As the NBA trade deadline loomed last year, a star player reacted to the blockbuster trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers and Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks by saying the following:
“It’s a business. You have to understand this. Nobody’s safe. Nobody’s safe.”
The player who said those words: Milwaukee’s Giannis Antetokounmpo.
This season’s deadline is fast approaching, now less than a week away, and it’s Antetokounmpo who is the epicenter of the NBA trade universe this time. Speculation about his future — will the Bucks trade him or not? — will continue until he either gets moved or until the deadline hits Thursday afternoon. And if he doesn’t get moved now, the rumors will almost certainly resume in June around the draft and the start of free agency.
Going into Friday, there was just one trade of note this season: Atlanta moving Trae Young to Washington earlier this month. There has been an average of 13 deals around the trade deadline every year for the last decade, so it certainly seems like teams are waiting to see how the Antetokounmpo domino falls — if it happens at all — before figuring out what they want to do.
“I think there’s a lot of dialogue going on around the league,” Golden State general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. said last week. “We talk to all these teams, everybody’s talking to each other, feeling each other out.”
Everything starts with Antetokounmpo, and it doesn’t take much to set the rumor mill into overdrive. A photo — probably a decade or so old — was posted on Facebook this week, purportedly on Antetokounmpo’s mother’s page. It’s of three people, including the Bucks star, standing on the side of the court that the Miami Heat call home.
Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant everything. It did get a whole lot of people talking. Such is NBA life at trade deadline time, and nobody is sure how to deal with the craze this time of year.
“I don’t know the answer,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said Thursday when asked about how to handle the noise. “I’ve never known that answer. Every year, it’s a different thing. It’s so much tougher now. I’ve said that many times. When we played … you had to go and buy the paper to read the paper.”
Is he obsessing over the thought of losing Antetokounmpo?
“Why think about something that hasn’t happened and probably won’t happen?” Rivers asked.
This much is certain: All 30 NBA teams have taken and made calls in the last few days and will continue doing so for the next few days, all to see what the market is and how everyone can improve their chances of winning now or improve their odds of contending in a couple years.
The Warriors are probably among the teams who want Antetokounmpo the most. Miami would be another. New York, too. Everybody — Milwaukee included — surely wants him on the roster, though most teams frankly don’t have much of a shot.
It’s a fun time of year, except for those who have to get asked about rumors every few hours.
“We don’t really give it any time,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said, speaking generally about trade rumors and not any specific one. “The veteran players, they understand that so much of it is just conjecture. It’s just a bunch of BS. But it is part of our business. That’s what we all sign up for.”
The fact that teams have interest in Antetokounmpo is obviously no surprise; he remains one of the best players in the world. The question is whether the Bucks feel this is the time to let their longtime franchise cornerstone go, amid a disappointing season and with Antetokounmpo likely to be sidelined for the next several weeks with another instance of a calf injury.
And last week, Antetokounmpo may have sounded the alarm with these comments after the Bucks lost to Oklahoma City:
“We’re not playing hard,” Antetokounmpo said that night. “We aren’t doing the right thing. We’re not playing to win. We’re not playing together. Our chemistry’s not there. Guys are being selfish, trying to look for their own shots instead of looking for the right shot for the team. Guys trying to do it on their own.”
The season is getting away from the Bucks, and some of their future draft capital is gone as well because of other moves they’ve made in recent years. They landed Damian Lillard, then watched him tear his Achilles and wound up setting him free so he could return to Portland. They’re 18-28, 12th in the Eastern Conference. It’ll likely require somewhere around a .500 finish to get into the postseason mix this year and that means Milwaukee would have to go 23-13 the rest of the way.
That doesn’t seem likely. So, now, the Bucks have a decision to make. It should also be noted that Antetokounmpo — who spent part of Thursday at a celebration for Peter Feigin, who is stepping down as Bucks president after a 12-year run — is a few months from entering the final year of his contract.
“The main thing,” Dunleavy said, probably echoing the thoughts of 29 other GMs right now, “is we do the right thing.”
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