The 2024-2025 NBA season is here. At the end of a quiet low season, we make our annual trip too close to the sun, challenging you to endure the sultry views. These are hot takes that we might actually believe.
The Milwaukee Bucks are teetering on dissolution.
For whatever reason, we don’t feel comfortable talking about it. We like to think that – with a full training camp under head coach Doc Rivers, a refocused Damian Lillard and a few roster adjustments – the Bucks are doing just fine. And we really want to think that. No one wants the worst for Giannis Antetokounmpo, a fun-loving superstar whose ceiling knew no bounds just a few years ago.
Rather than face reality, we prefer to consider his recent comments to Sam Amick of The Athletic – “'[What] what if this year doesn’t go well?’ Yeah, if we don’t win a championship, I might get traded” – joking.
But who are we kidding: four seasons removed from their championship campaign, the Bucks are spinning their tires so close to the middle of the NBA as they compete for the title, setting fire to the rest of Antetokounmpo’s prime, and there will be a (new) point when he can no longer tolerate the status quo.
And that point comes this season.
As Antetokounmpo told The New York Times last year before signing a three-year, $175 million contract extension: “I don’t want to be on the same team for 20 years and not win another championship.”
Around this point last season, Antetokounmpo became frustrated with Milwaukee’s decline. Since winning the title in 2021, the Bucks had already taken two steps back, losing a second-round playoff series to the Boston Celtics in 2022. But a five-game first-round playoff loss to the eighth-place seeded Miami Heat in 2023 was an embarrassment, even though injuries prevented Antetokounmpo from playing two games in the series.
So the Bucks pulled the trigger on a blockbuster trade early in last season’s training camp, dealing Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen and the rights to three first-round draft picks to the Portland Trail Blazers for Lillard. The trade briefly made Milwaukee the betting favorite to win the championship until it failed. Portland redirected Holiday to Boston, where he completed a starting five that would not be denied a title.
Meanwhile, the Bucks suffered another opening-round playoff exit. Antetokounmpo strained his left calf at the end of the regular season and missed the entire set in the first round against the Indiana Pacers. Lillard suffered right Achilles tendonitis midway through the series and Milwaukee lost in six games.
The net result: one playoff series win in three seasons of Antetokounmpo’s best season.
He will be 30 years old in December. He has finished in the top five for MVP and top 10 in Defensive Player of the Year voting each of the last three years, averaging 31-12-6 during that span. He was great. He also experiences wear and tear on his lower extremities. Since hyperextending his left knee during the title run, he has missed time with a sprained right ankle, a right calf injury, a sore right knee, a sore left ankle, a sore left knee, a sprained right knee, a left Achilles injury, a left hamstring injury and a strained left calf.
How long can his 6-foot-4, 242-pound frame support a relentless pursuit of the rim? He’ll be asking himself the same question all season long; any increasing losses will make the answer harder to hear.
For now, Antetokounmpo can convince himself otherwise, just as the Milwaukee faithful have done. Rivers took control of a rudderless ship midway through the 2023-2024 campaign. According to Rivers, Lillard was out of shape and was going through what he said was a divorce in “the toughest year of my life.”
A fresh start should do wonders for their coaching and conditioning issues. Additionally, the Bucks added Gary Trent Jr., Taurean Prince and Delon Wright – three capable members of any playoff rotation – despite having nothing but minimum contracts to address their deep concerns in that regard from last season.
Put a healthy Antetokounmpo in there and all is well again in Milwaukee. Right?
Except this part: The Bucks did nothing to address their biggest concern: an aging supporting cast.
Brook Lopez is 36 years old. No one else from his draft class is still relied upon as a starting contributor, let alone the anchor of a championship-level defense. We should note: Milwaukee’s defense is below average last season. And the ground isn’t getting any more stable under Lopez’s expiring $23 million contract.
Lillard is 34. His last three seasons ended with injury. And he’s a liability to the defense. These truths are self-evident – and are getting worse, even as we expect him to enjoy a bounce-back season offensively.
At 33 years old, Khris Middleton is the youngest of the three. His health is also in serious trouble. He has spent the past three summers rehabbing surgeries: on his left wrist in 2022, his right knee in 2023 and both of his ankles this offseason.
Even if Antetokounmpo can produce his seventh straight first-team All-NBA season – and there’s no reason other than health not to do so – and even if the trio of Trent, Prince and Wright are a dismal continuation of the rotation lengthens, the bones of this potential contender will still be old. And Lillard is to the point guard position what Lopez is to the center spot and Middleton is on the wing. Each is priceless.
Remove one and the facade collapses. Even when healthy, they face a competition that is getting younger and more athletic with each passing year. As it stands, they have the fourth-best odds to win the Eastern Conference. They finished third last season, when Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Lopez were healthy for much of the regular season. However, Antetokounmpo suffered a calf injury, which ended any chance of winning a single playoff series.
What happens when what was obvious last season becomes clear again? The Bucks are not favorites. They are counting on one of the best players in the world – a player who is increasingly injured – to carry a core of people in their mid-thirties through four play-off rounds. While that could theoretically be enough to convince them that they have a title contender come the start of the season, the flaws in that plan will reveal themselves in due course.
They are already visible. Middleton won’t even be ready to start the season.
At what point does Antetokounmpo realize what the past three seasons have exposed? He no longer has the supporting cast needed to navigate the struggles of the NBA. He declared last season in March “the hardest” of his career, knowing even before his injury that Milwaukee would fall short of its annual goal.
This time, the Bucks can’t blame a first-year head coach for a subpar defense. They can’t blame Lillard’s late arrival on an imperfect partnership with Antetokounmpo. They can’t blame injuries when age and history are more obvious suspects. The realization will come faster this time.
And then what? Then Milwaukee better turn around quickly or Antetokounmpo risks wrapping up the thought he started when he told The New York Times, “At the moment I feel like, oh yeah, we’re trying to rebuild . ‘
Because what value will Lillard, Lopez and Middleton have if they can’t lift Antetokounmpo? Lopez will be a free agent at the end of the season. Lillard and Middleton owe a combined $89 million next season. Who can they get that represents an upgrade? They can’t sweeten the pot with a first-round draft pick because they won’t have one of their own until 2031. There is only one way out.
