While there have been murmurs around Giannis Antetokounmpo and a potential exit from the Milwaukee Bucks for quite some time, things jumped to a fever pitch this week with reporting from ESPN's Shams Charania that Antetokounmpo "is ready for a new home ahead of the Feb. 5 trade deadline" and that the Bucks organization is "starting to listen" to offers.
Of course, that does not guarantee that the former MVP and NBA champion will be moved before the dust of the deadline settles, but it does make for an all-out frenzy of trade-related chatter. Several teams make at least theoretical sense in a Giannis pursuit, but, as Marc Stein and Jake Fischer put it on Thursday, "no team in the conversation has a greater ability than (the Golden State Warriors), as we speak, to make a direct two-team Giannis trade with Milwaukee."
Fantasy trades involving Giannis and a team-up with Stephen Curry have circulated for years, but the Warriors actually are in a position to make a compelling offer right now.
What would a deal look like?
In the latest reporting from ESPN's Anthony Slater, he notes that "the Warriors have voiced to (Jimmy) Butler a plan to keep him despite the ACL tear, believing he will rehab and boost them upon his return at some point next season." With that said, the clearest pathway for matching salary in a Warriors-Bucks deal is to send the currently injured Butler to Milwaukee. Crucially, that does not have to be the construction, as Golden State could get to the number by putting Draymond Green and Jonathan Kuminga together, among other things. Still, for the purposes of this discussion, Butler as the matching salary makes the most sense, simply because a big part of the Warriors push to land Giannis would likely be related to a chance to win at the highest levels this season.
For example, a deal built around Butler and Brandin Podziemski, plus a bevy of future draft capital (Golden State can trade four first-round picks), could entice the Bucks. Milwaukee could send both Giannis and his brother, Thanasis, back to Golden State, and there are ways to add to a two-team construction with relative ease if needed. Of course, it would not be fun for the Warriors to have to tell Butler, while injured, that he's headed to Milwaukee, but it's simply the most logical price.
Are the Warriors good enough if they do this?
The central question in Golden State when weighing whether to put a package like the one outlined above on the table is whether the Warriors would be a real title contender right away. After all, Stephen Curry will turn 38 years old in March and, while he is aging as well as anyone could possibly imagine, his window as an elite player could close in the relatively near future. Giannis is also 31 years old with a ton of mileage (and injury concerns), meaning the Warriors would very willingly be targeting "one last ride" with Curry and hoping that Antetokounmpo can help the franchise bridge the gap to the next generation.
All of that is sound but, again, it relies on the Warriors being good enough right now to justify the future outlay. In the Butler-centric scenario, Golden State would effectively be upgrading from Butler to Antetokounmpo with the rest of the team's 2025-26 roster effectively in place. Make no mistake, Antetokounmpo is much better than Butler, even as Butler was playing at an All-Star level, but the Western Conference is absolutely stacked.
Even with Antetokounmpo at full health throughout the playoffs, are the Warriors better than the Oklahoma City Thunder? Almost certainly not. Yes, Golden State would have two of the three best players in the series, but Oklahoma City would have the best (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) and the vast majority of the next eight-to-ten players when lining the two teams up side-by-side. Beyond Oklahoma City, Denver still has the NBA's most dominant force in Nikola Jokic, Houston has a talented, deep, and terrifying group, and San Antonio has youth to go along with a two-way force in Victor Wembanyama.
All in all, the Warriors can reasonably look themselves in the eye and believe that effectively turning Butler into Antetokounmpo could make the team into a real threat to make the NBA Finals. Former Houston Rockets and current Philadelphia 76ers executive is famously credited with a theory saying that any team with at least a five percent chance of winning the championship should be pushing in to try to win the title in that season.
If that is the barrier for entry, the Warriors do reach that level with Antetokounmpo, but the decision has many tentacles, including whether Golden State would rather hold some of its reserves back for a post-Curry future or push them in now for one last run toward potential glory.