Giannis Gives Insight Into Future With Bucks
Since entering the league as the 15th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft, Giannis Antetokounmpo has grown into one of the elite power forwards in the association. He’s won two MVPs, a Defensive Player of the Year award in 2019, and in 2021, he led the Milwaukee Bucks to its first NBA championship since 1971. Antetokounmpo picked up Finals MVP honours along the way during that run.
2021 saw Giannis agree to a five-year contract extension worth $228.2M ending a summer of uncertainty in Bucks land where the front office and fans alike wondered whether their small market team would be able to retain the Greek Freak’s services over the long haul. With a contract that long and lucrative surely Giannis would remain in Milwaukee until the end of his career.
Or so they thought. Some recent pronouncements from the All-World forward have now suddenly made that prospect a little less certain than it was a few months prior.
Future Now Uncertain
The 2023-2024 season will be the tenth of Giannis’ career and the third in his current contract with the Bucks. However, this week he made headlines with a remark that caused people to think there was a possibility he may have his eyes on playing elsewhere if the team isn’t careful.
“I would not be the best version of myself if I don’t know that everybody’s on the same page, everybody’s going for a championship, everybody’s going to sacrifice time away from their family like I do. And if I don’t feel that, I’m not signing,” Giannis told reporters.
To put things in perspective, Giannis Antetokounmpo will soon become eligible to sign a three-year $173M extension. However, the 28-year-old star isn’t keen on putting pen to paper quite yet.
This isn’t the first time Giannis’ future in Milwaukee has become shrouded in doubt. He previously revealed that he was ready to walk away from basketball in 2020- the year everything shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, Antetokounmpo followed the Bucks’ recommendation to see a sports psychologist and was able to rediscover his passion for the game. A year later, the Bucks won the championship.
This year, the Bucks lost against the Miami Heat in the first round of the 2023 playoffs- despite the Bucks finishing the regular season as the top team in the Eastern Conference. That stunning exit led to the firing of then Bucks Head Coach Mike Budenholzer and the hiring of former Toronto Raptors Assistant Coach Adrian Griffin.
The coaching change in Milwaukee is another reason why Antetokounmpo is reluctant to sign an extension at the moment, opting instead for a wait and see approach when it comes to his new bench boss. “You’ve got to see the dynamics,” he said. “How the coach is going to be, how we’re going to be together. At the end of the day, I feel like all my teammates know and the organization knows that I want to win a championship. As long as we’re on the same page with that and you show me and we go together to win a championship, I’m all for it. The moment I feel like, oh, yeah, we’re trying to rebuild —”
Now a decade into his NBA career, Antetokounmpo has reached the halfway point of his goal of playing 20 seasons with one team- something that’s only been accomplished by Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Dirk Nowitzki. While loyalty is something near and dear to Giannis, he left no room for interpretation when it came to his primary focus moving forward. “Winning a championship comes first. I don’t want to be 20 years on the same team and don’t win another championship.”
Antetokounmpo averaged 31.1 points, 11.8 rebounds, and 5.7 assists, on 55.3% field goal shooting in 63 regular-season games last season. He played through injuries in the 2023 playoffs but the Bucks couldn’t escape adding themselves to the list of teams eliminated by the play in qualifiers in Miami.
While it’s too early to signal any alarm bells, one has to keep in mind that Giannis is an elite NBA superstar but also a smart businessman. While you can likely chalk up his recent comments as an attempt to gain leverage over not only his next contract, but also roster construction moving forward, Giannis has shown over the last 10 years that he’s a man of his word. And if he feels as though Milwaukee is moving in a direction that he doesn’t agree with, it’s not inconceivable that he could see if the grass is greener elsewhere.
-Iggy Gonzales
Photo: Erik Drost. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.