Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo made it very clear this offseason that he wanted the organization to be as committed to winning as he was in order to sign a long-term deal with Milwaukee.
While Antetokounmpo still has no plans to sign an extension in 2023 (he can make far more money if he waits until next offseason), he says he’s “happy” following the Bucks’ blockbuster trade for All-NBA guard Damian Lillard.
“Big trade having Dame here,” he said, per Eric Nehm of The Athletic (Twitter link). “We added another level to our team…They’ve shown they’re committed to winning a championship. I’m happy.”
“I want to be a Milwaukee Buck for the rest of the my career, as long as we are winning…the commitment from the team for me, is there,” Antetokounmpo added, according to ESPN’s Jamal Collier (Twitter link).
Here some more notes from the Bucks’ Media Day session:
- According to Nehm (Twitter link), Antetokounmpo says he and Lillard have a similar mentality. “Having a guy like Dame on the team, it’s unbelievable…Built from the same cloth,” Antetokounmpo said. “Wants to win, he’s extremely hungry.”
- Lillard believes he and Antetokounmpo will complement each other on the court as well, tweets Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports. “I’m the best version of myself as a player,” Lillard said. “So I think we’ll complement each other really well. I think he’s the kind of guy that he’s not going into it worried about being the man or anything like that either. So I think it’ll work out perfectly.”
- Antetokounmpo once again praised former teammate Jrue Holiday, who was sent to Portland in the Lillard deal and then was traded to Boston yesterday. “We’re definitely going to miss him… He’s always going to be a champion forever. He’s always going to be my friend, the best person I’ve ever met,” he said, per Nehm (Twitter link).
- Center Brook Lopez talked about free agency this summer, as Nehm of The Athletic relays (Twitter links). The big man eventually returning to the Bucks on a two-year, $48MM deal. Lopez prioritized “finding the place that I had the best chance to win and finding a place where I was valued,” adding that Milwaukee “was the only place I really wanted to be…(re-signing) means everything to me.”
- If they’re invited, both Lopez and Khris Middleton would like to play for Team USA in the 2024 Olympics, Nehm tweets.
- Speaking of Middleton, he says he’s fully healthy following offseason knee surgery, according to Nehm (Twitter link). The three-time All-Star was limited to 33 regular season games in 2022/23 after undergoing wrist surgery in the 2022 offseason and then being bothered by his right knee. “I feel great,” he said. “Don’t have the pain that I had last year. It was a decision that was made halfway through the season that I was going to have to get it fixed. It wasn’t a hard decision at all.”
Even with Lillard, MIL’s destiny may still be tied to KM’s health. 100% now is great, but he needs to be right in the playoffs (which he hasn’t been the past two seasons).
First thing I thought of was all the extra defensive responsibility that KM would have to shoulder with this trade
Defense in the NBA is like a chain and once a link gets broken the whole chain is weakened
Yep, it’s more true now than ever. The NBA has made defense so hard and offense so easy, it’s hurt the game. Or at least I find it hard to watch at times. It does increase the value of 2 way players, which is certainly good on its own.
I don’t think it’s so much the NBA making it easy as basketball being an offensive game as soon as the 3pt line was introduced. The change to remove “illegal defense” from the rulebooks was a good measure, and it led to the lowest scoring era ever in the early 2000s, but then the 7SOL Suns saw the writing on the wall and laid the foundations for the modern NBA with space-and-pace lineups creating the most efficient offense of all time. I don’t know what change they would make, except maybe adopt the low foul calls and physicality of the EuroLeague (compared to the NBA).
The 3 pt line was never the issue. It’s the prohibiting of perimeter defense that’s changed the sport, and dumbed it down, to the point that another skill crisis is around the corner. The NBA isn’t basketball, the latter has a long history. Pre-Stern, the NBA played one version or another of classic basketball (or was at least get it as close to it as the international game has remained). It was a better game, certainly to follow, in that it rewarded the full array of player skill sets and team playing styles. Not the universal generic 3 pt shooting/layup drills you see today. Maybe it wasn’t the most fan friendly to the casual fan, I can’t say. But, regardless, Stern-ism certainly wasn’t focused on improving the sport, as a sport, but only aligning marketing and outcomes. Stern learned that with his largest client in his pre-NBA life. Did the WWE improve wrestling? Maybe you believe so, many certainly find it a more watchable product. But would you expect someone who wrestled competitively to believe it improved his sport? That person likely understands the WWE isn’t going anywhere and nobody (the Olympics aside) wants to watch real wrestling. But you shouldn’t expect him to respect it as wrestling. The NBA is still real vs fake, but it’s worse in other ways, mostly because Stern had lousy aim. His rules often had an effect which was the opposite of what he wanted. Since he’s never wrong, the response was never repeal, but a doubling down and even more new rules. Rinse and repeat through his tenure and now Silver’s tenure. That’s where the NBA game is, and any purist or true fan of the real game will tell you it is, at least if they saw the real thing. Nobody is expecting a complete cleansing of the NBA version of the sport. But working a way back is going to be needed soon, and it’s a worthy discussion point. Truth is that I think mindless concepts like defensive 3 seconds / illegal defense/ legal guarding position can be dispensed with relatively quickly, without offending anyone. The real foul/violation rules can’t be reinstated quickly; it might take decades. It’s not realistic to expect modern players to play an entertaining game if the same rules verticality, initiation of contact, incidental vs consequential contact, were applied to the post and perimeter, offense and defense, equally as intended. Not sure even I would want to ask them to try.
He’s happy now, but if they don’t win a title he’s going to leave and say he just wants to be happy.
Dame < Holiday
Bucks got worse. As a warriors fan Dame is a great scorer that’s it. Never played defense in his life
Bucks seeing JRue traded to C’s makes the Dame trade less favorable.
Still a no brainer for Giannis extension in Milwaukee, and making Heat management a big double looser…
I wouldn’t say worse, just different. Better offense, worse defense. They will probably have a better regular season, but most likely a 2nd Rd exit
Dame is leaps and bounds better than Holiday on offense and there’s more to his game then shooting. He’s a gifted passer and creator. Dame has always had to be the primary scorer but he’s still averaged 6.7 apg and never has had weapons like Middleton, Lopez and Giannis. I wouldn’t be surprised if he bumps that assist average up in the neighborhood of 9-10 a game. They lost Holiday and it will hurt on defense but they’ll still have a great defense. They have Lopez who is one of the best rim protectors in the league, Middleton is a good perimeter defender and then there’s that guy named Giannis, I hear he’s decent on the defensive end as well.
The Cavs had the best defense in the league in the regular season despite having a much worse defensive backcourt than the Buck will have now. (Connaughton and Beasley are good/average defensively, respectively, while both Garland and Mitchell are below-average). Yeah, they lost in the playoffs, but that had more to do with getting out-rebounded and a lack of spacing, not defense.
And I don’t know about you, but I’d take Giannis and Lopez over Mobley and Allen, at least for this next season, on defense. In the future, we’ll see. But it’s not time to ring the alarm bells yet.
Also, anyone who thinks Dame can only shoot has only ever seen highlights, not an actual Blazers game. Taco has the right of it.
But that’s the nba that’s why a lot of people don’t view Draymond as a hall of fame player
What is he supposed to say? Lillard sucks?