The Bucks are seemingly resisting Giannis Antetokounmpo trade talks, so is there a win-now move to make?

The Bucks could try to swing a deal to improve their roster instead of trading their superstar

There's a staring contest going on in Milwaukee right now. A good one, at that. Neither side has blinked for months. Every now and then, Giannis Antetokounmpo nudges the Bucks toward a trade, and every time, without fail, the Bucks pretend they didn't hear him. Nobody's even willing to take responsibility for the rumors. Antetokounmpo isn't comfortable with all of this, according to Chris Haynes. That's all his representatives. If that sounds a bit like a bewildered Mr. Burns asking how he can be held responsible for what his goons are ordered to do, well, congratulations. You've passed rumor mill literacy 101.

The Bucks won't trade Antetokounmpo until he forces them to do so, and considering his reported aversion to doing so, they seemingly have a window, however small and however brief, to potentially change his mind. Both Eric Nehm and Marc Stein are reporting that they are attempting to do so by sniffing around win-now trades.

This is par for the Bucks course. Every time the trade buzz starts, Milwaukee has managed to avert it with a home run swing. A year before his 2021 free agency, the Bucks landed Jrue Holiday and convinced him to extend. The same story played out with Damian Lillard in 2023. When noise got louder following Lillard's torn Achilles last spring, they waived and stretched him in order to sign Myles Turner. Giannis legally couldn't extend at that point, but reportedly approved of the move. Seemingly not enough to avoid a wandering eye, but enough to put off a formal request at least for the moment.

That's where Milwaukee sits today. History tells this front office that if they can just keep kicking the can down the road long enough, just keep avoiding that direct, irrefutable trade request, they can take another home run swing and hope it connects. With the easiest stretch on their schedule coming up, maybe the Bucks (currently 11-16 and 10th in the East) can even win enough games in the short term to eke their way back into Eastern Conference contention by the time Antetokounmpo recovers from his calf strain. That's the goal here. Survive long enough to get Antetokounmpo back, then upgrade before the deadline so he'll have a reason to stay.

There are two pretty significant problems with that concept. The first traces back to the Lillard-for-Turner swap. Last year's Bucks had an extremely top-heavy salary structure featuring two supermax players at the top and very little depth on the bottom. Axing Lillard for Turner replaced an enormous salary for a smaller one, but didn't offer the benefits doing so would under most circumstances because it involved taking on a $20 million dead cap charge for Lillard. All of this leaves the Bucks with very little tradable salary. 

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Aside from Antetokounmpo and Turner, the Bucks have only two players making even mid-level money: Kyle Kuzma and Bobby Portis, neither of whom are trivial to the existing rotation. After that, they have only two players making even $4 million: Kevin Porter Jr. and Ryan Rollins, both of whom are bargains at their current price points. After that? Minimums all the way down.

And then there's the matter of draft capital. Milwaukee's first-round picks between now and 2030 are owed out through prior trades. That means they have one to trade, in either 2031 or 2032. That obviously isn't much under the best of circumstances, which these aren't. It would be absolute organizational malpractice for an 11-16 team to give up a first-round pick six years away in the name of short-term improvement even if they weren't staring down the reality of losing their best player and marching through half of a decade without their picks. Unless Antetokounmpo explicitly says he'll extend, trading anymore picks is a nonstarter.

So that's where the Bucks sit today. They want to improve, but shouldn't use their meager pick supply to do so and may not even have the money to make a big addition feasible. Where does that leave them? Probably shopping around for bad contracts.

Zach LaVine, with a cap hit of $47.5 million, could be a Bucks trade target. Getty Images

The most common name they've been linked to has been Zach LaVine. Sacramento would love to get out of the last year of his contract and would probably give him up purely for matching salary. Great. Several problems, though. First, Kuzma and Portis are important. Swapping them out for LaVine may improve the guard offense, but it would cost the Bucks their only athletic wing and their best bench scorer. Would that even be worth it? Would LaVine even represent that much of an upgrade over Rollins and Porter? Probably not, but desperate times may call for desperate measures.

