MILWAUKEE — Giannis Antetokounmpo thumbed through his cell phone in the Milwaukee Bucks locker room, ice wrapped around both knees and his foot submerged in a converted mop bucket full of even more ice. He had scored 16 points in a preseason game against the defending NBA champion Oklahoma City Thunder more than an hour ago, and the last of his few scattered teammates – including his brother, Thanasis – were gone.
Everybody else – reporters, team officials, locker room attendants, the rest of the basketball world outside Fiserv Forum – watched Antetokounmpo, waiting to hear what he had to say. The folks in the building every game knew the routine entering Year 13 with their superstar, and nobody is ready to consider the prospect of it ending.
Nobody besides maybe Antetokounmpo.
“I’ll be aggressive until I retire,” he eventually told a small group of reporters on this night, speaking to his role within the Bucks’ new-look offense this NBA season, but the words could be interpreted any number of ways given what he’s said (and hasn’t said) about his future in recent weeks.
What Antetokounmpo is thinking, and whether he decides to stay with the Bucks for the rest of his career, will linger as a juicy storyline throughout the 2025-26 NBA season, with the team’s fortunes and Antetokounmpo’s statements likely to be parsed for clues until this beloved Milwaukee sports figure offers a more definitive answer.
He has two more years, with a player option for the 2027-28 season, left on his current contract with the Bucks. But Antetokounmpo has only committed to playing for the franchise this season and that “if in six, seven months I change my mind, I think that’s human, too,” he told reporters this preseason.
The two outcomes are equally compelling for Antetokounmpo’s legacy. Either he becomes the increasingly rare basketball star to stick with the same franchise for his entire career, while perhaps decreasing his chances of winning another championship. Or he changes the NBA landscape by forcing his way to another team, risking the comfort and adoration of the only American home he’s known in hopes of perhaps increasing the odds of joining a new echelon of league legends with multiple titles.
An uncomfortable conversation for Giannis, Bucks
Though there are familiar small market vs. big market undertones to the speculation, Antetokounmpo’s one-of-a-kind path to becoming the face of the Bucks franchise makes the conversation all the more delicate. In fact, in Milwaukee, they don’t want to have it at all.
“There is no chatter here. The chatter is in Connecticut for the most part. They don’t even have a pro team in Connecticut, but that’s been where the chatter is at. There’s been very little talk about it for us,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said last week, making light of an ESPN report earlier this month that Milwaukee and the New York Knicks discussed a potential trade involving Antetokounmpo this past offseason.
But even Antetokounmpo acknowledged there’s an extra layer to this round of rumors – even if he doesn’t see them on social media – because he’s also adjusting to a revamped supporting cast.
The Bucks, in an effort to remain Eastern Conference contenders after three-straight first-round exits in the NBA playoffs, stretched and waived Damian Lillard’s contract and signed Myles Turner from the Indiana Pacers. Also gone are familiar faces like Khris Middleton, Brook Lopez and Pat Connaughton. This happened two seasons after the Bucks initially pivoted from the core that helped them win the 2021 NBA championship by trading Jrue Holiday in a three-team deal that brought back Lillard.
“Now, I think we’re a young team so with my actions and my words, I’ve got to keep on validating (to) those guys that … I’m here and there’s nothing else that matters,” Antetokounmpo said. “… I feel the energy within my teammates, right? With conversations, with practices, after in the locker room, at buses, when we’re traveling on the plane, that’s when I feel. So the rest is just extra noise, right? I wish everybody could be like that, but I know a lot of people are not like that, and a lot of teammates are going to go through their phone.”
Those that have been in a locker room with Antetokounmpo caution about reading too much into anything beyond this season.
Though the “Greek Freak” is now a 31-year-old father, the two-time MVP is still perhaps the best two-way player in the NBA. Antetokounmpo set a career high for assists in 2024-25 and shot better than 60% from the field for the second consecutive season. He’s the only player in NBA history to do that while averaging more than 30 points per game. Everybody in the NBA would want him – if Antetokounmpo wants out of Milwaukee.
“He just answered the question and that’s all you can ask of someone is to be where their feet are,” said former Bucks teammate Wesley Matthews. “To me, everything I know about him and what he’s saying, there’s no reason to feel anything other than that. He’s a competitor. He wants to win.”
Yet, it’s hard to discuss Antetokounmpo’s situation without infusing emotion into the analysis.
“Thirteen years in one place, he don’t know anything else. I think that’s what’s special,” continued Matthews, who is starting his first season as a Bucks television commentator. “The state of Wisconsin and the city of Milwaukee got to see him really try to adapt to the culture of what is Milwaukee, what is the U.S. He went crazy over Jamba Juice the first time, right? He’s wholesome in a way that you can relate to.”
‘Wish a person loved me as much as the Bucks love Giannis’
Antetokounmpo was the overlooked prospect thriving in an overlooked NBA city, and the power of their embrace can be seen all around Milwaukee now. His life story, as a Nigerian immigrant in Greece who brought his whole family along on this NBA journey, became a Disney movie.
There’s also an entire Deer District of bars, restaurants and entertainment options built around Fiserv Forum, which opened in 2018. The stands are full of Antetokounmpo’s No. 34 jerseys, and a giant mural of him greets drivers as they roll down Wisconsin Avenue into downtown Milwaukee. Antetokounmpo and his brothers have their own apparel store, Antetokounbros, across the street from the arena.
“He’s very loyal to his family and to Milwaukee. That’s why we come – the loyalty,” said longtime Bucks season ticket holder John Janacik. “We’ve watched him get married and have kids. It’s hard to explain, and it’s nothing anyone else on the team could replace. But he has values and he doesn’t let it get to his head.”
This, for more than a decade, has exemplified what the relationship between a small-market city and an NBA star can be.
The Bucks’ franchise valuation has increased from $258 million in 2011 when Antetokounmpo was drafted, according to Forbes, to $4.54 billion in the latest Sportico estimates. The Bucks were considered the least valuable of the NBA’s 30 teams in the Forbes rankings in 2011, but checked in at No. 20 in Sportico’s 2025 rankings.
It’s why, if this is a long goodbye, it will be painful. If it’s not, there will be relief and joy, just like five years ago when the city lit up the Hoan Bridge to celebrate Antetokounmpo signing a new extension to remain with the Bucks. There may not be an in between, even as Milwaukee apparently tries to grease the wheels further by signing Antetokounmpo’s two brothers to NBA contracts for the season.
“I wish a person loved me as much as the Bucks love Giannis,” Charles Barkley said on “The Rich Eisen Show” in reaction to Antetokounmpo’s preseason comments about his future. “They went out and got him Dame Lillard. They went out and got him Myles Turner. They have done everything possible to try to make the Bucks win again, so the notion that he don’t feel they’re doing everything in their power – they have done everything. … It’s disheartening for me to hear him speaking like if we don’t win the championship this year, I want to be out of here. I hate hearing that.”
The only way to ensure Antetokounmpo stays with the Bucks is to win, however awkward the rhetoric could get for their fans if this season looks a lot like the past three and offers little clarity. He hasn’t directly set championship-or-bust expectations, but the way he talks about other teams suggests he’s consumed with getting back there.
So, Antetokounmpo does seem genuinely excited about this Bucks team ‒ ‘We’re not the favorites, but we’re going to be a problem’ ‒ and that Rivers is implementing more of a five-out approach on offense. It emphasizes spacing and 3-point shooting with the addition of Turner. Milwaukee, Antetokounmpo explained, will have more movement and fewer isolation looks, like the Oklahoma City Thunder, Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics.
“We’re playing like the best teams in the league,” he declared, which also meant he was very aware they weren’t before.