The 2024-25 NBA season is here. At the end of an uneventful offseason, we take our annual trip too close to the sun, daring you to stand the swelter of these views. This is Hot Takes We Might Actually Believe.
The Milwaukee Bucks are teetering on dissolution.
For whatever reason we do not feel comfortable talking about it. We like to think that — with a full training camp under head coach Doc Rivers, a refocused Damian Lillard and a few tweaks to the roster — the Bucks will be just fine. And we really do want to think that. No one wants what is worst for Giannis Antetokounmpo, a fun-loving superstar whose ceiling knew no bounds as recently as a few years ago.
Rather than face reality, we prefer to consider his recent comments to The Athletic’s Sam Amick — “'[What] if this year doesn’t go well?’ Yeah, if we don’t win a championship, I might get traded” — a joke.
But who are we kidding: Four seasons removed from their championship campaign, the Bucks are spinning their tires, inching as close to the NBA’s middle as they are title contention, burning the rest of Antetokounmpo’s prime, and there will be a(nother) point when he can no longer stand the status quo.
And that point will come this season.
As Antetokounmpo told The New York Times last year, before he signed a three-year, $175 million contract extension, “I don’t want to be 20 years on the same team and don’t win another championship.”
Around this point last season Antetokounmpo was frustrated by Milwaukee’s regression. Since winning the title in 2021, the Bucks had already taken two steps back, losing a second-round playoff series to the Boston Celtics in 2022. But a five-game, first-round playoff loss to the eighth-seeded Miami Heat in 2023 was embarrassing, even if injuries prevented Antetokounmpo from playing two games in the series.
So the Bucks pulled the trigger on a blockbuster trade at dawn of last season’s training camp, dealing Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen and the rights to three first-round draft picks to the Portland Trail Blazers for Lillard. The swap briefly made Milwaukee the betting favorite to win the championship, until it backfired. Portland rerouted Holiday to Boston, where he completed a starting five that would not be denied a title.
Meanwhile, the Bucks endured another opening-round playoff exit. Antetokounmpo strained his left calf at the end of the regular season, missing the entirety of their first-round set against the Indiana Pacers. Lillard suffered from right Achilles tendinitis midway through the series, and Milwaukee lost in six games.
The net result: A single playoff series victory in three seasons of Antetokounmpo’s prime.
He will turn 30 years old in December. He has finished top-five for MVP and top-10 in Defensive Player of the Year voting each of the past three years, averaging a 31-12-6 in that span. He has been amazing. He is also experiencing wear and tear on his lower extremities. Since hyperextending his left knee on the title run, he has missed time to a sprained right ankle, a right calf injury, a sore right knee, a sore left ankle, a sore left knee, a sprained right knee, a left Achilles injury, a left hamstring injury and a strained left calf.
How much longer can his 6-foot-11, 242-pound frame support a relentless pursuit of the rim? He will be asking himself this same question all season; any mounting losses will make the answer harder to hear.
For now Antetokounmpo can convince himself otherwise, much like the Milwaukee faithful has. Rivers assumed control of a rudderless ship midway through the 2023-24 campaign. Lillard was, according to Rivers, out of shape and, by his own admission, going through a divorce in “the toughest year of my life.”
A fresh start should do wonders for their coaching and conditioning issues. Plus, the Bucks added Gary Trent Jr., Taurean Prince and Delon Wright — three capable members of any playoff rotation — despite having nothing but minimum contracts to address their depth concerns in that regard from last season.
Insert a healthy Antetokounmpo, and all is right in Milwaukee again. Right?
Except for this part: The Bucks did nothing to address their chief concern — an aged supporting cast.
Brook Lopez is 36 years old. No one else from his draft class is still relied upon as a starting contributor, much less the anchor of a championship-level defense. We should note: Milwaukee’s defense rated below average last season. And the ground does not get steadier under Lopez’s $23 million expiring contract.
Lillard is 34. His last three seasons have ended in injury. And he is a detriment on defense. These truths are self-evident — and getting worse, even as we expect him to enjoy a bounce-back season offensively.
Khris Middleton is the youngest of the three at age 33. His health is also in the direst straits. His last three summers have been spent rehabbing from surgeries — to his left wrist in 2022, his right knee in 2023 and both of his ankles this offseason.
Even if Antetokounmpo can submit a seventh straight first-team All-NBA season — and there is no reason but health that he should not — and even if the trio of Trent, Prince and Wright extends what was a woeful backend of the rotation, the bones of this would-be contender are still old. And Lillard is to the point guard position what Lopez is to the center spot and Middleton is on the wing. Each is invaluable.
Remove one, and the facade crumbles. Even when healthy they must face a league that gets younger and more athletic by the year. As is, they own the fourth-best odds to win the Eastern Conference. They were third last season, when Antetokounmpo, Lillard and Lopez were healthy for much of the regular season — only for Antetokounmpo to suffer a calf strain, negating any chance of winning a single playoff series.
What happens when what was obvious last season becomes clear again? The Bucks are not favorites. They are banking on one of the best players alive — an increasingly injury-prone one — to drag a core of mid-30-somethings through four playoff rounds. While in theory that may be enough to convince them at the start of the season they have a title shot, the flaws in that plan will reveal themselves in due time.
They are already showing. Middleton won’t even be ready to start the season.
At what point does Antetokounmpo realize what the past three seasons have laid bare? He no longer has the supporting cast necessary to navigate the NBA’s gauntlet. He declared last season “the hardest” of his career in March, knowing full well before his injury that Milwaukee would fall short of its annual goal.
This time around the Bucks cannot blame a sub-par defense on a first-year head coach. They cannot blame Lillard’s late arrival for an imperfect partnership with Antetokounmpo. They cannot blame injuries when age and history are more obvious suspects. The realization will come quicker this time around.
And then what? Then Milwaukee better pivot quickly or risk Antetokounmpo finishing the thought he began when he told The New York Times, “The moment I feel like, oh, yeah, we’re trying to rebuild —”
Because what value will Lillard, Lopez and Middleton hold if they cannot hoist Antetokounmpo aloft? Lopez is a free agent at season’s end. Lillard and Middleton are owed a combined $89 million next season. Who could they fetch who represents an upgrade? They cannot sweeten the pot with a first-round draft pick, since they do not control one of their own until 2031. There is only one way out of this.
