This week, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks had discussions in August regarding a potential trade for superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, though nothing came to fruition.
But that reportedly caught the attention of a number of teams around the NBA.
“When that report came out, the fact that the Knicks and Bucks had some level of negotiation, as you can imagine some teams checked in with the Bucks. Like, ‘Hey, are you open to negotiations with Giannis?’ And the answer has been a resounding ‘no’ from what I’m told,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported Sunday. “So everybody is locked in on this year. And I know Giannis is prepared to try to do the most for the Bucks. No matter what it looks like, how they stack up to the other teams, the Bucks believe with Myles Turner and Giannis and their other returning players that they can be a contender in the East. But there’s no way that this Giannis thing is not gonna come back to the surface.”
It’s hard to imagine the Bucks ever truly entertaining a trade of Antetokounmpo unless he either demands it or it becomes clear that the championship window is closed and a rebuild is in order. Neither scenario has definitively played out to this point.
As Charania reported, the Bucks “insisted to the Knicks that they preferred not to move Antetokounmpo, but those in Milwaukee believe New York did not make a strong enough offer to continue even discussing a trade, league sources said. It’s unclear how the Bucks would have responded to an all-out chase by the Knicks. The multi-week process was described by one source with direct knowledge of the talks as an exclusive negotiating window. New York, for its part, believes the Bucks never were serious about entertaining an Antetokounmpo trade, sources said.”
According to Charania, the Knicks have long hoped to pry Antetokounmpo away from Milwaukee, with league sources believing that if the superstar is to ever leave the Bucks, he would choose the Knicks. For now, that speculated marriage isn’t happening, but if the Bucks start poorly this season, you can bet rumors about a potential Antetokounmpo departure will rev up yet again.
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