That's a post-trade problem. Here's a pre-trade problem: Portis and Kuzma alone aren't enough to legally match salary on LaVine's $47.4 million cap figure. The Bucks would need to include another $2.4 million. So long, Gary Harris. That's no major loss, but it would leave Sacramento with 17 rostered players. Would the Kings want this deal badly enough to waive two players? Is there another deal the Kings could attach that would allow them to balance their roster? In all likelihood, someone is going to need to grease the wheels for a third team to take on Harris and a King. That means a second-round pick or more most of the time. The Bucks literally don't have one. Between now and 2032, Milwaukee has just a single second-rounder. It's a top-55 protected pick from Utah this year. So it's fake. The Bucks can't even bribe someone into taking a minimum contract off of their hands.

You can apply these concerns to most players in the max range. Milwaukee might theoretically be the sort of team that could justify taking on Paul George, for instance, given their enormous wing need. He makes even more than LaVine. So does Kawhi Leonard, probably the best single player they have the assets to hypothetically chase. Any of the higher-end All-Stars on the market are just too costly. Say the Bucks were willing to talk picks in an Anthony Davis trade. They'd have to include Turner just to match the money. Where is a Davis-Antetokounmpo duo getting you with little else?

There are cheaper cap dumps out there. None really make sense for the Bucks. DeMar DeRozan is likely just as gettable as LaVine from Sacramento. Milwaukee's entire roster theory relies on having 3-point shooters around Antetokounmpo. That's not DeRozan. The biggest area of need right now is perimeter defense. There just isn't much of it available, and what little actually might be feasible comes with all sorts of other drawbacks. Would the Bucks really want to spend all of their remaining draft capital on the Pelicans' Herb Jones knowing that he's an inconsistent shooter? Probably not.

If there's an answer here, it's going to be the uncomfortable one. Milwaukee's clearest path to a significant upgrade probably comes over the summer. Several pretty significant changes come at that point.

Moving money gets easier for everyone. AJ Green's extension gives the Bucks another eight-figure salary to work with, but they can also sign-and-trade their own free agents if they need to create a bit more money to work with, and with bigger offseason roster limits of 20 players, it's easier for teams to absorb contracts and figure the rest out later.

Milwaukee will also have more draft capital to work with. As it stands right now, the Bucks don't technically control their 2026 first-round pick, and they can't trade it in-season, but functionally, they're going to have it when the draft arrives in June. Why? Because it is currently tied to swap rights with the Pelicans, who are far worse than they are at 5-22. Either the Bucks keep their own pick, or it miraculously jumps up in the lottery, in which case, they get the New Orleans pick as a solid consolation prize. Either way, if the Bucks don't improve, they should have a decent 2026 pick to trade with. Their 2033 pick also unlocks as a trade chip, as the league calendar will roll over and bring it within the seven-year trade window.

And then of course, new players become available with every passing transaction cycle. Nobody available today seems capable of turning the Bucks around, or more importantly, convincing Antetokounmpo that this team is even capable of turning around. That might be different in June or July. 

Of course, that's means getting to June or July. That's been Jon Horst's superpower as Milwaukee's GM. He buys time until a rabbit hops into his hat. But Antetokounmpo could end this at any moment. All he has to do is ask for the trade, stop dancing around the obvious and accept that getting to a real contender means being the bad guy in Milwaukee. The moment he blinks, the Bucks lose the staring contest.

The Bucks could force the issue. Even if Giannis asks, they don't have to trade him during the season, or during the offseason for that matter. They could tell him "there will be no trade, you will be a Buck until and unless you exercise your right to become a free agent in 2027," and then try to rebuild the team without his blessing. Good luck getting buy-in from your existing players in that world, much less any new ones you might want to recruit.

This all sounds pretty pessimistic. It should. It's pretty rare for 31-year-old stars to want to stay with 11-16 teams that don't control their picks or have young talent on the horizon. This isn't an overnight mistake. It took years for the Bucks to dig this hole, and it will take years for them to pull their way out of it even if they trade Antetokounmpo tomorrow. That's unavoidable. The only question now is whether they're ready to start climbing or if they're really going to insist on digging further with another shortsighted move.