Bucks' Giannis Antetokounmpo Expected to be Main Trade Target for Lottery Team

After getting booted from the first round for the third consecutive year — and losing nine-time All-Star Damian Lillard to a possibly career-altering Achilles tendon tear — the Milwaukee Bucks find themselves in an unenviable place this summer.

The Bucks have minimal trade assets with which they can part. Offloading Lillard's massive contract will be near-impossible given his health trouble.

Thus, the team will essentially have no path for surrounding two-time league MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, 30, with a championship-caliber supporting cast until Lillard either returns to his All-Star ways (although even then, he never looked quite comfortable alongside Antetokounmpo, and they never developed the pick-and-roll chemistry many expected) or is just permanently off the Bucks' books.

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Although Antetokounmpo has apparently at least crept up to the line of requesting a trade out of town in the past, his concerns were always sated by blockbuster deals for All-Star guards.

When Milwaukee traded a lot of its future draft equity to acquire Jrue Holiday in the 2020 offseason, that yielded the team's first title in 50 years the following summer. When the Bucks subsequently flipped Holiday and most of their other draft leverage to bring on Lillard during the 2023 offseason, the team's luck ran out.

The subtraction of Holiday, and the injury-related decline of Khris Middleton, effectively killed what had been the team's biggest asset around Antetokounmpo — its lethal perimeter defense.

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Now, the Bucks seem to have run out of options to return to their title-winning aways, at least while Antetokounmpo remains at or near his athletic prime.

If Antetokounmpo does demand a trade away from the only NBA team he's ever known, Sam Vecenie of The Athletic posits that the San Antonio Spurs would view him as their top trade priority this summer.