Giannis Antetokounmpo had to have known the question was coming.
“Do you think that you can still win that second championship here in Milwaukee after a third straight first-round exit?”
The question came after the Bucks’ season ended in Indianapolis on Tuesday night. Antetokounmpo is surely asking himself the same question right about now.
Antetokounmpo didn’t have a public answer for it following the 119-118 overtime, season-ending loss in Game 5 of Round 1 against Indiana. He probably doesn’t have a private answer to it, either. But he needs that answer sometime over the coming days or weeks, because he is now officially at the crossroads that plenty of superstars have reached over the years.
Stay or go?
Yes, a fair question — though it’s not really Antetokounmpo’s decision. He’s under contract to the Bucks for multiple seasons. Even if he asks for a trade, they don’t have to accommodate him.
It could be great for Antetokounmpo; he’d pick a new spot and that team would instantly be considered a title contender. It could be great for the Bucks; most teams after years of contending have to hit the reset button at some point anyway, and they could get a haul of players and picks to begin anew.
“I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do this,” Antetokounmpo said in response to the question. “I know … 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. I don’t know.”
Here’s what might figure into the answer, whenever the time comes to formulate the real one: His place in Milwaukee lore is secure, he’s brought an NBA championship to the city, he won’t have Damian Lillard for much if not all of next season because of Lillard’s torn Achilles, his team just got eliminated in the first round for the third consecutive season and the Bucks aren’t exactly loaded with draft picks or easy ways to bolster their roster.
Antetokounmpo is in his prime. He’s about to finish in the top four of the voting for the NBA MVP award — a trophy he’s won twice — for the seventh consecutive year. He just averaged 30 points per game for the third year in a row, and if he had scored eight more measly points in the 2021-22 season it’d be four straight years of doing that. He just averaged at least 25 points and 10 rebounds for the eighth straight season; only Shaquille O’Neal, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone have more such seasons.
Antetokounmpo will want more, whether he’s in Milwaukee or elsewhere.
“There’s a lot of times that life has made me sad or frustrated since I was a kid. I never gave up,” Antetokounmpo said. “You know, I always try to find solutions in my life. I think it translates to the basketball court. I always try to, even though things might not happen the way I want it to happen. I always have class, and I have this optimistic mentality of coming back, keep on working. And there’s going to be a day that’s it going to be your turn.”
Moving someone with two years and $113 million left on his contract — not to mention a player option that could extend it by another year and tack $63 million more onto the bill — will be difficult. And players don’t always get traded where they want to go; the obvious case in point there is when Lillard wanted to be traded by Portland to Miami and wound up in Milwaukee instead.
But if it’s what he wants, teams will jump at the chance to make it happen.
“Giannis is one of one,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “I think, unfortunately for all the voters, they’re tired of voting for him for stuff. But he had every bit of an MVP season this year. What I’m most proud of is he has turned into a leader. I’m not just talking about on the floor, but off the floor.”
Antetokounmpo has received tons of praise in recent years for the way he has sometimes given long, well-thought-out, from-the-heart answers to important questions in postgame news conferences. He handled a question about the postgame fracas that involved Indiana star Tyrese Haliburton’s father essentially taunting Antetokounmpo on the court seconds after the final buzzer with his traditional grace and charm. It wasn’t the first time Antetokounmpo found the right words in an important moment.
Another important moment is here. Another big question. Stay or go?
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