The Milwaukee Bucks will forever be Giannis Antetokounmpo’s team.
This is the franchise of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Sydney Montcrief, of Paul Pressey, of Ray Allen and Michael Redd. Still, it will always be where the Greek Freak called home for the majority, if not the entirety, of his career.
Giannis is the all-time leader in every statistical category except 3-pointers and steals.
Milwaukee deserves credit for building a title team and multi-year contender around him. The Bucks have been in the title conversation every year since 2019 when they hired Mike Budenholzer. They have added Brook Lopez, Eric Bledsoe, Jrue Holiday, and of course, Damian Lillard.
They did not sit on their hands; the Bucks have done everything they can to help Giannis win more titles.
But most empires do not fall overnight. They don’t crack apart in some dramatic sequence where everyone woke up and knew it was over. It’s a slow degradation at the hands of the strain that holding itself up takes.
And the Milwaukee Bucks feel like they’re in the last days of an empire.
That doesn’t have to mean that their emperor sails away to foreign lands; it doesn’t mean that Antetokounmpo finally departs in trade for another team. Maybe it just means a totally fresh start with a completely new build around the icon. That would be a happy ending, one that real-life empires are not afforded.
But looking at what has happened since 2022, it’s hard to believe that the status quo can remain going forward.
Like it or not, changes are coming for the Milwaukee Bucks
The Bucks should have won the title in 2022. Celtics fans can gnash their teeth all they want, but if Khris Middleton is healthy in that series, you cannot have watched how close that series was and not believe Middleton would have made the difference.
If the Bucks had won that series, they would have faced the 2022 Heat. There’s a lot of reason to believe that’s where it ends.
Jimmy Butler has owned the Bucks. Hot opponent shooting has been a problem for them, and while that Heat team was defense-first, they could still get hot. Maybe the Heat would have eliminated the Bucks for a third time in five years (if history isn’t altered and they lose in 2023, too).
Then again, maybe the Heat weren’t as good, and the Bucks win back-to-back titles.
But they didn’t. And they haven’t been back to the second round since.
Injuries are the biggest culprit, for sure. Giannis was injured for both the first-round series vs. the Heat in 203 and the Pacers series in 2024.
Then the trade for Damian Lillard, an unqualified success at the time and a no-brainer everyone praised them for.
The results have been ... fine.
Lillard’s averaging 25 and 7 on 43-37-92 splits with the Bucks. That’s a superstar stat line.
But Milwaukee just hasn’t *clicked* at all. They have not tapped into a high floor or a high ceiling. They are plus-1.2 in schedule-adjusted net rating this season. Not average, slightly above, and far from “above average.” Light years from “great.”
The Bucks are just another team.
Their solution for this, to take them forward, was to trade the heart and soul of their team, Khris Middleton, and deal him for Kyle Kuzma, then add Kevin Porter Jr.
This is like trying to repair heart damage with a toilet plunger. It’s an effective tool, just not for what ails them.
Middleton is worn down by age and injuries. It makes sense to move on from him and try and pivot forward. Moving him for Kuzma, however … is a bridge too far. Or not far enough. One or the other. Or both.
Kuzma’s a good player with championship experience and will bring basketball skills the Bucks need to the table. But he’s not going to reshape the formula for Milwaukee into a real contender.
That’s not to say the Bucks are drawing dead. Like the 2022 champs, the Warriors, and the 2023 champs, the Nuggets, the Bucks are a former champion who can show up to the tournament and make a run.
If they don’t, however, you wonder what’s next.
What comes next for the Milwaukee Bucks?
People have prematurely written the obituary for the Giannis era in Milwaukee what feels like dozens of times, and every time, the Bucks have pulled a rabbit from a hat to upgrade the team and lock in his commitment again.
They traded for Damian Lillard, for crying out loud.
But if this version can just never get out of first gear, what do they do?
They used a big contract in Middleton to get an upgrade and got Kuzma. Again, maybe Kuzma unlocks something. But if he doesn’t, if he’s the same “totally fine” role player he was with the Lakers, if he maxes out at “pretty good,” that can have been a good trade and still not enough.
The sun isn’t setting on Giannis; he just turned 30. He’s got probably three more seasons of elite performance before the gears start to grind a bit. But that also means there’s not a decade or half-decade to forge a new path.
Milwaukee has had to reconfigure itself on the fly, several times, to keep the Bucks in contention, and all of those moves were designed under the previous CBA, which the current CBA specifically punishes.
Is there a bigger move they can make this summer? Will Giannis decide it’s just time for some fresh scenery? Is the only way for this team to break through the wall back into being true contenders a black swan event they can neither predict nor control?
Things are not dark at all in Milwaukee. But the sun has started to set on this empire, and Milwaukee may have to embrace a revolution if they want to survive at all.