4 teams who could offer Giannis Antetokounmpo a better running mate than Damian Lillard

The Milwaukee Bucks are 1-4 and look more like a Cooper Flagg contender than a championship contender through the first week and change of the NBA season. Doc Rivers has a losing record since taking the Bucks job and this roster is basically immune to improvement. There are few assets to trade and there's even less flexibility to trade them. The Bucks are stuck in the second apron with a sky-high tax bill, a stark lack of promising young talent, and an aging roster without the necessary components to sustain winning around Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard.

It does help that Giannis and Dame don't emanate the greatest vibes in the world.

The Bucks are in major trouble. It's generally unwise to panic after five games, but all the issues that plagued Milwaukee last season are cropping up against this season. The 'Doc is new' excuse is out the window. He had a full offseason to install his playbook and put the pieces together. It's hard to field a bad team with Giannis and Dame on your roster, but the Bucks are trying their damnedest.

Giannis has made no effort to avoid trade rumors. If the Bucks can't turn this ship around, it's only a matter of time until the two-time MVP gets antsy. Milwaukee should be much better than this, but for all the hype surrounding the Dame partnership when that trade went down, these hypothetical landing spots could pair Giannis with an even better No. 2.

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4. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Zion Williamson would break defenses for the Pelicans

The concept of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Zion Williamson in the same frontcourt is difficult to wrap one's head around. The sheer athleticism between the two would prove challenging for most defenses to contain. Currently without a proper starting center, the New Orleans Pelicans surely wouldn't object to slotting Giannis into that role, banking on his defensive range as a backstop behind Herb Jones, Dejounte Murray, and NOLA's perimeter hounds.

Obviously, the Pelicans would need to gut a deep supporting cast and draft pick reservoir to make this happen. Giannis won't come cheap, especially with multiple years left on his contract. The Pelicans aren't exactly a marquee destination either, which could complicate talks. Giannis is bound to have thoughts on where he should end up.

That said, the prospect of pairing Giannis and Zion is tantalizing, as it would create the most unique and sheerly dominant frontcourt pairing in modern history. Forget spacing, the Pelicans would have two free tickets to the front of the rim at all times. Defenses would presumably pack the paint and throw a wall at both slashing giants, but Zion has thrived in non-optimal spacing environments before. Giannis' shooting isn't anything worse than what Daniel Theis is providing these days.

The Pelicans would have no trouble collapsing the defense and creating for open shooters on the perimeter. This trade would presumably encourage the Pelicans to look for more 3-point bombers (Jordan Hawkins would have a field day), but just getting Giannis is the building is a great first step. Let's start there.

3. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Alperen Sengun can put the Rockets on the map

The Houston Rockets are loaded with assets, both personnel and draft-wise, so there aren't too many teams with better trade packages lined up. Color me skeptical of Houston keeping both Amen Thompson and Reed Sheppard out of this trade, but I'm just imagining the two-man actions with Sheppard wheeling around DHOs from Giannis, or Thompson getting straight to the rim and setting up Giannis on dump-offs.

That said, his true "running mate," at least in the beginning, would be Alperen Sengun. Most will quibble with dubbing Sengun "better" than Damian Lillard, but we need to start thinking long-term. Lillard's prime years are clearly behind him. Giannis still has a few left in the tank. At just 22 years old, Sengun has All-Star upside in a role so many teams covet.

Nikola Jokic has really changed how we think about the center position. I am not here to feed those reckless comparisons, but Sengun's playmaking chops are a rare gift at the five spot. There would be plenty of funky, creative ways to utilize the combined passing and interior scoring capacity of Sengun and Giannis.

Meanwhile, it's a perfect defensive marriage. Sengun struggles to protect the rim at a high level due to his limited size and lack of vertical pop. Giannis covers a ton of ground on the weak side and can give Sengun a bit of cover, addressing one of Houston's foremost weaknesses.

The Rockets are deep enough to trade for Giannis and keep a decent supporting cast intact. This team would be going places.

2. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander would win several rings with Thunder

It's clear the Oklahoma City Thunder are the best team in the Western Conference. It's impossible to predict the future in such a loaded conference, but a healthy OKC team should run the gauntlet and meet Boston (or some East underdog) in the NBA Finals. That's without trading for Giannis.

There isn't a single team better positioned to thread the needle between the present and the future than OKC. Sam Presti still has an ungodly volume of future first-round picks in his stores. The Thunder can overwhelm the Bucks with picks and not even touch their cache of young talent. OKC has a real chance to pair Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, and Giannis if it comes to trade discussions between the two teams.

Giannis could opt for a more glamorous market, but if he's truly committed to winning, this should be his desired landing spot. OKC isn't necessarily the sexiest town, but that team is stacked, 11-deep with dawgs, as Kevin Garnett so eloquently laid out on his podcast.

The Thunder are deep, young, and brimming with star-power. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is already an MVP candidate, arguably even more prominent in the NBA hierarchy than Giannis. Imagine Antetokounmpo as the No. 2. Moreover, Chet Holmgren is rapidly ascending that ladder in his own right. OKC would have the league's most dynamic and suffocating defensive frontcourt between Chet and Giannis, with Shai creating endless advantages as the head of the snake offensively. That takes pressure off of Giannis and hopefully preserves him for a long run of championship contention.

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Stephen Curry would melt minds with the Warriors

This is what most folks want to see. We never got Stephen Curry and LeBron James on the same team, but Steph and Giannis might be equally entertaining. The Golden State Warriors have patiently saved up their draft picks, with several young prospects — Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis — who could appeal to a Bucks team heading toward a rebuild.

Can Golden State win a bidding war with OKC or Houston or New Orleans? Absolutely not, but this is where Giannis' own desires come into play. The eight-time All-Star won't force a trade without some measure of influence over his eventual landing spot. The Bucks have the right to ignore Giannis and do what's best for the team, but more often than not, the NBA's true superstars can pull strings behind the scenes.

Golden State is a premium market and an established winner. Giannis would add an element to Steve Kerr's offense that we've never seen, putting relentless pressure on the rim and generating easy buckets or ball movement as a result. The two-man actions with Giannis and Steph would break defenses, essentially providing what Milwaukee fans expected from Giannis and Dame. He's not getting younger, but Steph appears to be aging more gracefully than Lillard. His off-ball dynamism and shot versatility are just different, too. Dame is an all-time shooter, but he can't compare to Steph, especially when it comes to playing off of another offensive fulcrum.

The Warriors are red-hot out of the gate this season. Kerr has real depth and scoring punch to work with around Steph, which changes the perception of Golden State quite a bit. The team isn't built to contend for a championship as is, but adding Giannis obviously launches the Warriors up several tiers in the West.