahead of the trade deadline rather than wait for this summer.
Though the Knicks undoubtedly would love to have a player like Antetokounmpo, they donâ€t have an unprotected first-round pick to offer until this summer when their 2033 pick is unlocked. Like the Anthony deal in 2011, the Knicks would have to cannibalize their own team in order to meet Milwaukeeâ€s asking price. Barring the Knicks trading Karl-Anthony Towns or OG Anunoby for longer-term assets, itâ€s hard to see how the Knicks and Bucks check off each otherâ€s boxes.
The Warriors could get in the mix with three unprotected first-round picks (2026, 2028 and 2032) at their disposal, but a third team would likely have to be involved in order to make the money work. After Phoenix chased Jimmy Butler last season, could a three-way deal involving Giannis to Golden State and Butler finally going to Phoenix work? In this scenario, Phoenix would reroute the bulk of the KD haul — Green and Brooks — to Milwaukee along with Golden Stateâ€s picks.
The Cavaliers may be another team to watch. After another disappointing finish to the season, would Cleveland put Evan Mobley in a deal for Antetokounmpo if it got off to a slow start? The Bucks undoubtedly would covet the 24-year-old Defensive Player of the Year as the future of their franchise. The Cavs would also have two unprotected first-round picks in 2030 and 2032 at the ready if the Bucks were at all uneasy about Mobleyâ€s five-year, $224 million contract.
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If suitors are willing to commit multiple unprotected first-round picks and a young player, the Bucks have to listen. Milwaukee might think itâ€s unthinkable for a small-market team to trade the face of its franchise in his prime. But the other side can bring a much brighter horizon. Just ask Sam Presti.
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