The Milwaukee Bucks are 1-4 and look more like a Cooper Flagg candidate than a championship contender through the first week and change of the NBA season. Doc Rivers has had a losing record since taking over the Bucks job and this roster is basically immune to improvement. There are few assets to trade and even less flexibility to trade them. The Bucks are stuck in the second bracket with a sky-high tax bill, a severe lack of promising young talent and an aging roster without the necessary components to maintain the winning streak around Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard.
It does help that Giannis and Dame don’t give off the best vibe in the world.
The Bucks are in big trouble. It’s generally unwise to panic after five games, but all the issues that plagued Milwaukee last season are coming to the fore again 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 best.
Giannis has made no effort to avoid this trade rumors. If the Bucks can’t turn this ship around, it’s only a matter of time before the two-time MVP starts to get restless. Milwaukee should be much better than this, but despite 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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The concept of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Zion Williamson in the same frontcourt is difficult to understand. The sheer athleticism between the two would prove to be a challenge for most defenses. Currently without a good starting center, the New Orleans Pelicans certainly wouldn’t mind putting Giannis in that role, relying on his defensive range as a backstop behind Herb Jones, Dejounte Murray and NOLA’s perimeter dogs.
Clearly, the Pelicans need a deep supportive pour and draft reservoir to make this happen. Giannis won’t come cheap, especially with several years left on his contract. The Pelicans aren’t exactly a popular destination either, which could complicate conversations. Giannis will certainly have thoughts about where he should end up.
That said, the prospect of pairing Giannis and Zion is tantalizing, as it would create the most unique and dominant frontcourt combination in modern history. Forget the distance, the Pelicans would have two free tickets to the front of the rim at all times. The defense would presumably pack the paint and throw a wall at both cutting giants, but Zion has thrived in less-than-optimal spacing environments before. Giannis’ shooting is nothing worse than what Daniel Theis is offering these days.
The Pelicans should have no problem collapsing the defense and creating open shooters at the rim. This trade would likely encourage the Pelicans to look for more three-point bombers (Jordan Hawkins would have a good day), but building Giannis is a great first step. Let’s start there.
The Houston Rockets are loaded with assets, both personnel and draft-wise, so there aren’t many teams with better trade packages lined up. I’m skeptical about Houston keeping both Amen Thompson and Reed Sheppard out of this trade, but I’m just imagining the two-man moves where Sheppard drives around DHOs from Giannis, or Thompson goes right to the rim and dumps Giannis… off.
That said, his real running mate, at least initially, would be Alperen Sengun. Most will quibble about Sengun being “better” than Damian Lillard, but we need to start thinking long term. Lillard’s best 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 the way we think about the center position. I’m not here to fuel those reckless comparisons, but Sengun’s playmaking ability is a rare gift at the fifth spot. There would be plenty of funky, creative ways to utilize the combined passing and interior scoring abilities of Sengun and Giannis.
In the meantime, 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 lot of ground on the weak side and can give Sengun some coverage, addressing one of Houston’s key weaknesses.
The Rockets are deep enough to trade for Giannis and keep a decent supporting cast intact. This team was going to go places.
It’s clearly 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 throw down the gauntlet and face Boston (or some Eastern underdog) in the NBA Finals. That’s without trading for Giannis.
There is no team better positioned to connect the threads between the present and the future than OKC. Sam Presti still has an ungodly number of future first-round picks in his stores. The Thunder can overwhelm the Bucks with picks and not even touch their stockpile of young talent. OKC has a real chance to sign Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams, And Giannis when it comes to trade talks between the two teams.
Giannis could opt for a more glamorous market, but if he really wants to win, this should be his desired landing spot. OKC isn’t necessarily the sexiest city, but that team is packed with 11-member dawgs, as Kevin Garnett so eloquently pointed out on his podcast.
Kevin Garnett LOVES the ‘DOGS’ on the OKC Thunder pic.twitter.com/C5FsUesVW2
— Designated Report (@DesignatedRpt) November 2, 2024
The Thunder are deep, young and packed with star power. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is already an MVP candidate, perhaps even more prominent in the NBA hierarchy than Giannis. Imagine Antetokounmpo as the No. 2. Plus, Chet Holmgren is quickly climbing that ladder on his own. OKC would have the league’s most dynamic and suffocating backcourt between Chet and Giannis, with Shai creating endless upside offensively as the head of the snake. That takes the pressure off Giannis and hopefully ensures that he can continue to compete in the championship for a long time.
This is what most people want to see. We’ve never had Stephen Curry and LeBron James on the same team, but Steph and Giannis might be just as entertaining. The Warriors of the Golden State have patiently preserved their draft picks, with several young prospects – Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski, Trayce Jackson-Davis – who could be called upon for a Bucks team heading into 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 degree of influence on 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 be pulling the 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 before, applying relentless pressure to the rim and generating easy buckets or turnovers. The two-man plays with Giannis and Steph would break down the defense and essentially provide what Milwaukee fans expected from Giannis and Dame. He’s not getting any younger, but Steph seems to be aging more gracefully than Lillard. His off-ball dynamics and shot versatility are just different, too. Dame is an all-time shooter, but he doesn’t compare to Steph, especially when it comes to playing at another offensive base.
The Warriors are red hot this season. Kerr has real depth and scoring power to work with around Steph, which changes the perception of Golden State quite a bit. The team isn’t built to simply compete for a championship, but adding Giannis clearly elevates the Warriors on several levels in the West.